正統信仰闡釋 第 1 章 第 9/15 段

If the whole is one nature, where is the completeness in humanity? Or how does the essence according to us subsist? But since the completeness in humanity and the declaration of the essence according to us are introduced by saying "incarnate," let them cease propping themselves up on a staff of reed.'

Here, then, he set 'the nature of the Word' in the sense of nature.

For if he had taken 'nature' instead of 'hypostasis,' it would not have been absurd to say this even without 'incarnate;'

for in saying absolutely 'one hypostasis of God the Word' we are not mistaken.

Likewise also Leontius the Byzantine understood the saying in the sense of nature, not instead of hypostasis.

And in his defense against the criticisms of Theodoret concerning the second anathema, the blessed Cyril speaks thus:

'The nature of the Word, that is, the hypostasis, which is the Word Himself.'

So that to say 'the nature of the Word' signifies neither the hypostasis alone nor the common feature of the hypostases, but the common nature contemplated as a whole in the hypostasis of the Word.

That, then, the nature of the Word was incarnate, that is, was united to flesh, has been said.

But that the nature of the Word suffered in the flesh we have not yet up to now heard, whereas we have been taught that Christ suffered in the flesh;

so that to say 'the nature of the Word' does not signify the hypostasis.

It remains, then, to say that 'to be incarnate' means to be united to flesh, while 'the Word became flesh' means that the very hypostasis of the Word became, without change, the hypostasis of the flesh.

And that God became man and the man God has been said.

For the Word is God, and He became man without alteration.

But that the Godhead became man, or was incarnate, or became human—this we have in no way heard.

Yet that the Godhead was united to humanity in one of its hypostases—this we have learned.

And that God is formed, that is, takes on the substance of what is foreign, that is, of what pertains to us, has been said.

For the name 'God' is applied to each of the hypostases, but we cannot say 'Godhead' of a hypostasis.

For we have not heard that the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone, is the Godhead;

for 'Godhead' signifies the nature, while 'Father' signifies the hypostasis, just as 'humanity' signifies the nature, and 'Peter' the hypostasis.

But 'God' both signifies the common feature of the nature and is applied to each of the hypostases by derivation, just as 'man' also;

for he is God who has the divine nature, and he is man who has the human nature.

In all these matters it is to be known that the Father and the Holy Spirit in no respect shared in the incarnation of the Word, except according to the divine signs and according to good pleasure and will.

That the holy Virgin is Theotokos (God-bearer). We proclaim the holy Virgin to be properly and truly Theotokos;

for since He who was born of her is true God, she who bore the true God incarnate of her is truly Theotokos.

For we say that God was born of her, not as though the Godhead of the Word took the beginning of its being from her, but that God the Word Himself—begotten of the Father before the ages, timelessly, and existing without beginning and eternally with the Father and the Spirit—in these last days, for our salvation, dwelt in her womb and was, without alteration, made flesh of her and born.

For the holy Virgin did not bear a mere man, but true God; not bare, but incarnate; not having brought down the body from heaven and passed through her as through a conduit, but having taken from her flesh consubstantial with us and given it subsistence in Himself.

For if the body was brought from heaven and not taken from our nature, what need was there of the enhumanment? For the enhumanment of God the Word came about for this reason: that the very nature which had sinned and fallen and been corrupted might conquer the deceiving tyrant and so be freed from corruption, as the divine Apostle says:

'For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead;'

if the first is true, so is the second.

'The first Adam is of the earth, earthy; the

second Adam, the Lord, is from heaven;' he does not say that the body is from heaven, but is showing that He is not a mere man.

For behold, he named Him both Adam and Lord, signifying the two together.

For 'Adam' is interpreted 'earth-born;'

and it is clear that 'earth-born' is the nature of man, which was formed from the dust;

while 'Lord' is indicative of the divine essence.

And again the Apostle says:

'God sent forth His only-begotten Son, born of a woman.'

He did not say 'through a woman,' but 'of a woman.'

The divine Apostle therefore indicated that He who became man, born of the Virgin, is the very same only-begotten Son of God and God, and that He who was born of the Virgin is the same Son of God and God—born bodily, in that He became man, not having dwelt in a man formed beforehand as in a prophet, but Himself having become man essentially and truly, that is, having given subsistence in His own hypostasis to flesh ensouled with a rational and intellectual soul, He Himself having become its hypostasis;

for this is what 'born of a woman' signifies.

For how could the Word of God Himself have been made under the law, unless He had become man consubstantial with us? Wherefore we justly and truly name the holy Mary Theotokos;

for this name comprises the whole mystery of the economy.

