BOOK ONE. ON THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST THE MEDIATOR, RETAINING TWO NATURES IN ONE PERSON. CHAPTER I. A book sent by the king to Fulgentius. Fulgentius's reply at the king's command. To be unwilling to assert the faith is to deny the faith. The necessity of replying is from the divine precept. To your triumphant judgment, most pious king, I could never believe it has been withdrawn by forgetfulness, that recently you commanded a certain volume to be sent to me by the courier Felix, bidding me reply forthwith.
Since its length was so great that it needed rather more time to be reviewed, and the end of the day was at hand, night drawing near, having barely tasted the very beginnings of that volume by a hurried run through a rapid reading, I had asked that a space of one night be granted us for reading through everything in the order of a full review; which the will of your gentleness altogether decreed should be denied, so that you did not even command us to be allotted time for reading through the remaining portions of the Scripture.
But I, since for the space of some days I awaited the direction of your eminence, and since thereafter, the tenor of that inquiry being withdrawn, only a reply was demanded of us, have destined to be reviewed by your gentleness these few things—for which, with the Lord's help, the smallness of our talent suffices—concerning that same inquiry, which from the beginning I came to know only slightly; lest perhaps I be thought puffed up out of disdain, or be judged bound by the fault of silence, which your loftiness might suspect—either not to render a reply out of pride, or to have been silent out of a distrust of the true faith.
For to your zeal, most clement king, I do not doubt it is well known that among those who have been redeemed by participation in Christian grace, to be unwilling to assert the faith is almost the same as to deny it. Since indeed the only-begotten God himself, the founder and redeemer of the human race, testifies with a wholly certain declaration that, just as he will confess the one confessing, so he will deny the one denying, saying: 'Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven' (Matt. X, 32, 33). So again, he himself, coming in his majesty, will be ashamed of the one who is ashamed of him and of his words.
The standard of this saying Luke is known to have set down in such a sentence, where he confirms the deadly silence of this shame in such a way that he does not keep silent that the one who is ashamed must be consigned to perdition; recalling among other things that the Lord said this: 'For what does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but loses himself and suffers the loss of himself?' (Luke IX, 25). And, indicating the cause of this perdition, he added: 'For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him the Son of man will be ashamed, when he comes in his majesty, and the Father's, and the holy angels'.' And not undeservedly is such a servant both cast out and punished, since by one and the same silence he confirms error, who, possessed by terror or by torpor (al.
tepidity) possessed, does not by his silence build up the truth. And whoever does not confirm the Lord's glory, empties it out, and whoever does not refute the divine reproach, heaps it up. Very often a slothful soldier, weighed down by drowsy torpor, delivers the royal camp to the besiegers, while he does not defend it with fitting watches. These things I have taken care above all to send beforehand, lest your piety should wish in any way to censure me for a proud reply, upon whom the very necessity of replying imposes the duty of a free reply: for when the matter concerns God, it is no light guilt if what pertains to salvation be kept silent. For thus it behooves us to believe in the heart unto righteousness, that confession may likewise be made with the mouth unto salvation (Rom. X, 10);
since the word of God is not bound (2 Tim. II, 9). To this is added that oracle of the divine precept which binds the person of every ecclesiastical preacher by a certain fellowship not only of faith but also of service, the Lord saying: 'Cry out, do not cease, lift up your voice like a trumpet' (Isa. LVIII, 1). What is said to Isaiah in one person is commanded to many; the only-begotten God himself saying to his disciples: 'What I say to one of you, I say to all' (Mark XIII, 37). Therefore blessed Peter also, by the prompting of fatherly love, bids us to be ready to reply: 'Being ready always,' he says, 'to reply to everyone who asks you a reason for the faith and hope that is in you' (1 Pet. III, 15).
