Opuscula Theologica et Polemica 1 part 3/12

just as, then, we too, in relation to Adam and Eve, and to that very God who was made flesh for our sake, are kindred through our humanity, and consubstantial.

For just as the unbegotten and the begotten are not the essence of God (for who would say so?), so neither are seed-conception and its absence, in any way whatsoever, the nature of humanity.

The great theologian Gregory, then, gives no indication that the human [nature] in the Savior is, according to nature, one thing, while that which is ours is another — even though it has been so supposed by some, because he says: 'We might say that the statement is patterned from the man';

not that [statement] being understood with reference to the Savior;

for his willing, being wholly deified, was in no way contrary to God;

as is the case with the human will, which does not always follow the divine [will], but for the most part resists and struggles against it.

For it is properly his, and is called so, not as being of another [nature], or from another, besides our essence and nature;

but as having come to be on account of him and in him, according to the same and single hypostasis;

and not enacted by itself apart, or for itself, as is the case with us.

Whence also the mode of generation that was newly introduced, innovating its own proper seed, had the very Word [as that seed], obtaining together both to exist naturally and to subsist divinely in him;

so that what is ours might be confirmed;

and what is above us might be believed —

without which there is, at all, no nature whatsoever, but only an empty phantasm — and so as to preserve the union:

the one [aspect], preserved in natural otherness;

the other, again, known in hypostatic identity;

and thus, both wisely and piously at once, to declare the whole principle of the [divine] economy, throughout, to be at once unconfused and undivided.

Him, if you yourself proclaim orthodoxly, you shall have proclaiming you in return, according to the promise, and granting the enjoyment of what is his own — here, as it were, through hope; there, through actual experience;

of which enjoyment, beseech that I too may partake, O sanctified Father, bringing [me] near, through your mediation, to him who calls and saves;

and, as a reward for the mutual compassion of those of the same kin toward one another, [beseech] him who grants to be glorified with him and beside him;

to whom be glory and dominion, together with the all-holy Father, and his life-giving Spirit, unto the ages of ages.

Against those who say that one must speak of one operation of Christ, according to predominance;

on the ground that, since his divine [operation] is more effective, it prevails over the human — thus, they think, one must argue [in defense of this].

In the first place, you yourselves also confess two operations;

But relative terms always bring in, along with themselves, their counter-distinguished correlatives as well.

Furthermore, if you speak of the operation according to predominance, as though the human [operation] were abolished through being overpowered, you thereby introduce a diminution for both.

For that which prevails is itself also, in every case, among the things that are acted upon;

for it too is mastered by that which is mastered.

For even if to a lesser degree, nevertheless it is, in every case, still mastered;

just as gold, though predominating over the silver, let us say, or the bronze mixed with it —

yet is itself also mastered, even if less, evidently in proportion to the quantity that was mixed in.

Against those who say: 'Just as there is one operation of the instrument and of that which moves it, so also [there is] one operation of the Godhead and of the manhood.'

If you say the instrument is natural, then, according to you, the Word will be coeval with the flesh, or the flesh co-eternal with the Word;

for everything that makes use of a natural instrument has that [instrument] as coeval with itself;

and then it will be time for us to say either that the divine nature is a creature, or that the body is uncreated.

But if you say the instrument is [an instrument] of art/craft, you thereby introduce it as inanimate, and as standing apart by itself and divided;

and as not always in motion, but only whenever it seems fit to the one working [with it] to take it in hand and put it to work;

and thereupon you will be shown to be of one mind with the demented Nestorius, who divides and separates the two natures of Christ, God, that came together into one hypostasis and one person;

or [you will be shown to be] disciples of the impious Apollinarius, who says that the body of Christ is without soul and without mind.

A composite operation is, in every case, [the operation] of a composite nature.

But every composite nature has an origin that is simultaneous [in its parts] and involuntary;

for it exists as created, and is circumscribed by its own place and world;

and is inclusive of many individuals.

