Antirrheticus Against Apollinarius 1 part 6/7

while those who judge all things, yet themselves give no occasion for judgment to those who might wish it, because of the loftiness of their conduct, are called "spiritual";

and he calls "soulish" the one who stands between these two, who falls as far short of the one as he rises above the other.

Since, then, he wishes the one who is being perfected through virtue not only to be attested in a lofty manner of life, but even if he does something bodily to look to God, and even in what is intermediate, not even so to be abandoned by God—

("For whether you eat," he says, "or drink, or do anything, do all to the glory of God" [1 Cor 10:31]—so that even through bodily occupations one might not fall away from the aim of divine glory)—for this reason, to the Thessalonians, who had already in every respect been apprehended for the better, he grants complete sanctification through his blessing, saying:

"Now may God sanctify you entirely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body [be preserved blameless]"—that is, may every bodily, psychic, and spiritual pursuit look toward sanctification.

Is one, then, to distinguish the soul as uniquely apart from the force of the blessing that belongs to each of these? How is the whole body preserved, when it is bound in every way and altogether to fall apart in death? How is it "whole," the body that is pressed down and shriveled through self-control, and worn to decay through harsher servitude? How could anyone say that poor Lazarus did not fail to receive the blessing, teeming as he was with such sores and being consumed through the discharge? But—strange as it may be to say—in that body flowing with sores, the blessing of Paul was fulfilled in full;

for his whole body, together with his soul, was preserved through his spiritual conduct, because it was not dragged down by the necessities of the flesh, from the loftier hope, into any unseemly thoughts;

for the flesh did not cause the soul any distraction, nor was the mind disturbed by the passions of the body.

And the hymn of the three children, taking up "spirits and souls of the righteous" into fellowship of praise, does not command the souls to praise separately and the spirits of the souls separately, as Apollinarius supposes.

For what praise peculiar to the soul could there be that is not fulfilled through the understanding? For a soul separated from understanding, as has already been said many times, is a beast, having no share in rational and intellectual activity.

Why then does he, as he himself says, separate the mind from our soul? Let it be granted that it is possible for praise to God to be fulfilled by the spirits, since he says that the spirits are mind.

But if he supposes the soul to be something other than the mind, how will the mindless one praise God? What hymn-singing born of mindlessness will please God? And what further need would there be of mind for the soul, if for divine doxology it were sufficient by itself in its hymn-singing, needing no cooperation from the mind at all? But these are not the things we have learned from those who have expounded Scripture to us.

But since souls, once loosed from their bodily bonds, are equal to angels, as the Lord says, for this reason the argument indicates, through their pairing with the spirits, the equal honor of souls with the angels;

for the angels are spirits, according to the prophet who said:

"He who makes his angels spirits" — with whom the three young men also deem the souls of the righteous worthy to sing hymns.

But the Savior, when he says that God must be worshiped "in spirit," does not by the term "spirit" signify the mind, but rather that one ought not to hold any bodily conceptions concerning the divine.

For since the Samaritan woman said to the Lord that God must be worshiped on the mountain, as though in a circumscribed place — which is not outside a bodily notion — for this reason the Logos says to her who had strayed from the truth that God is spirit, that is, incorporeal, and that those who worship him cannot draw near to the incorporeal in a bodily manner, but must fulfill worship in spirit and truth.

For he sets his corrective words in contrast to her twofold ignorance, opposing truth to place, and spirit to bodily conceptions.

For this reason Paul too says that he serves the Lord not in place nor in body, but in spirit, following the truth.

But as for the saying, "The flesh is not subject to the law of God" — this very statement carries in itself the refutation of the deceit of their doctrine;

for to wage war, to take captive, and not to be subject, and all such things, are activities of choice.

But if there is no mind, neither could there be choice.

Therefore, the flesh which Apollinarius calls "ensouled and endowed with choice," he thereby confesses is not separated even from the mind.

But even if it be called "flesh" alone, it contains in itself the complete definition of humanity, so that when anything belonging to the completeness of that nature is lacking, what remains can no longer be called "human."

"But man," he says, "consists of three."

Let this be granted, even though the argument does not compel us of necessity to assent.

"But the Lord too," he says, "being called man, likewise consists of three: spirit, soul, and body."

We do not, for the present, contest this point either;

"But also 'heavenly man'" — this is said concerning the Lord — "and 'life-giving spirit.'"