For if she who bore is Theotokos, then surely He who was born of her is God, and surely also man.

For how could God, who has His existence before the ages, be born of a woman, unless He had become man? For the son of man is plainly man.

But if He who was born of a woman is Himself God, then clearly He who was begotten of God the Father according to the divine and beginningless essence is one and the same as He who was, in these last times, brought forth of the Virgin according to the essence which had a beginning and is under time, that is, the human essence.

And this signifies one hypostasis and two natures and two births of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But we do not call the holy Virgin Christotokos (Christ-bearer), because the defiled and abominable and Jewish-minded Nestorius—that vessel of dishonor—invented it as a slur to do away with the term Theotokos and to dishonor her who alone is truly honored above all creation as Theotokos, though he himself, together with his father Satan, bursts with rage;

for 'Christ (anointed)' can be said of both David the king and Aaron the high priest (for these are the things anointed, namely kingship and priesthood), and of every God-bearing man—but they are not God by nature, as the heaven-driven Nestorius even presumptuously asserted, calling Him who was born of the Virgin 'God-bearing.'

But far be it from us to call Him or to conceive of Him as 'God-bearing,' but rather as God incarnate.

For the Word Himself became flesh, conceived indeed of the Virgin, but having come forth as God together with what He had assumed, that flesh itself having already been deified by Him at the very moment of its being brought into existence—so that the three came to be together: the assumption, the existence, and the deification of it by the Word; and thus the holy Virgin is understood and called Theotokos not only on account of the nature of the Word, but also on account of the deification of the human, the conception and existence of which were together wrought as a wonder—the conception of the Word, and the existence of the flesh in the Word Himself—the Mother of God herself supernaturally supplying that the Maker should be fashioned and that God, the Maker of all, should become man, deifying that which He assumed, the union preserving the things united such as they were also united;

I mean not the divine alone, but also the human of Christ, both that which is above us and that which is according to us.

For He did not first become as we are and afterward become above us, but rather both belonged to Him from the first existence, because from the very moment of conception He had His existence in the Word Himself;

the human, then, is human according to its own nature, but it is God's and divine in a supernatural way.

Moreover He also had the properties of the ensouled flesh;

for the Word accepted them by way of the economy, they coming to be naturally and truly according to the order of natural movement.

Concerning the properties of the two natures. Confessing the same one to be perfect God, we say that the same one is also perfect man, having all that the Father has, except unbegottenness, and having all that the first Adam had, except sin alone—which things

are a body and a rational and intellectual soul;

and that He has, correspondingly to the two natures, the natural properties of the two natures in double;

two natural wills, the divine and the human; and two natural energies, the divine and the human; and two natural free wills, the divine and the human; and wisdom and knowledge, the divine and the human.

For being consubstantial with God the Father, He wills and acts of His own free will as God; and being also consubstantial with us, the same one wills and acts of His own free will as man;

for His are the miracles, and His also the sufferings.

Concerning the wills and free choices of our Lord Jesus Christ. Since, then, there are two natures of Christ, we say that there are also two of His natural wills and two natural energies.

And since the hypostasis of His two natures is one, we say that one and the same wills and acts naturally according to both, of which, in which, and which Christ our God is; and that He wills and acts not dividedly but unitedly;

for each form acts with the communion of the other.

For of those whose essence is the same, of these also the will and the energy are the same;

but of those whose essence differs, of these also the will and the energy differ.

And conversely, of those whose will and energy are the same, of these also the essence is the same;

but of those whose will and energy differ, of these also the essence differs.

Therefore in the case of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, from the identity of the energy and the will we recognize the identity of the nature.

But in the case of the divine economy, from the difference of the energies and the wills we recognize also the difference of the natures; and knowing the difference of the natures, we confess together also the difference of the wills and energies.

For just as the number of the natures of the one and the same Christ, piously understood and stated, does not divide the one Christ but presents the difference of the natures as preserved even in the union, so also the number of the wills and energies essentially belonging to His natures (for according to both natures He was willing and working our salvation) does not introduce division—God forbid—but signifies only their preservation and safekeeping, even in the union;

for we say that the wills and the energies are natural and not hypostatic.

And I mean by them the very power of willing and acting, according to which what wills and acts wills and acts.

For if we grant them to be hypostatic, we shall be compelled to say that the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity have different wills and different energies.

For it is to be known that 'to will' and 'how to will' are not the same;

for 'to will' belongs to nature, just as also 'to see' (for it is present in all men), but 'how to will' does not belong to nature, but to our deliberate disposition, just as also 'how to see,' well or ill (for not all men will alike, nor do they see alike).

