For just as, when two parties are at variance through a quarrel, some third person, being interposed in their midst, dissolves the strife and dissension of the contenders — so also did Christ.
1:1675
φιλάνθρωπονδεσπότηνἀποστρεφόμενοι·
當我們正轉離那愛人類的主之時;
while we were turning away from a Master who loved mankind;
and Christ, casting Himself into the midst, brought both natures together into friendship, and Himself endured the punishment laid upon us by the Father.
He therefore offered the first-fruits of our nature to the Father, and the Father Himself marvelled at the gift, both on account of the great worthiness of the One who presented it and the spotlessness of that which was offered.
Let us therefore recognize who that one was who heard the words, 'Sit at my right hand'; what was that nature to which He said, 'Be a sharer of my throne'? That was the very nature to which He had said, 'Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.' From the same, a little further on.
1:1682
Ποίῳχρήσομαιλόγῳ, ποίοιςφθέγξομαιῥήμασιν, ἀγνοῶ
我當用怎樣的言語,當發出怎樣的話語呢?我實在不知道。
What manner of speech shall I employ, with what words shall I give utterance? I do not know.
Today it has been deemed worthy to become higher than all; today it has received back that which the angels long desired throughout so great a time; today the archangels have been enabled to become spectators of what they had long yearned for, and they have beheld our nature shining forth in the glory of immortality upon the throne of the King.
Who shall truly declare the mighty acts of the Lord, and make heard all His praises? Who could set forth in words the greatness of His beneficence toward us? Human nature is joined to the Godhead, while each nature abides in itself.
1:1692
ΚυρίλλουἐπισκόπουἹεροσολύμων
耶路撒冷主教區利羅(西里爾)。
Of Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem.
1:1693
Ἐκτοῦκατηχητικοῦδʹλόγουπερὶτῶνδέκαδογμάτων
出自第四篇要理講授,論十項教義。
From the fourth catechetical lecture, concerning the ten doctrines.
Believe that this only-begotten Son of God came down from the heavens to the earth on account of our sins, taking upon Himself this humanity subject to the same experiences as ours, and being born of a holy Virgin and of the Holy Spirit—the incarnation having come about not in mere seeming and fantasy, but in truth;
nor as though He passed through the Virgin as through a conduit, but truly taking flesh from her, truly eating as we do, truly drinking as we do, and truly being nourished with milk.
1:1697
Εἰγὰρφαντασίαἦνἡἐνανθρώπησις, φάντασμακαὶἡσωτηρία
因為若道成肉身是幻象,那麼救恩也不過是幻影了。
For if the incarnation were a fantasy, then salvation too is a phantom.
1:1698
ἐσθίωνμὲνὡςἄνθρωπος, ἀληθῶςὡςἡμεῖς·
祂確實像人一樣吃,真實地像我們一樣;
Eating indeed as a man, truly as we do;
1:1699
εἶχεγὰρτῆςσαρκὸςτὸὁμοιοπαθὲςὡςἡμεῖς·
因為祂有與我們相同的、屬肉身的同感;
for He had the flesh's likeness of experience, as we do;
1:1700
τρέφωνδὲἐκπέντεἄρτωντοὺςπεντακισχιλίουςὡςθεός·
然而祂以五個餅餵飽五千人,這是作為神;
yet feeding the five thousand from five loaves as God;
being Himself the mediator of salvation in that very mystery by which He mediated between God and men, being one and the same the two together, and out of the natures united unto this very end being one and the same through each nature, yet in such a way that in each He lacks neither—lest, as man being born, He should cease to be God, or again, being man, He should not remain God.
This, then, is the blessedness of the true faith among men: to proclaim Him both God and man, to confess both the flesh and the Word, and to know that the God is also man, and not to be ignorant that the flesh is also the Word.
Born, therefore, from a Virgin as man—the only-begotten God—and destined, at the fullness of the appointed time, Himself to accomplish for Himself the advancement of the man into God, He preserved this order in all the words of the Gospel, so that He might teach men to believe Him to be Son of God, and might remind them to proclaim Him Son of Man;
yet in such a way that, in this very intercourse between the two kinds proper to each, He never at any time speaks except with the signifying of both God and man.
From this source, then, arises the pretext by which the heretics beguile the simpler folk and the ignorant, so that, falsifying the things spoken by Him according to His humanity, they say that these were uttered on account of the weakness of the divine nature; and since it is one and the same who speaks all that He spoke, they contend that He said all these things concerning Himself.
But if Christ is one, man and God, and the man was not then for the first time God, nor indeed when He was man was He then not also God, nor after the man is the Word in the Lord not man and the Word God, then it is of necessity that there be one and the same mystery of His words, which is also that of His birth.
But whenever you consider the occasion—of God and man, and again of the man wholly and of God wholly—if anything of such a kind has been spoken so as to indicate what belongs to that particular time, then fit the things said to that occasion.
And since it is one thing that God is before the man, another again that He is man and God, and yet another that after the man and God He is wholly man and wholly God, do not confound, by the things said and the things done, the mystery of the dispensation.