For these belong to us, if their meaning be rightly understood.

For he who has been commingled with the heavenly one, and who through this admixture with the better has transformed what is earthly, would no longer be called "of dust," but "heavenly";

and he who, by the life-giving Spirit, works his activity upon us, is himself also a life-giving spirit.

But let us see to what purpose the writer employs these statements.

"If," he says, "the heavenly man is composed of everything equal to us who are of dust, so that he also has a spirit equal to that of the earthy, then he is not heavenly, but a vessel of the heavenly God."

There is much in these statements that is obscure and hard to detect, owing to the feebleness of their expression;

nevertheless it is easy to uncover the intention.

For he says that if that man were deficient in mind, he would be heavenly;

but if he were complete, he would no longer be heavenly, but would become a vessel of the heavenly God.

Now among these statements, which would one abhor more than the other? The notion that the divine is hindered by completeness, as though the flesh were more proper than the mind for union with deity;

or is it the notion that, while one believes God to be heavenly, the one who has received the heavenly God within himself is not there where God is believed to be, but is elsewhere than the heavenly realm, and is named something other than this? For, says Apollinarius, if he is a vessel of the heavenly God, and God is above in heaven, as the Preacher says,

then he who has contained God within himself is, together with the one contained, properly called "heavenly" instead of "of dust";

so that even by what the writer says — if he had understood the consequence of his own words — the doctrine of truth is clearly established, being confirmed by the wisdom of its enemies.

But let us examine what follows next.

"But if," he says, "we consist of three, while he consists of four, he is not man, but man-god."

Let not the reader of this discourse laugh at the manifestly foolish and senseless character of the statement, but rather let him groan at the willful blindness of those enslaved to this irrationality.

If the whole of human nature is saved by the indwelling of the divine power, then God the Word will have to be named "man-god";

And just as myths, weaving together different natures, fabricate monstrous creatures both in shape and in name — forming and naming things such as "horse-stags" and "goat-stags" and the like — so too this new myth-maker, following the teachers of his own poetic craft, makes a mockery of the divine mystery.

For it is not possible for one who wishes to hold the doctrines up to ridicule to be turned away from this absurd combination of terms, whichever of the two — the writer's teaching or ours — should seem to prevail;

for whatever you say on either side, you will not remove from the account the composition out of two natures.

For he who says that the flesh is from above does not thereby establish that it is not flesh at all;

and the flesh, being governed by a certain ensouled nature and having in itself a vital power, as Apollinarius himself intends, properly bears the designation "human";

but he who assumed it, and through it manifested himself, is in every way, by nature, other than it;

for the very term "assumption" itself indicates the natural otherness of the one who assumes from that which is assumed.

It is not that the goat-part grew onto half of a stag, or, conversely, that in the mingling of the animals the reverse occurred, so that the stag-part grew onto an entire goat, that the myth gave it the name in the way stated; rather, the compounding of the names signifies a sharing, in some manner, of each nature.

So that, according to the writer, if the same one is both man and God, having the conjunction in some manner — whether the nature has come together fully or is deficient — he will not escape that absurd compounding of the name.

And if the Greeks, having learned these things from him, should mock our mystery in comedy, he who furnished the occasion for the blasphemy will surely fall under the prophetic curse which says: "Woe to him through whom my name is blasphemed among the nations!"

Let us now consider what he adds again to what has been said.

"If," he says, "he is composed of two complete natures, then he is not man in that in which he is God, nor is he God in that in which he is man."

But if, according to his own argument, the compound is granted to consist of a deficient element and a complete one, would not the same thing be said by those who dare such things — that in that in which he is God, man is not, and in that in which he is man, God is not? For in every way the concept of deity and that of humanity are distinct, and no one would suppose the diminution of humanity to be the boundary of the divine nature;

for it is not the case that the one thing exists in the non-being or the imperfect being of the other, but each, being conceived in itself, is contemplated under its own proper name.

For he who hears "God" takes in, along with this appellation, all that is fitting to think concerning God; and he who receives the appellation "man" has, by this word, formed an image of the whole nature; and the understanding of what is said suffers no confusion from the names, such that one should conceive the one in the other of the two names.

For neither is the one signified in this, nor the other in that, but each of the names remains true to its natural sense, and in no way will their significations be interchanged with one another.

But "incomplete" and "complete" become, for the hearer, the basis of other concepts altogether.