This we shall grant also in the case of the energies;

for 'how to will,' 'how to see,' 'how to act' is a mode of the use of willing and seeing and acting, present only to the one who uses it, and separating him from the others according to what is commonly called difference.

So then, willing in the simple sense is called 'volition,' that is, the faculty of willing, being a rational appetite and a natural will;

while 'how to will,' that is, that which is subject to the volition, is the thing willed and the deliberative (gnomic) will;

and 'capable of willing' is that which is naturally fitted to will—for instance, the divine nature is capable of willing, and likewise also the human;

while 'the willing one' is he who uses the volition, that is, the hypostasis—for instance, Peter.

Since, then, Christ is one and His hypostasis is one, one and the same is He who wills and acts both divinely and humanly.

And since He has two natures capable of willing, inasmuch as they are rational (for everything rational is capable of willing and self-determining), we shall say that there are in Him two volitions, that is, two natural wills.

For the same one is capable of willing according to both His natures;

for He assumed the faculty of willing that is naturally present in us.

And since Christ is one and the same is He who wills according to each nature, we shall say that the thing willed is the same in Him,

He not willing only those things which He naturally willed as God (for it does not belong to the Godhead to will to eat, to drink, and the like), but also the things constitutive of the human nature—not by any opposition of judgment, but in the propriety of the natures;

for He willed these naturally at that time when His divine will willed and permitted the flesh to suffer and to do its own things.

And that willing belongs naturally to man is clear from this.

Excepting the divine, there are three kinds of life:

the vegetative, the sensitive, and the intellectual.

Now proper to the vegetative is the nutritive, the augmentative, and the generative motion;

to the sensitive, the motion according to impulse;

and to the rational and intellectual, the self-determining motion.

If, then, the nutritive belongs by nature to the vegetative, and the motion according to impulse to the sensitive, then surely the self-determining motion also belongs by nature to the rational and intellectual;

and self-determination is nothing other than the will;

the Word, then, having become flesh ensouled, intellectual and self-determining, also became capable of willing.

Moreover, natural things are not learned;

for no one learns to reason, or to live, or to hunger, or to thirst, or to sleep.

Neither do we learn to will;

if in irrational creatures nature leads, while in man, who is moved authoritatively according to will, nature is led, then man is by nature capable of willing.

If man was made according to the image of the blessed and supersubstantial Godhead, and the divine nature is by nature self-determining and capable of willing, then man also, as its image, is by nature self-determining and capable of willing.

For the fathers defined self-determination as will.

Moreover, if to will is present in all men and is not

present in some and absent in others, and that which is contemplated in common in all defines the nature, then man is by nature capable of willing.

If the nature receives the 'more' and 'less,' but willing does not receive the more and less, and what is by nature self-determining works equally in all having the same nature, then willing is natural and belongs to nature.

If willing is not natural, it will perish together with the nature.

If the will is not natural, it will be either hypostatic or contrary to nature;

but if hypostatic, then on this view the Son will be of a different will from the Father;

for what is hypostatic is characteristic of the hypostasis alone;

but if contrary to nature, the will would be a falling away from nature;

for things contrary to nature are destructive of things according to nature.

Does the God and Father of all will inasmuch as He is Father, or inasmuch as He is God?

But if inasmuch as He is Father, His will would be other than the will of the Son;

but if inasmuch as He is God—and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit also is God—

then the will belongs to nature, that is, it is natural.

Again, if according to the fathers those whose will is one have also one essence, and the will of the Godhead of Christ and of His humanity is one, then one and the same will be also their essence.

If, according to the fathers, the difference of nature is not manifested by the one will, then it is necessary either, while saying one will, not to assert a natural difference in Christ, or, while asserting a natural difference, not to say one will.

If, as the divine Gospel says, the Lord, having come into the regions of Tyre and Sidon and entered a house, willed that no one should know it, and could not be hid—if His divine will is all-powerful, yet having willed to be hidden He could not, then it was inasmuch as He was man that, having willed, He could not, and He was capable of willing also inasmuch as He was man.

'Having come,' it says, 'to the place, He said:'

And they gave Him wine mingled with gall, and having tasted it He would not drink.

If, then, He thirsted inasmuch as He was God, and having tasted would not drink, then He was passible inasmuch as He was God;

for both thirst and tasting are affections.

But if not inasmuch as He was God, then assuredly He was capable of willing inasmuch as He was man.

And the blessed Paul the Apostle also says:

'Having become,' he says, 'obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.'