For it is necessary that, according to the quality of the kinds and of the natures, one manner of intercourse have been proper to them not yet at the mystery of the man's being born, another while He was yet drawing near to death, and yet another when He had already attained to the eternal state.
For even though in the birth, in the passion, and in the death He carried out the acts of our nature, yet all these He accomplished by the power of His own nature.
Do you see, then, that God and man are so confessed that death is reckoned to the man, but to God the resurrection of the flesh? For understand the nature of God in the power of the resurrection, and you will recognize the dispensation according to the man in the death.
But now He has appeared as mediator between God and men, so as to join both natures together in the unity of the person, both by the true things augmenting those that are customary, and by mingling the true with those that come from custom.
What then, heretic? Since Christ is God and man—but if indeed as man, do you slander God? He exalts in Himself the human nature; but you dare to debase His divine nature.
1:1737
Τοῦαὐτοῦἐντῷλόγῳτῷπερὶτῆςἐκθέσεωςτῆςπίστεως
同一位作者,於論信仰之陳述的講論中。
By the same, in the discourse on the exposition of the faith.
For to believe is ours, but to know is His; and thus God the Word Himself, having received all that belongs to man, let Him be man; and the man that was assumed, having received all that belongs to God, let him be nothing else save what God is.
He knows how so to receive within Himself that nothing of increase is added to Him, even as He knows how to pour Himself out whole, so that nothing of diminution befalls Him.
Let us not, then, according to the notion of our own weakness and conjecturing from the sensible lessons of experience, suppose God and man to have been mingled after the manner of created things that are mingled with their like; nor by such confusion of the Word and the flesh believe that a single body was thereby produced; lest, after the manner of things that are confounded, we should suppose two natures to have been brought into one substance;
1:1743
ἡγὰρτοιαύτημίξιςἐστὶνἑκατέρουμέρουςφθορά
因為這樣的混合乃是雙方各自的朽壞。
for such a mingling is the corruption of each part.
But God, who contains yet is not contained, who searches yet is not searched, who fills yet is not filled, who is everywhere wholly present at once and pervades all things—by pouring out His own power, as compassionate, was mingled with the human nature; yet the nature of man was not mingled with the divine.
What, then, was it fitting for the all-wise One to accomplish? By the mediation of the flesh which He assumed, and by the union of God the Word with the man from Mary, both things come to pass: so that the one Christ, united out of both, being disposed in His divinity should remain in the proper dignity of His impassible nature, yet in the flesh, having consorted with death, He might at one and the same time display, in the flesh's nature that is akin to ours, the contempt of death by means of death, and at the same time confirm by His decease the just claims of the New Covenant.
And that the natures brought together into a true unity are indeed diverse, yet there is one God and Son out of both — not as though the difference of the natures were done away with on account of the union.
1:1758
ΤοῦαὐτοῦἐκτῆςπρὸςτοὺςἈνατολικοὺςἐπιστολῆς
同一位,錄自致東方諸人書。
Of the same, from the letter to the Orientals.
1:1759
διὸἕναΧριστόν, ἕναυἱόν, ἕνακύριονὁμολογοῦμεν
因此我們承認獨一基督、獨一的子、獨一的主。
wherefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord.
According to this understanding of the unconfused union, we confess the holy Virgin to be Theotokos, because God the Word was made flesh and became man, and from the very conception united to Himself the temple taken from her.
For even if the natures of those that have run together into a unity be thought of as diverse and unequal to one another — I mean of flesh and of God — nevertheless there is but one Son out of both.
And even if the only-begotten Word of God be perchance said to be united to flesh according to hypostasis, we do not say that any pouring together of the natures into one another has been effected; rather, each remains what it is.
He has been named man — although according to nature He exists as God, the Word who is from the Virgin's Father — as having partaken of blood and flesh in a manner like unto us.
For thus was He seen by those on earth, not having let go of what He was, but having come to be in the assumption of our humanity, which is complete according to its own principle.
1:1773
Τοῦαὐτοῦἐκτοῦπερὶτῆςἐνανθρωπήσεωςλόγου
同一位,錄自論成為人的講論。
Of the same, from the discourse On the Incarnation.
For understand altogether that what indwells is one thing in another — that is, the divine nature in humanity — and it did not, by suffering any mingling or pouring together and transmutation, become what it was not.
and you have learned exactly that they showed the union of the divinity and the humanity to be unconfused, not only after the birth, but also after the saving Passion and the Resurrection and the Ascension.
Of things blended together, the qualities are mingled and not destroyed, so that in a certain manner they even stand apart from the things that were blended — just as wine from water.
Nor is there a blending as toward a body, nor such as that of bodies with bodies, but one that holds also the unmingled, so that the energy of the divinity may, as need requires on each occasion, either act by itself or intermingle — as happened in the fasting of the Lord.
If the commingling with iron, which shows the iron to be fire so as to do even the works of fire, did not change its nature, neither is the union of God with the body a change of the body — even though the body furnishes the divine energies to those able to lay hold of it.
If a man has both a soul and a body, and these remain being in a unity, much more does Christ, having divinity together with a body, have both remaining and not being confused.