For we call "complete" that which is fully constituted according to its own proper definition of nature;

and neither of these two terms, said by itself, signifies either man or God, but suggests that whatever thing or name it is joined with in designation is to be understood as either full or deficient.

How then, if the man be incomplete, is it established by Apollinarius that the incomplete element is God, as though the mutilation of our nature coincided with the account of deity? Again, advancing his argument to what follows, he says:

"Man cannot save the world while remaining man and being subject to the common corruption of humankind."

For if human nature were sufficient to secure the good for itself, the mystery would be superfluous.

But since it was impossible to escape death unless God provided salvation, for this reason the light shines in the darkness through the flesh, so that it might banish from the flesh the destruction that comes from darkness.

"But neither," he says, "are we saved by God, unless he has been commingled with us."

In these statements the writer seems to be speaking soundly, and he brings the soul back toward sensible reasonings;

for he who speaks of a "mixture" of things naturally distinct signifies their union.

"And he is mingled," he says, "by becoming flesh — that is, man — as the Gospel says: that it was when he became flesh that he tabernacled among us."

Nor do these things clash with sound doctrine either — unless afterward some seed of the tares should be sown alongside it.

For this is our own teaching, or rather the doctrine of the truth: that he tabernacled among us then, when he became flesh, and conversely, that he became flesh then, when he tabernacled among us.

If, then, the flesh dates from that moment from which comes the indwelling among us, then before the virgin was given the good news by Gabriel, the Word was not yet flesh;

...a man, through whom the divine was mingled with human life.

"But neither," he says, "does he dissolve the sin of men without having become a sinless man, nor does he overthrow the reign of death over all mankind, unless he died and rose as man."

Would that he had remained sound-minded to the end, speaking the things that come from the Church!

And again he returns to his own train of thought and speaks, blaming the ecclesiastical teaching for holding that we regard the suffering as pertaining to the man; and he brings forward his own statement to refute our opinion, which runs as follows:

“But,” he says, “the death of a man does not abolish death.”

What is he trying to establish by saying this? That the very deity of the Only-begotten — the very power, the very truth, the very life — was put to death in the passion on the cross, so that, during that three-day span of time, there was no life, no power, no righteousness, no light, no truth, not even deity itself.

For he does not say that when one deity died, another was left remaining; since he is shown in many places contending against Arius on this very point, maintaining that the deity of the Trinity is one — and since this deity, as he himself jointly establishes by his own argument, was put to death in this event, there was assuredly no other deity left.

And how anyone could suppose that he does not make deity mortal, I am unable to comprehend.

For death, in the case of man, is nothing other than the dissolution of the composite;

for indeed, when in us the body is dissolved into the elements of which it is composed, the soul does not perish along with the dissolution of the body, but the composite is dissolved while the uncomposite remains undissolved.

If, then, death does not touch the soul, how is deity put to death? Let those who do not know what they are saying explain.

But the statements that follow on from this, being of the same construction, I shall pass over;

for in what follows he says, establishing that the very deity of the Only-begotten died: “The death of a man does not abolish death, nor does he who has not died rise again;”

“from all of which,” he says, “it is clear that God himself died, inasmuch as,” he says, “it was not possible for Christ to be held fast by death.”

I think these statements, since their absurdity is self-evident, ought to be passed over without further examination, for anyone with a rational mind can perceive on his own the impiety and absurdity of one who plainly declares that God himself died, having undergone death in his own proper nature.

Yet it is perhaps reasonable to note this much: that even what he says as though speaking in our own person is not free of falsehood, but there are in it things maliciously fabricated in slander of our teaching.

For he says that we do not assert that Christ exists from the beginning, in the sense that the Word is God.

But we do not deny that in the last days the power of God, and the wisdom, and the light, and the life — all of which Christ is — was manifested through flesh;

but to say that the Lord and Christ, who is signified and named by these terms, did not at some point exist as these things — this we judge to be no more tolerable in impiety than the complete denial of the name itself.

For he who says that Christ did not exist from the beginning (and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, and every lofty and God-befitting name) would also, in effect, be saying that nothing else exists which is comprehended through this great name.

For just as in the designation “man” there is included the rational faculty, and the capacity for knowledge, and whatever else is said to be a distinguishing property of the nature — and if someone should say that “man” does not exist, then all the remaining properties of the nature are necessarily abolished together with the denial of the name — in the same way, if Christ is the power, the wisdom, the exact representation, the radiance, then he who says that Christ did not exist from the beginning will necessarily also nullify the things that are conceived along with him.