Since we are commanded to render a reason for our faith and hope to everyone who asks it, all distinction ceases utterly, whether of rank or of person. For to whom shall it be thought that the disclosure of truth ought to be denied, when the prophet testifies that he spoke without confusion in the presence of kings, saying: 'I spoke of your testimonies in the sight of kings, and was not confounded' (Ps. 118:46)? CHAPTER II. In answering, regard must be had to royal dignity. God is to be feared and honored more than an earthly king. Praise of a barbarian king for his zeal for wisdom. Wherefore, when for our faith we answer freely, so far as we have divinely received the ability, we ought not to be marked by any suspicion of stubbornness or of insolence,
since we are mindful neither of our own lowliness nor of your royal dignity, and know that fear is to be shown to God and honor to kings, the apostolic teaching thus forewarning us: 'Render to all their dues,' and a little after: 'to whom fear, fear; to whom honor, honor' (Rom. 13:7). Blessed Peter opened to us the clear knowledge of this fear and honor by his distinction, saying: 'Honor all men as servants of God, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king' (1 Pet. 2:17). Now no small measure of love and honor does he show to your clemency, whoever answers you, when you inquire, that which pertains to the faith of the truth.
Fittingly, therefore, we offer the homage of honor to your gentleness, upon whom we perceive the summit of the royal crown to have been conferred by divine bounty. Yet it escapes no wise man with how great fear that everlasting King of kings and Lord of lords ought to be reverenced, who commands that even temporal kings be honored. If anyone fears him too little, he greatly despises him; whoever lessens the honor due to him increases his own injury; nor does he escape the guilt of the ungrateful, who supposes that the perpetual immensity of the Creator and the immense perpetuity of things is to be estimated by the qualities of creatures. This your kindly gentleness beyond doubt discerns, this the sagacity of your genius and zeal recognizes;
and whoever knows how to consider it declares it truly to be marveled at — not because it is unusual for a man to apply himself to the study of the Scriptures, but because it is thus far held rare that the mind of a barbarian king, continually occupied with the numerous cares of the realm, should be so kindled with the fervent delight of coming to know wisdom, since such tireless efforts of this kind only a man of leisure or a Roman is wont to have. Through you, most merciful king, through you, I say, the pursuits of learning strive to make their way into the customs of a barbarian people, which is wont to claim ignorance for itself as though by native right.
You have proved yourself to be one who surpassed even yourself, while you so preside over the government of the African realm by your rule that you desire rather to enlarge the spaces of your soul than of your kingdom. You know, venerable king, and (as I do not doubt) you firmly hold as established by settled judgment, with how much better advantages he is joined who desires to know the truth, than he who, having subdued nations, desires to extend more widely the bounds of a temporal kingdom. CHAPTER III. The king's mistaken zeal in the Arian perfidy. The inquiry into truth confers a great good, which nevertheless is not then frustrated of its desired effect, if the mind leans upon right lines toward the knowledge of the true. Then also it will profit to have run with swift genius, if the steps of one tending toward the truth are held by no error of crookedness.
But how is that credulity to be esteemed wholesome, which supposes the worship of divine religion to consist in this — that either the Godhead should be deprived of its natural truth, while there is denied in it what is not denied in man; or the mystery of our redemption should be perverted by uncertain confusion, so that anyone should dare to deny the Lord Christ, the Son of God and of man, to be either truly God of the Father by nature, or perfect man; or if the Godhead should be reckoned to have been subject to the sufferings of the man, or the whole man should be believed not to have existed in the powers of the deity?
And thus the truth is emptied out by an error not unlike, if either in the one person of the true God and true man Christ that which stands to be substantially diverse is confounded, or in the Godhead of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, a substantial diversity being believed, that which is one and indivisible of the Trinity is separated: since the divine simplicity neither permits a partial diversity to be ascribed to itself, whereby it would not undeservedly lie subject to composition; nor does rational understanding in any way need any zeal for diversity, which knows the faith of only one simple and everlasting nature to be sufficient for the fullness of its salvation, inasmuch as it is not ignorant that God himself thunders to it by the heavenly oracles:
'Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord' (Deut. 6:4). And 'the Lord your God you shall adore, and him alone shall you serve.' And 'You shall have no gods besides me.' But neither must this be unknown to human minds, with how great a loss of eternal salvation he is fined, whoever does not fear to inflict insult by impious and death-dealing thoughts or words upon the proper and only-begotten Son of the true God — as regards the immense and everlasting substance of his divinity — whether of local motion or of any changeableness; whence he is not undeservedly to be condemned by that saying of the Davidic song: 'The fool has said in his heart, There is no God' (Ps. 13:1). For truly, if he is local, he is not immense;
if he is changeable, he is not God. CHAPTER IV. The errors of the heretics arising from an evil understanding concerning the mystery of the Incarnation. Thence also the blindness of the Jews. Now it is certain that nearly all the errors of heretical depravity have from this point crept in upon certain men in manifold ways, since — while the great sacrament of piety, 'which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, preached to the nations, believed in this world, taken up in glory' (1 Tim. 3:16) — some either do not believe it as it is, or do not believe it at all; and that stone, which, rejected by the builders, was made the head of the corner, becomes, for certain men possessed by the blindness of a depraved credulity, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense (1 Pet.