If one takes with reference to the divinity, in the case of Christ, the saying, 'What He sees the Father doing, that He also does,' and not with reference to the flesh — according to which the incarnate One is distinct from the Father who was not incarnate — he divides two divine energies;
1:1809
οὐδιαιρεῖταιδέ, οὐκἄραεἰςθεότηταλέγεται
然而它並未被分開;所以那話並不是就神性而說的。
but it is not divided; therefore it is not said with reference to the divinity.
Just as a man is not irrational when the rational is added to the irrational, so neither is the Saviour a creature when the created body is added to the uncreated God.
And the body, remaining within its own measure, receives the union with God in respect of being made alive, and neither does that which is made alive give life.
If not even the blending of soul with body — although it is from the beginning by natural growing-together — makes it visible on account of the body, nor changes it into the other properties of the body, so as to be cut and diminished, how much more is God, who is not by nature grown together with a body, unchangeably united to a body? And if the body of a man remains in its own nature, and this indeed ensouled, neither in the case of Christ did the blending change the body so that it is not a body.
1:1817
Καὶμετὰπλεῖσταπάλινταῦτατέθεικεν
又在許多話之後,他再次擺出了這些話:
And after a great deal he set down these things again:
He who confesses soul and body as being presented by Scripture as one thing, contends against himself by asserting that such a union of the Word with the body is a change — a thing not observed even in the case of the soul.
and he himself says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.' The command is human, granting a beginning to the session, but the dignity is divine, namely to sit together with God, whom the thousand thousands minister to, and before whom stand the ten thousand times ten thousand.
And that the words 'until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet' are spoken as to a man, Paul teaches, calling the achievement his own — that is, according to what is divine —
'according to the working,' he says, 'whereby he is able even to subject all things to himself.' Behold divinity and humanity inseparably in the one person.
But let us not be abased, deeming lowly the worship of the Son of God even in his human likeness; rather, as one who honors with royal glory a king who has appeared even in a mean robe, and especially when we behold the garment itself glorified — as befitted the body of God and the Savior of the world, the seed of eternal life, the instrument of divine operations, the loosener of all wickedness, the destroyer of death, and the author of resurrection —
{ERAN.} And why in the world, being the first to introduce the mixture, did he insert so great a division into his words? {ORTH.} The power of truth compels even those who fiercely contend against it to agree with what it declares.
And if things utterly deprived of reason and soul need some rest, then we who partake of soul and reason will do nothing unfitting in measuring our labor by our strength.
That even after the union he has remained what he was — undefiled, impassible, unchangeable, uncircumscribed — and that he preserved intact the nature which he assumed, the divine Scripture, and moreover the teachers of the churches and the luminaries of the world, have clearly taught us.
{ERAN.} So did a man furnish us salvation? {ORTH.} Did we then confess that our Lord Jesus Christ is only a man? {ERAN.} Now then, define what you believe the Christ to be.
but if, having taken flesh, he became man, why in the world do you leave that which is passible impassible, while subjecting to the passion that which is impassible? {ERAN.} But he took flesh for this reason, that through that which is passible the impassible might endure the passion.
1:1857
{ΟΡΘ.} Ἀπαθῆκαλεῖς, καὶπάθοςαὐτῷπροσαρμόττεις
﹛正統﹜你稱它為不能受苦的,卻又把受苦加給它。
{ORTH.} You call it impassible, and yet you fit passion to it.
1:1858
{ΕΡΑΝ.} Εἶπονὅτισάρκαἔλαβενἵναπάθῃ
﹛厄拉尼斯特﹜我說祂取了肉體,是為要受苦。
{ERAN.} I said that he took flesh in order that he might suffer.
{ORTH.} But when the conjunction, that is, the union, is dissolved, the mortal receives the determination of death, while the soul remains immortal, even though sin brought on the death.
{ORTH.} Why then, when soul and body sinned together, does the body alone undergo the punishment of death? {ERAN.} Because it was the body that looked wickedly upon the tree and stretched out the hands and plundered the forbidden fruit.
{ORTH.} You have expounded to us the matters concerning nourishment in the manner of a natural philosopher — through how many parts it travels, and how many alterations it undergoes, before it is at last changed into the nature of the body.
How then did you say that the body alone sinned — the body which, apart from the soul, cannot even breathe at all? {ERAN.} The body receives life from the soul, but it procures for the soul the injurious acquisition of sin.
But why, O most wise one, did you mention the blameworthy services of the body, yet leave out the praiseworthy ones? For it is possible to look with friendship and kindness, to wipe away a tear of compunction, to hear the divine oracles, to incline the ear to one in need, to hymn the Maker with the tongue, to teach the neighbor what he ought, to move the hands to mercy, and, to speak in sum, to use the members of the body for the acquisition of every virtue.
ORTH. How then can you say that God the Word tasted death? For if, where the immortal is created, it was shown impossible for it to become mortal, how is it possible that he who is uncreatedly and eternally immortal, the Maker of both mortal and immortal natures, should partake of death? ERAN. We too know that his nature is immortal, but we say that he partook of death in the flesh.