Obedience is the submission of a will that exists, not of one that does not exist;

for the irrational is not obedient, nor

and the Lord, having become obedient to the Father, did so not inasmuch as He was God, but inasmuch as He was man.

For inasmuch as He is God He is neither obedient nor disobedient;

for these belong to those under authority, as the divinely-eloquent Gregory said.

Christ, then, is capable of willing also inasmuch as He is man.

But in saying that the will is natural, we do not mean that it is constrained, but that it is self-determining;

for if it is rational, it is assuredly also self-determining.

For not only the divine and uncreated nature has nothing constrained, but neither does the intellectual and created.

for being by nature good, and by nature creator, and by nature God, God is these things not by necessity.

For who is it that imposes necessity? But it must be known that self-determination is spoken of equivocally—in one way of God, in another of angels, and in another of men.

For in the case of God it is in a supersubstantial way; in the case of angels, the choice running together with the disposition and admitting no interval of time at all (for having the self-determination by nature, the angel uses it without hindrance, having neither the resistance that comes from bodies nor the assailant); but in the case of men, the disposition being conceived as prior in time to the undertaking;

for man is self-determining and has self-determination by nature, but he also has the assault from the devil and the movement of the body.

Because, then, of the assault and the weight of the body, the choice lags behind the disposition.

If, then, Adam obeyed willingly and willingly ate, then the will is the first thing affected in us;

but if the will is the first thing affected, and the Word, in becoming incarnate, did not assume this together with the nature, then we have not been set outside of sin.

Moreover, if the self-determining power of the nature is His work, and He did not assume it, then either He condemned His own creation as not good, or He grudged us its healing, depriving us of complete healing and showing Himself to be subject to passion, either by not willing or by not being able to save perfectly.

And it is impossible to speak of any one composite thing made out of the two wills, as the hypostasis is composite out of the natures.

First, because compositions are of things existing in a hypostasis and not of things contemplated in another principle and not in their own;

second, because if we shall speak of a composition of the wills and energies, we shall be compelled to speak also of a composition of the other natural properties—of the uncreated and the created, of the invisible and the visible, and the like.

And how would that composite will out of the wills be named (for it is impossible for the composite to be named by the appellation of the things composed), since we shall name even that which is composite out of the natures 'nature' and not 'hypostasis'? Moreover, if we shall speak of one composite will in the case of Christ, we separate Him by will from the Father;

for the will of the Father is not composite.

It remains, then, to say that only the hypostasis of Christ is composite, and is common—both of the natures and likewise also of His natural properties.

But it is impossible to speak of deliberation (gnome) and choice (proairesis) in the case of the Lord, if indeed we wish to speak properly.

For deliberation is a disposition toward the thing decided, following upon inquiry and deliberation, that is, counsel and judgment, concerning the thing unknown.

After which comes choice, selecting and preferring the one before the other.

But the Lord, not being a mere man but also God and knowing all things, had no need of inquiry and investigation and counsel and judgment, and by nature He had the appropriation toward the good and the estrangement from the evil.

Thus indeed Isaiah also says, that 'before the child knows or chooses evil things, he shall choose the good;'

because 'before the child knows good or evil, he refuses the wickedness, so as to choose the good.'

For the word 'before' makes clear that He, not as we do by inquiring and deliberating, but being God and in a divine manner having also subsisted according to the flesh—that is, being united according to hypostasis to the flesh—by His very being and by knowing all things, possessed the good that is from nature;

for the virtues are natural and are present naturally and equally in all, even if we do not all equally work the things of nature.

For through the transgression we were driven from the natural state into the unnatural;

but the Lord brought us back from the unnatural into the natural;

according to the image and according to the likeness.

And asceticism and its toils were devised not for the acquiring of virtue as though it were brought in from outside, but for the casting off of the adventitious and unnatural vice—just as, casting off the rust of iron, which is not natural but came to be from neglect, by labor we make manifest the natural brightness of the iron.

But it is to be known that the name 'deliberation' (gnome) is of many turns and many meanings.

For sometimes it signifies exhortation, as the divine Apostle says:

'Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my opinion (gnome);' and sometimes it means counsel, as when the prophet David says:

'Against Thy people they craftily devised a plot (gnome);' and sometimes a decree, as Daniel says:

'Concerning what did this shameless decree (gnome) go forth?' and sometimes it is taken of faith or opinion or conviction; and, to put it simply, the name 'gnome' is taken according to twenty-eight meanings.