Therefore, being guided by the holy Scriptures, we say that Christ always exists, contemplated together with the eternity of the Father.

For just as the Only-begotten God is always God, and does not become so by participation, nor pass over into deity through some advancement from a lowlier state, so also the power and the wisdom and every God-befitting name is co-eternal with deity, such that nothing is added by way of increase to the glory of his nature which did not exist from the beginning.

We say that especially the name “Christ” is contemplated as belonging to the Only-begotten from eternity, being led by the hand toward this understanding by the very significance of the name itself.

For the confession of this name contains the teaching of the holy Trinity, each of the believed persons being manifested in this designation in a fitting manner.

And so that we may not seem to be speaking anything of our own accord, we shall set forth the very words of the prophecy.

“Your throne, O God,” it says, “is forever and ever;”

“a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.”

“You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;”

“therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.”

For in these words, by the throne the text signifies the rule over all things;

and the scepter of uprightness interprets the incorruptibility of judgment;

and the oil of gladness represents the power of the Holy Spirit, with which God is anointed by God — that is, the Only-begotten is anointed by the Father — since he loved righteousness and hated unrighteousness.

If, then, there was ever a time when he was not a friend of righteousness and an enemy of unrighteousness, it would follow that one should say that he who is said to have been anointed for this very reason — because he loved righteousness and hated unrighteousness — was in fact never anointed at all.

But if he is always a friend of righteousness (for he could never hate himself, being himself righteousness), then it is clear that he is likewise always beheld in the anointing.

Just as, then, the righteous one is not unrighteous, so neither could the Christ ever be un-anointed;

and he who is never un-anointed is assuredly always Christ.

That, then, the one who anoints is the Father, and the anointing is the Holy Spirit, anyone would agree who has not veiled his heart with the Jewish veil.

How then does he say that we assert Christ did not exist from the beginning? Yet it is not the case that, because we confess Christ to exist eternally, we therefore also conceive the flesh formed by him as always existing about him;

but we know him to be one and the same, both pre-eternal and Lord, and after the passion we again confess this very same one, just as Peter says to the Jews, that “God made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

But we say this not as regarding a duality of Christs and Lords around the one, but because the Only-begotten God, being by nature God, and Lord of the universe, and King of all creation, and maker of the things that are, and restorer of those who have fallen, bore with much long-suffering the resolve not to reject our nature — fallen through sin — from communion with himself, but rather to receive it back again into life.

For this reason, at the end of human life, when our wickedness had already grown to its utmost — so that no part of evil should be left untreated — he then accepted admixture with the lowliness of our nature; and having taken the man into himself, and himself having come to be in the man — as he says to the disciples, “I am in you and you in me” — he made the one commingled with him to be what he himself was;

and he himself was always the Most High;

for this reason he also exalted that lowly one on high;

for surely he who is highest above all had no further need to be exalted.

And what the Word was — Christ and Lord — this the one who was commingled and taken up also becomes in the deity;

for it is not that he who already is Lord is again ordained to lordship, but rather that the form of a servant becomes Lord;

therefore also it is said, “one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”: in like manner, he who before the ages was clothed with the glory of the Spirit (for this is what the anointing signifies through symbols) is called Christ; and after the passion, having adorned with that same anointing the man united to him, he makes him Christ;

but the glory contemplated before the world, and before all creation, and before all the ages, with which the Only-begotten God is glorified, would, according to our teaching, be none other than the glory of the Spirit;

for the doctrine of true religion hands down that the Holy Trinity alone is pre-eternal.

“He who exists before the ages,” says the prophecy concerning the Father;

and the glory contemplated around the Only-begotten God before the ages is the Holy Spirit.

What, then, belonged to Christ, who existed with the Father before the world was, this also comes to belong, at the end of the ages, to the one united with Christ.

“For Jesus of Nazareth,” it says, “whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit.”

So let him not slander our teaching, as though we did not say that the Only-begotten God is always Christ;

rather, Christ exists always, both before the economy and after it;

but man exists neither before this nor after these things, but only in the time of the economy.

For the man did not exist before the virgin, nor does the flesh any longer exist in its own proper characteristics after the ascent into the heavens.