2:8). Whence not undeservedly, when Simeon, rejoicing, had been counted worthy to bear in his aged arms the infant Christ, the Lord of the temple, brought to his own temple according to the precept of his law (Luke 2:28) — and, bearing the figure of the present age, already wearied with fleshly old age, the old man took up the new man, namely him who alone could, out of sinners (as he says to the aged one: 'You are God my Savior, and for you I have waited all the day' [Ps. 24:5]), not only remove ingrained oldness, but even renew youth like the eagle's (as one to whom the apostolic trumpet also would truly sing: 'As the truth is in Jesus, that you put off, according to
the former manner of life, the old man, which is corrupted according to the desires of error; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, him who according to God was created in the justice and holiness of truth' (Eph. 4:22)); that Simeon, therefore, perceiving the effect of worldly salvation and renewal to be present (for God did not send his Son to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him [John 3:17]), when first he prayed to be released from the anguish of the present life, saying: 'Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace: for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples;
a light for the revelation of the nations, and the glory of your people Israel' (Luke 2:29-34); a little after he testifies this concerning the same child: 'Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising again of many' (ibid., 34). There, therefore, perfidy generates a fall for those who believe wrongly, where right credulity exalts the faithful. In one and the same Christ, true Son both of God and of man, the bleared vision of those who see less clearly is thus far darkened, in whom the manifest knowledge of the true light shines to those who are enlightened. Thence it is that the Jew, blind, saw the man Christ and fell, to whom long before Isaiah did not cease to proclaim: 'With your ear you shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you shall see, and shall not see' (Isa. 6:9).
But what those seeing were not going to see, he showed by what followed, while by an evident prophecy he testifies that God was to be born of a Virgin: 'Behold,' he says, 'a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel' (Isa. 7:14), which the evangelist interprets, saying: 'God with us' (Matt. 1:23). The Jew, therefore, hearing, remained deaf, and seeing, was made the more blind; by whom neither is the everlasting and only-begotten Son believed to be of the true Father, and the fruitfulness of incorrupt virginity is denied. CHAPTER V. The error of Mani concerning the flesh of Christ. It is refuted from the book of Wisdom. It is convicted from the epistle of John.
Hence also Mani dreads to believe true flesh in the true God, since — believing human flesh to be polluted not by the fault of guilt, but by natural property — he, being blind, attributes to a nature of evil (which he lyingly feigns for himself) so great a power that, if he should believe the true God to have assumed a true nature of flesh, he would not believe the divinity (which by a deceitful profession he calls incapable of defilement) to be exempt from the pollution of the flesh; and therefore in Christ he preferred to believe a phantasm of flesh rather than a nature, and while he did not see the human infirmity assumed by him with medicinal power, he wretchedly excluded himself from the remedy of salvation.
But this madness of impure falsehood, the foreknowledge of the Holy Spirit resisting it, was extinguished before it was begotten, the Instrument of the Old Testament commending the incorruptible state of wisdom in these words in its course: 'Wisdom is more mobile than all mobile things: and she reaches everywhere by reason of her purity. For she is the vapor of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the brightness of the almighty God; and therefore no defilement runs into her. For she is the splendor of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the majesty of God, and the image of his goodness. And though she is one, she can do all things; and remaining in herself, she renews all things' (Wis. 7:24, 27).