Concerning the energies in our Lord Jesus Christ. We say that there are also two energies in our Lord Jesus Christ;

for as God and consubstantial with the Father He had the divine energy, and as having become man and consubstantial with us He had the energy of the human nature.

But it is to be known that 'energy' is one thing, the 'energetic faculty' another, the 'effect' another, and the 'agent' another.

Energy, then, is the active and essential motion of the nature;

the energetic faculty is the nature, from which the energy proceeds;

the effect is the result of the energy;

and the agent is the one using the energy, that is, the hypostasis.

But the energy is also called 'effect,' and the effect 'energy,' just as the created thing is also called 'creation;'

as 'all creation,' when we mean the created things.

It is to be known that the energy is a motion, and is acted upon rather than acts, as the divinely-eloquent Gregory says in his discourse concerning the Holy Spirit:

'If it is an energy, it will plainly be acted upon and will not act, and it will cease as soon as it has been acted upon.'

But it must be understood that life itself is an energy, and the movement of a living being is an energy, and the whole economy of the living being—both the nutritive and augmentative, that is, the vegetative, and the motion according to impulse, that is, the sensitive, and the intellectual and self-determining motion.

And the energy is the effect of a power.

If, then, we contemplate all these in Christ, then we shall also affirm a human energy in Him.

Energy is the term given to the first thought that arises in us;

and there is a simple and relationless energy of the mind, putting forth its own thoughts by itself imperceptibly, apart from which it could not justly even be called mind.

And again, energy is the term given also to the manifestation and unfolding of what has been thought, through the utterance of speech.

But this is no longer relationless and simple, but, being contemplated in relation, is composed of thought and word.

And the very relation which the maker has toward the thing made is an energy;

and the very thing brought to completion is called an energy.

And the one is of the soul alone, another of the soul using the body, another of the body intellectually ensouled, and another the effect;

for the mind, having first contemplated what is to be, thus works through the body.

The leadership, then, belongs to the soul;

for it uses the body as an instrument, leading and directing it.

But the energy of the body, led and moved by the soul, is another thing.

And the effect of the body is the touching and the grasping and, as it were, the encompassing of what is being made; while the effect of the soul is, as it were, the shaping and configuring of what is coming to be.

Thus also concerning our Lord Jesus Christ: the power of the miracles was the energy of His Godhead, while the handiwork and the willing and the saying, 'I will, be thou cleansed,' was the energy of His humanity.

And the effect of the human was the breaking of the loaves and the leper's hearing the 'I will,' while the effect of the divine was the multiplication of the loaves and the cleansing of the leper;

for through both—through the energy of the soul and that of the body—He showed forth one and the same divine energy, kindred and equal.

For just as we know the natures to be united and to have mutual interpenetration with one another, and do not deny their difference, but indeed

even number them and know them to be inseparable, so also with the wills and the energies we both know their conjunction and recognize their difference, and number them, and do not introduce division.

For in the same manner that the flesh both was deified and suffered no change of its own nature, in the same manner also both the will and the energy were both deified and did not depart from their own bounds;

for one and the same is He who is both this and that, and who wills and acts both in this manner and in that, that is, both divinely and humanly.

It is therefore necessary to speak of two energies in Christ because of the twofold character of the nature;

for of those whose nature is diverse, the energy is different, and of those whose energy is diverse, the nature is different.

Of those whose nature is the same, the energy also is the same; and of those whose energy is one, the essence also is one, according to the divinely-eloquent fathers.

It is therefore necessary, of two things, one: either, saying one energy in the case of Christ, to say also one essence; or, if indeed we hold to the truth and confess two essences both according to the Gospel and according to the fathers, to confess together also two energies correspondingly following upon them;

for being consubstantial with God the Father according to the Godhead, He will be equal also according to the energy.

And being consubstantial with us, the same one according to the humanity, He will be equal also according to the energy.

At any rate the blessed Gregory, the bishop of Nyssa, says:

Of those whose energy is one, of these assuredly also the power is the same;

for every energy is the effect of a power.

And it is impossible that there should be one nature or power or energy of an uncreated and a created nature.

But if we should say that the energy of Christ is one, we shall attach to the Godhead of the Word the affections of the rational soul—I mean fear and grief and anguish.

But if they should say that the holy fathers, when discoursing concerning the Holy Trinity, said:

'Of those whose essence is one, of these the energy is also one, and of those whose essence differs, of these the energy also differs,' and that one ought not to transfer the things of theology to the economy, we shall reply:

If this was said by the fathers only concerning theology, then after the incarnation the Son will no longer be of the same energy as the Father, nor of the same essence.