It is time, then, for you, in saying that Christ has one composite operation, to say also that Christ has a composite nature — of which it is indeed the defining [operation] — that nature having its parts simultaneous;

and [say] that the coming-together of these [parts] is involuntary and compelled;

and created, and circumscribed by its own world and place;

and, finally, [say] that there is a multitude of Christs, of whom this [nature] is predicated.

If you take the saying, 'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me' — which carries an implication of contraction — as spoken from the man, not the man conceived according to the Savior (for that one's willing was in no way opposed to God, being wholly deified), but the man as with us, on the ground that the human will does not always follow God but for the most part resists and struggles against him, as the divine Gregory says —

the following words of the prayer, that is, 'Not what I will, but let your will prevail' — what does it seem to you to be?

[Is it a sign] of contraction, or of courage?

[Is it a sign] of utmost concord, or of separation?

But that it is not a sign of resistance nor of cowardice, but rather of complete connaturality and concord, none of those who have understanding will deny.

And if it is a sign of complete connaturality and concord, from which will do you take this to proceed?

From the will as with us, or from the man conceived according to the Savior?

But if indeed from the will as with us, then the teacher's statement declaring concerning it has erred, namely:

'that the human will does not always follow the divine will, but for the most part resists and struggles against it.'

For if it follows, it does not resist;

and if it resists, it does not follow.

But if you take 'Not what I will, but let your will prevail' not from the will as with us, but from the man conceived according to the Savior, then you have confessed the utmost concord of his human will with his divine and paternal will;

and you have confessed that the nature of the twofold Christ is two;

and you have set forth the acts of willing and the operations as being according to nature,

he having in neither nature any opposition whatsoever;

even while he preserved, in every respect, the natural difference of those natures out of which, and in which, and which he was, being the same according to nature.

But if, hemmed in by these arguments, you are driven to say that 'Not what I will' belongs neither to the will as with us, nor to the man conceived according to the Savior, but is applied negatively to the unoriginate godhead of the Only-Begotten,

excluding thereby the notion that he wills anything of his own apart from the Father —

then necessarily you also carry the thing willed, which is the refusal of the cup, back to that same unoriginate godhead.

For even if you say that the negation involves the removal of his willing anything of his own, it does not involve the taking away of the thing willed;

for it is not possible for the negation to be applied to both,

both to the Only-Begotten's willing something of his own apart from the Father, and to the thing willed.

Since otherwise the willing of the will common to the Father and the Son would altogether be the removal of what is willed by God, that is, of our salvation.

For this is established, by nature, as the thing willed by him.

But if it is not possible for the negation to be applied to both, it is clear that if you refer it only to his willing something of his own, in order to establish the common will, you will not remove the thing willed, that is, the refusal of the cup;

but you will bring it to bear instead against the common and unoriginate godhead, to which you have also negatively referred the willing.

But if even to conceive of this is abominable, then clearly here the negation, that is, 'Not what I will,' wholly removing opposition, sets forth the connaturality of the Savior's human will with his divine and paternal will;

inasmuch as the Word, having been essentially united to the whole nature entire, deified it wholly by that very essential union.

Whence, as having become for our sake as we are, he said, in a manner befitting man, to God the Father:

'not mine, but let your will prevail' —

inasmuch as he himself, God by nature, also had, as man, an act of willing — the fulfilment of the paternal will —

on the one hand, as consenting to this together with the Father and the Spirit;

and on the other hand, as having become obedient to the Father because of it, even unto death, death on a cross;

and having himself accomplished, through the flesh, the great mystery of the dispensation toward us.

SCHOLION. That those who say that 'Not what I will' is applied negatively to the unoriginate godhead of the Only-Begotten —

signifying, as they themselves say, that he wills nothing of his own apart from the Father — they are, of necessity, also compelled to carry the thing willed, which is the refusal of the cup, back to that same unoriginate godhead;

and that, since it is not possible for the negation to be applied to both — both to the Only-Begotten's willing something of his own apart from the Father, and to the thing willed — they by all means carry it back only to the willing of something of his own, and not to the thing willed, which is the refusal of the cup, that is, our salvation;

than which what could be more absurd?

For it follows that God wills to let pass what is, by nature, established as the thing willed by him.

Since of whatever 'Not what I will' pertains to, of that also, in every case, pertains:

'Let this cup pass from me.'

O all-wise initiate, and mystagogue of mysteries,

for by the sacred interweaving of both, you have acquired perfection in all good things;

according to the one, having become wholly and entirely God's through the fulfilment of his divine commandments, you are reckoned — by such as I, who, because of an extreme excess of poverty, in a soul's disposition mired in matter, wallow in the corrupting discharge of unclean passions — to be wholly united to God;

while at the same time, thereby, procuring for yourself, according to reason, security;

for nothing is stronger than voluntary poverty for the establishment and preservation of good things;

for it stands as an unbreakable foundation of the divine edifices in the soul, and becomes the procurer of salvation for all the other things through which the good has been zealously pursued;

by leading, through effectual demonstration rather than didactic address, by way of a lofty condescension, unto greatness of virtue, those who wisely direct toward you both their mind and, likewise, their manner of life.

In accordance with this zeal, I say, possessing the whole fervor of the Spirit, and having acquired in the earth of your heart that fire which the Word — by nature a lover of the good and a lover of mankind — came to cast upon it, a fire that consumes wholly our depraved habit and motion, you set aflame those who, through deceit and folly, rave madly after matter and rave madly in speech, both in base deeds and counterfeit words, refuting the rottenness and vanity of these by the display of that blessed lamp, burning unquenchably in you according to divine knowledge and virtue;

and you warm those utterly frozen by the icy stiffness of this precipitous, lightless height, with the radiant beams of divine words;

wholly driving away and dissolving the chill, and transforming utmost contraction into utmost courage and strength;

and again you give light from the eternal mountains —

I mean, the immaterial mountains of paternal words and doctrines, which have surpassed all knowledge and power of every sense — you illumine those who long for light;

and by that taste which pertains to wisdom, you render them already well imaged, through hope, as that very thing which is, by its own nature, the object desired;

leading them onward, and devoutly bringing them, through experience, to a total transformation.

For nothing so images forth the work of your divine priesthood as zeal that is tempered with godly reverence and unyielding, together with the innate principle in us that both sustains and kindles it, preparing us to do, and wisely steering us toward, those things which he who is first by nature also commands — unto our ascent to him, and unto complete restoration through holy works and good doctrines;

and unto flight from, and aversion to, those things which cause us to miss this sacred ascent.

And what else so violently dissolves this, and, as it were, walls it off —

I mean the journey toward the Word — except the fearful betrayal of it by those who have now sprung up against those who travel the royal road of the divine and paternal doctrines;

a betrayal that acknowledges no deviation whatsoever among those who are unhappily borne along, on either side, in the pits of confusion and the ravines of division,

nor wishes to know it in any way at all — that royal road by which, through the grace of the all-holy Spirit who wisely guides and leads by the hand, those who press on, according to their prayers, through sincere and orthodox faith, are brought to the perfect, face-to-face knowledge and initiation into the great God and Savior of all, Christ.

For betrayal is the alteration of the pious opinion held both by him and concerning him, which, by the adoption of the confession and teaching of those of heterodox belief, sells him off, unto the destruction of his all-holy flesh taken from us;

or rather, unto the overthrow of the whole dispensation;

and it is a betrayal more grievous than that which took place at the first, when the Word existed in the flesh among us, by so much as the knowledge of his godhead, and the truth concerning his humanity, have become more perfectly manifest to all —

a truth that has laid hold of the ends of the inhabited world through the loud proclamation of the holy Fathers who preach it,

namely, the teaching of the teachers, that the One of the holy and consubstantial Trinity, the Only-Begotten Son, being perfect God according to nature, became perfect man by will, having truly assumed our consubstantial flesh from the holy Mother of God, ever-virgin, flesh ensouled rationally and intellectively, and having united it to himself hypostatically, properly, and indivisibly, exists one together with it, just as before;

yet not without composition in his hypostasis,

inasmuch as he remained God and consubstantial with the Father;

and again twofold, as having become flesh;

so that, by the twofold character of his nature, he might be akin in essence to both extremes, and might preserve the natural difference of the proper parts in relation to one another;

By the uniqueness of his person, while he possesses complete identity in respect of the parts, he also possesses, as one and only, a personal difference in relation to the extremes.

and, by the undiminished natural and essential invariance in relation to them (I mean the extremes), he is perfect in respect of each of the two.

the same being at once God and man.

Those who impiously teach the diminution of what naturally belongs to him introduce him as imperfect, and as having suffered the loss of what is according to nature.

For if — apart from sin alone, according to the divine Fathers — he does not preserve without deficiency the property of each of the natures out of which and in which the incarnate Word properly exists, even after the union, then God exists deficient;

if indeed, being wholly man, he has acquired a diminution of the natural properties.

One must not, therefore, under the pretext of a union that in truth harms nothing but only binds the realities together into one according to hypostasis, corrupt their existence by the removal of the natural will and the essential operation.

For whether we should melt down and fuse together, as though composing a whole out of parts, the two essential wills and the equally numbered natural operations into one will and one operation, such a thing is mythical, and will be shown to be wholly foreign and alien to his communion with the Father and with us;

since that one [the Father] does not have, according to nature, a composite will or operation.

For composition belongs to none of the things that exist in a subject,

because their existence is not contemplated at all in itself, apart from the underlying essence.

For besides being graceless and utterly contemptible, [this view amounts to] those who hold it further confessing that he is divided and cut in half, upward and downward, on account of his natural kinship with both extremes—

and this in the case of the union according to hypostasis, which is indivisible.

Or again, if we should preserve unimpaired, for the divine nature of the incarnate Word, both the natural will and the essentially inherent operation, but should take these away and strip them from the human essence in him,

then in this way we damage the union that transcends nature, which would have nothing left to bind it into one hypostasis, since the rationally and intellectually ensouled flesh — that is, the essence and nature like ours — would not exist in the Word at all, complete and preserved.

For where, and what nature is it, that has suffered the loss of what belongs to it according to nature?

If, then, the Lord was deficient according to the flesh in these things, or in any one of these natural properties, he did not exist as flesh at all, nor as man;

for let those who assert this either show a man existing by nature apart from these properties, or [concede that] he is not man at all;

or, if such a man does not exist at all, it is clear that the incarnate Word did not become man while deprived, according to nature, of these properties or of any one of them.

For how, and by what principle, could this be, since the nature has no deficiency in such things?

but rather it is something else, altogether foreign to our essence, and unknown;

either it was co-essentiated with him from the beginning, and descended together with him who came down from above — that being clearly the very thing he is said to have become;

then what benefit is the descent to us any longer, since we in no way come together with him through the holy flesh that was assumed not from us, though united according to hypostasis?

since [that flesh] would not be the firstfruits of our race, uniting the lump by grace and releasing it from all the divisive things of which the transgression of the old Adam has become the cause;

on account of which death was also passed as sentence upon nature.

Why, then, do they begrudge us perfect salvation and confession?

Why do they draw out against us their supposedly inescapable syllogisms, asserting that the wills follow upon the operations, and that opposition in turn follows upon these — from which they also bring in [the notion of] those who will contrary things?

But, to leave aside setting straight their arguments,

whence, and how, do they contrive such sophistries?

I should like only to inquire and learn this: whether they themselves, in doing such things and enacting the new Ekthesis, did this unwillingly — and who it was that applied the force.

Then, after the act — the will not existing at all beforehand — did they acquire afterward a will for what had been done? Whence, and from what source, did it come?

And who was it that compelled them to hold the will for what had been done, so that the deed was performed against their willing, and what was done was accepted against their wish?

And again, how — if the incarnate Word himself did not, as man, naturally will and perform the things according to nature — did he willingly admit hunger and thirst, pain, toil, sleep, and all the rest?

For it was not as Logos alone that he willed or performed these things according to nature, possessing as he does, together with the Father and the Spirit, a nature that is supra-essential and supra-infinite;

even though, again, as God, in his sovereign authority, he would give to the nature, whenever he willed, the occasion to perform what belonged to it,

just as the divine teacher of the Nyssenes, the great Gregory, says.

For if he, the same one, willed these things only as God, and not as man, then either the divine is by nature a body, or, having been changed in essence, it became flesh through a falling away from its own divinity;

or else, [the flesh] pertaining to him is, in every respect, at once rational and irrational;

or if indeed it was ensouled rationally, then the flesh pertaining to him was not ensouled;

but it was, throughout, soulless and irrational;

or if indeed it was ensouled rationally, it also possessed the natural will.

For everything that is rational by nature is also, altogether, possessed of will by nature.

And if he had a natural will as man, he willed, altogether according to essence, those very things which he himself, as God, having created it for its constitution, implanted naturally in the nature.

For he did not come to falsify the nature which he himself, as God and Word, had made,

but he came entirely to deify the nature which, willing it for himself, by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Spirit, he united to the same and one hypostasis, together with all that naturally belongs to it, apart from sin.

Therefore, as God by nature, he willed the divine and paternal things that are according to nature.

For he was a co-willer with his own Begetter;

and, again, as man by nature, that same one willed the things that are according to human nature,

keeping the economy pure of all mere semblance, in no way opposing the will of the Father.

For none of the natural things, just as nature itself never does at all, would ever oppose the cause of nature;

nor indeed does the gnomic will, and whatever belongs to it, [oppose it], whenever it inclines in accord with the principle of nature.

For even if someone should chance to say that something belonging to nature opposes God, the fault lies rather with him [the agent] than with nature,

he having implanted, as though naturally, war among beings, unto rebellion and strife against him and against one another.

For that nothing natural is opposed to God is clear from the fact that these things were created by him at [our] generation, and he bears no blame for their essential constitution in us;

but, quite the contrary, it is clear that we incur the charges on account of the perversion of these things.

For according to this [perversion], we become, by our gnomic inclination, [partakers] of every evil, after the pattern of the ancient evil serpent;

but according to that [nature], we exist by nature as God's handiwork and an honored creature.

We effect this altogether in respect of the same and one incarnate God the Word:

believing in orthodox fashion that he is, in all respects, perfect — the same one being at once God and man — from the fact that he possesses perfectly, and naturally, both the divine and the human, and both wills and operates [them];

and that he properly possesses both a divine and a human essence, and will, and operation;

so that we may not, through a deficiency concerning either of the natural properties, wrongly assert the diminution — or rather, the [denial of] perfect existence — of each of the natures out of which and in which he exists.

That he possessed a will according to human nature, just as also, according to essence, a divine [will], the Word himself demonstrates plainly through the human-befitting refusal of death which he made, in the economy, for our sake — according to which he said:

"Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me;"

that he might show the weakness of his own flesh;

and that it was not by mere semblance that he was recognized as flesh by those who beheld him, deceiving their perception;

but he was truly and properly man, as the natural act of willing testifies to this — the very will whose refusal [of death], in the economy, took place.

And that he was, again, wholly deified — inclining toward the divine will itself, being ever moved and formed from it and in accordance with it — is clear from the fact that he made a perfect decision in favor of the Father's will alone, according to which, as man, he said:

"Not mine, but let your will be done;"

giving himself to us, in this too, as a type and example for the setting aside of our own will, for the sake of the perfect fulfillment of the divine will, even should we for this see death impending [over us].

For if it were not the case that, having become man by nature, and possessing a natural — that is, human — will, and bending this will in accordance with the economy, and impelling it toward union with the will of the Father, he said to the Father himself:

'Let not my will come to pass, but thine;'

it is clear that he said this as being God by nature;

and from this, then, he showed himself as not possessing the same and equal will as the Father, but another, differing according to nature;

which will he also subjected, asking that only the paternal [will] should come to pass;

and if he possessed a will other than the Father's natural will, it is clear that he also had a differing essence;

for of one essence there is indeed also but one will, according to the most wise Cyril;

for either he had, as man, a natural will, and for our sake, in accordance with the economy, was entreating to be excused, though willing death;

and again he was impelled against it [death] through his perfect concurrence with the paternal will;

or, not having, as man, a natural will, he, as God by nature, suffered the sufferings of the body into his own essence — an essence naturally shrinking from death, and possessing, in relation to the Father, another natural will according to essence;

which he also sought and entreated, through prayer, not to come to pass;

And what God, fearing death according to the nature of the flesh, and for this reason entreating that the cup pass, [would] also possess a natural will other than the Father's?

Casting off, then, this absurdity from our souls, let us hold fast to the pious confession of the Fathers;

and when he says, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,' as the great Athanasius says in his discourse On His Incarnation and the Trinity —

'nevertheless, let not my will come to pass, but thine;'

'the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak' —

we understand that here he shows two wills;

for the human [will], because of the weakness of the flesh, declines the suffering;

but his divine [will] is ready.

In keeping with this, the great theologian Gregory also clearly teaches, in his second discourse On the Son, saying:

'For his willing is in nothing opposed [to God], being wholly deified.'

So then, according to this divine teacher, he had a human willing;

yet in no way whatsoever opposed to God;

it happened to be always shaped and moved by his own divinity according to essence, toward the fulfillment of the economy;

and being wholly and entirely deified by concurrence and connaturality with the paternal [will], and being divine properly by union, but not by nature, both truly becoming and being called [so];

in no way, by being deified, departing from what is according to nature.

By saying, then, 'wholly deified,' the teacher, having set forth the union of the human will that is according to him with his divine and paternal [will], completely banished every opposition, and those who will contrary things, from the mystery concerning Christ;

and by saying, 'for his willing,' demonstrating both the innate movement of the human will that is according to him, and the essential and natural difference [it has] in relation to his divine and paternal [will], he entirely removed the confusion together with the phantasy [Docetism].

For knowing that this [confusion], and the division equal to it in impiety, war against the principle of the economy, this divine Father, and the holy teachers of the Catholic Church who follow him, proclaimed with a loud voice both the difference and the union, each according to its own [principle]:

the one [difference] being really and completely preserved in the principle of nature; the other [union], again, being firmly and hypostatically preserved in the mode of the economy — for the confirmation that, in the one and only Christ who is God, according to the indivisible union, the realities that exist essentially, together with all the natural properties belonging to them, [are preserved].

For just as all [the Fathers] taught as dogma one and another nature — I mean the divine and the human — a twofold nature in the same and one [Christ],

so also, with piercing voice, they proclaimed to all one and another will — I mean the divine and the human — and two wills;

and one and another operation, both divine and human;

and again a twofold operation, that is, two.

For thus they also plainly declared the numerical signification of the essences.

For the same one appears, as man — while being by nature God — willing, in accordance with the economy, that the cup should pass;

and to this extent typifying what is ours, as the wise Cyril has taught us;

so that he might drive away every shrinking from death belonging to our nature, and might steel and rouse it manfully toward an impulse against death.

And again he appears as God — though being man according to essence — willing to fulfill the economy in a manner befitting the Father, and to work the salvation of us all;

and he is also shown as man — though being by nature God — operating humanly, and voluntarily receiving the experience of the sufferings for our sake;

and again he is shown as God — though being by nature man — operating divinely, and putting forth the divine signs in a manner befitting his nature;

from which it was made known that the same one was both God and man together, possessing wills and operations naturally equal in number to the essences out of which and in which he existed, for the confirmation of the perfect existence of those things which he properly was.

For the 'theandric' [operation], expressed by the teacher in a fitting term, evidently signifies, by way of periphrasis, the twofold operation of the twofold nature;