Concerning this incorruptibility of wisdom and the truth of the incarnation, that man, who from the very bosom of wisdom was counted worthy to draw enlightened the understanding of the heavenly mysteries, being secure, says with confidence: 'Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is of God. Every spirit that does not confess Jesus Christ to have come in the flesh is not of God, and this is Antichrist' (1 John 4:2-3): for he felt not the defilements of foul flesh, who came to take up the true substance of flesh and to cleanse that same foulness of flesh. Because for this reason he deigned to take up immaculate flesh, that, saving the flesh, he might be able to remove every stain of flesh, the same John again testifying:
'We know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin' (1 John 3:5). Again: 'For this the Son of God appeared, that he might destroy the works of the devil' (ibid., 8). For because the work of God was held bound by the bond of the diabolical work, the Son of God appeared that he might loose the one and save the other. CHAPTER VI. The heresy of Photinus. From the beginning of John many errors are refuted. God was the Word by nature, not by mere designation. Photinus too is ignorant of the great sacrament of piety which the Apostle recalls (1 Tim. 3:16), who confesses Christ's beginning from the Virgin: being ignorant that in the one Christ the truth of the flesh is to be believed as being from time in such a way that the natural truth of the everlasting divinity from the Father is not to be denied.
And therefore he does not believe God without beginning to have been substantially born of God the Father, in whom he confesses the truth of the flesh from the Virgin, not understanding that that Word was substantially born of God the Father — the Word which, in the fullness of times made flesh, dwells among us, which according to the divine substance which it has from the Father, 'in the beginning was, and was with God, and was God' (John 1:1). By these three sentences of the evangelist there is shown both the everlasting nativity of the Word, and the personal unconfused property, and the undivided substantial unity of the Father and the Son, so that in the Word made flesh, and dwelling among us,
the fact that it 'in the beginning was' — the recognition of everlastingness — should take away the suspicion of a begun nativity; the fact that it 'was with God' — the unconfused property of each person — should exclude the union of the Sabellian error; and the fact that it 'was God' — the truth of the essential name — should show the unity of substance of the begetter and the begotten. For John did not say, 'The Word was called God,' but 'God was the Word': so that, while in the God-Word the natural truth of the divine essence is recognized, consequently there should be proved the truth not of a designated name, but of a natural name. For the truth of nature is never deprived of the truth of the name. And thus that true incarnation of the Word, not of an uttered but of a substantial Word, is then
soundly believed, if we believe the eternal Word, which took up flesh from time, to be neither subject in the beginning of its existing, nor confused in person with the Father, nor other in nature than God. CHAPTER VII. Another error, of those who deny in Christ both the true deity and the true humanity together. Another error, of those who refer the works of the humanity to the deity. There are also certain persons, in this most greatly ungrateful to the gracious Savior, that in Christ — namely, in one who is true God and perfect man — they so assert themselves to receive the nature of God and of man, that they do not hesitate to preach in the Son of God one substance as false, the other as half-full.
For they are unwilling to believe the true deity of Christ, whose true nativity from God the Father they deny to have existed substantially, wishing to take from God the Son the nature of a true name, from whom they cannot take away the name of natural truth. For they say that in the name of the only-begotten God there is not a natural substance from the Father's generation, but only a designation granted by the gift of a title. The human nature also they so believe in Christ that they take away what is better of the man; what is inferior, this they leave:
and, considering too little the great sacrament of piety which the Apostle recalls, they strive to separate the rational soul from that marvelous assumption by the Mediator — a soul which they utterly assert not to have been in the Mediator of God and men. Yet another crime is added by these to the aforesaid error, whereby they admit the huckstering of a most foul confusion.
For in the unity of person (in which God and man, the one Christ, commending the inconfusible and inseparable truth of each nature, showed himself to be true God by his divine works and true man by his human sufferings, having the impassible whereby man was created sound, taking up the passible whereby the sick man might be healed) these men are so deceived by I know not what deception, that whatever the Lord — showing the true assumption of the servile form — humbly did or said, they do not fear to divert wholly to the insult of the divinity, which they subject to the suffering of changeableness,
while they distinguish by no consideration the truth of each nature, resplendent by the most clear manifestation both of words and of works: not attending where infirmity is shown to be taken up by the invincible and impassible power, where through infirmity there shine forth the tokens of invincible power: and thus they attempt to frustrate the effect of the divine mystery, because truly man could not be saved, if either he who took up man was not by nature true God, or in the taking-up by the true God something of man was lacking. CHAPTER VIII. The twofold nature of the Mediator to be demonstrated from the Scriptures. From the words of Isaiah three things are proved in Christ: flesh, soul, and divinity.