“For even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh,” he says, “yet now we know him so no longer;”

for it is not the case that, because God was manifested in flesh, he therefore remained flesh;

but since the human is subject to change while the divine is unchangeable, deity is immovable with respect to change, being altered neither toward the better nor toward the worse (for it does not admit the worse, and it possesses nothing better);

but the human nature in Christ has undergone change for the better, being altered from the corruptible to the incorruptible, from the perishable to the imperishable, from the short-lived to the eternal, from the bodily and configured to the bodiless and unconfigured.

Since they say that we assert that the man suffered, not God, let them hear this from us: that we confess deity to be present in the one who suffers, yet not that the impassible nature itself became subject to passion.

But so that what is said may become clearer, we hold the following understanding: that human nature derives its subsistence from a mind-endowed soul conjoined with a body;

and the combination of both comes into being when some material substratum is laid down beforehand for its constitution.

And that matter, having been formed into life by divine power, becomes a human being — so that, if one were to suppose hypothetically that God's creative power were not present together with the constitution of the thing being formed, the matter would remain wholly inert and immobile, not being brought to life through the creative activity.

Just as, then, in our own case some life-giving power is beheld within the matter, from which the human being — constituted of soul and body — is formed, so also, in the case of the virginity, the power of the Most High, having been implanted immaterially in the undefiled body through the life-giving Spirit, and having made the incorruption of the virgin the matter of the flesh, received the contribution supplied from the virginal body toward the thing being formed; and thus was created the truly new man — the first and only one to display in himself this manner of subsistence, the one created according to God, not according to man — the divine power pervading equally throughout the whole nature of the compound, so that neither part is without a share of deity, but is present, as is fitting, in both — I mean in soul and in body — suitably and appropriately to each.

Just as, then, when the man was born, the deity — existing before all the ages and remaining forever — had no need to be born, but, having once come to be present at the constitution of the man, appears together with him at his birth, so also she who is always living has no need to rise, but rises in the one who is brought back to life through the divine power, not herself being raised (for she has not fallen), but raising in herself the one who has fallen.

If, then, the divine has need neither of birth nor of resurrection, it is clear that the passion also is accomplished not as though deity itself suffered, but as being present in the one who suffers, and appropriating to itself that one's suffering through union with the one who suffered.

“The gifts … of God,” it says, depart from neither of these, but remain forever.

for indeed there is nothing that separates anyone from union with God except sin;

and for whomever life is without sin, for that one the union with God is assuredly inseparable.

Since, then, sinlessness pertained through both — I mean through soul and body — the presence of the divine nature was, as is fitting, in each.

But since death effected the separation of the soul from the body, the composite element was divided, while the noncomposite element was not separated, but remained undivided, present in each without being torn apart.

And the proof that God was in the body is that the flesh was kept in incorruption after death;

for incorruption is assuredly God.

And that [God] did not depart from the soul is proved by the fact that through it the way was opened for the thief's entrance into paradise.

Since, then, the mystery of the divine power was fulfilled by its coming to be in the twofold aspect of human nature, and, through each part, depositing its life-giving energy in the kindred part — through the flesh into the body, and through the soul into the soul (I mean the rational soul, and not the irrational one;

for the mindless is bestial and not human) — then the divinity, which from the beginning was mingled with the body and the soul and remained so throughout, is raised in the resurrection of that which lay dead, and thus Christ is said to have been raised from the dead, the same one both being Christ and having become Christ;

being Christ according to the eternal kingship before all ages, but having become Christ when the angels announced to the shepherds the great joy that would be for all the people at the birth of the Savior, who is, he says, fittingly named Christ the Lord, according to the word of Gabriel, who said that the Holy Spirit would come upon the virgin and the power of the Most High would overshadow her.

He, then, who was thus born, is fittingly called both Christ and Lord;

Lord, on account of the power of the Most High, and Christ, on account of the Spirit of anointing.

For it is not the one who exists before all ages who is anointed then, but the one concerning whom it is said, 'You are my Son, today I have begotten you.'

For 'today' is the middle point of the two divisions of time, the past and the future.

But how can the maker of the ages be both begotten and anointed within a portion of time? So that the divinity both did not die, and yet was raised;

for it has not died, because that which is not composite is not dissolved; but it has been raised, because, being present in that which was dissolved, it caused what had fallen according to the law of human nature to be raised up together with itself, so that, being present to each part as it brought forth what was proper to it, it might heal the nature of bodies through the body, and the nature of souls through the soul;

and again, having through itself united what was divided, it rises in that which is raised up.