And that every ambiguity of doubt may be removed, in the one person of the man Christ, the Mediator of God and men, the perfection of the divine and human substance must be demonstrated by prophetic and apostolic testimonies. Isaiah, as we have recalled above, says: 'Behold, a Virgin shall conceive in the womb, and shall bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, before he knows or utters evil, he shall choose the good; for before the child knows good or evil, he does not believe malice, that he may choose what is good, and the land shall be left desolate; for before the child knows to call father or mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria' (Isa. 7:14-16).
In this testimony the whole fullness of the saving mystery is contained: for the truth of the flesh is known in the virginal conception, and the intellectual soul is shown in the choosing of the good, and the true nature of the deity is displayed in the name Emmanuel; and thus in the true God the assumption of man was neither false nor half-full. For it was fitting that in the sacrament of human redemption neither should truth be lacking to perfection, nor perfection to truth. For if true flesh was not in Christ, what did the Virgin conceive in her womb? and if a soul or intellect of human nature is believed to have been lacking in Christ, what is the infant said to have been ignorant of, good and evil?
Or do we subject that divine nature of the Son of God to the ignorance of good and evil, so as to deny in Christ a human soul? Is the man thus assumed by God to be believed to have been able in any measure to know the things of God, in whom wisdom itself is said to have lacked the knowledge of good and evil? The human soul, therefore, which by nature was made capable of reason, is said not to have known good and evil in the infant Christ — the soul which, according to the evangelical truth, in the boy Jesus is narrated to have advanced in wisdom and grace: as Luke sets down and says: 'And the child grew, and was strengthened, full of wisdom, and the grace of God was in him' (Luke 2:40). And a little after: 'Jesus advanced in wisdom, in age, and in grace with God and men' (ibid., 52).
For as it belongs to the flesh to advance in age, so it belongs to the soul to have advanced in wisdom and grace, which nevertheless would in no way advance in wisdom, if it did not have the natural understanding which was granted to men for the sake of reason — not because God the assumer had need of this, but because the effect of the pious assumption required this for the remedy of our salvation, so that, while flesh and rational soul are assumed by God, both alike might be saved: for neither was the flesh itself to be assumed by the Son of God, unless it were to be saved by the divine assumption. But if God had no need of flesh, but took it up that he might save it, so likewise God had no need of a rational soul, but took it up to be saved together with the flesh:
the assumption of which human soul holy David, in prophetic manner, intimates, saying: 'For behold, God helps me, and the Lord is the sustainer of my soul' (Ps. 53:6). He assuredly helped what he took up, which beyond doubt, unless he took it up, he would not have helped. CHAPTER IX. The straying sheep is the sinner wandering from God. The ways of the Lord are faith, justice, mercy, and truth. But I think it necessary that the perfect assumption of man in Christ be shown also by the recounting of the evangelical parable, namely of the straying sheep, which the Lord carried back to the house borne upon his own shoulders; for the seeking of which David long before implored aid with a tearful petition, saying:
'I have gone astray like a sheep that was lost; seek your servant' (Ps. 118:176). When, therefore, the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: 'This man receives sinners, and eats with them' (Luke 15:2), the evangelist reports that the Lord spoke this parable to them: 'What man of you who has a hundred sheep, and if he shall lose one of them, does he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert, and go after that which was lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders rejoicing; and coming home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them: Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost' (ibid., 4ff.).
This sheep, in which the nature of sinful man is signified, by what error shall we say it went astray? of heart or of body? by error of feet or by error of morals? I do not suppose anyone so devoid of human reflection as to think that a man in any way goes astray from God by remoteness of dwelling and not by perversity of thought. In the way of God one walks not by the step of the body, but by the going of the mind. The way of God is right faith, which is shown to be so entirely a way that the Apostle testifies that we walk in it: 'By faith,' he says, 'we walk, and not by sight' (2 Cor. 5:7). The way of the Lord is justice, by which blessed David records himself to have been led, saying: 'Upon the water of refreshment he brought me up, he converted my soul: