The Unchangeable, Part 3

From the same writer’s work on the soul: “When they look at the child’s education, or at his growth in stature, or at the passing of time, or at the growing of the body, what would they say? But leaving aside the miracles done on earth, let them look at the raisings of the dead to life, the signs of the Passion, the marks of the scourging, the bruises and the blows, the wounded side, the prints of the nails, the shedding of the blood, the evidence of the death, and in a word the actual resurrection of the very body.” From the same work: “Indeed, if anyone looks at the birth of the body, he will plainly find that after being born at Bethlehem he was wrapped in swaddling clothes, was brought up for some time in Egypt because of the evil plotting of the cruel Herod, and grew to manhood at Nazareth.” From the same work: “For the tabernacle is not the same as the Word and God, and it was through that tabernacle that the blessed Stephen saw the divine glory.” [a] From the same writer’s sermon on “The Lord created me at the beginning of his way”: [b] “If the Word received the beginning of his birth from the time when he passed through his mother’s womb and wore the human frame, then plainly he was made of a woman. But if from the first he was the Word, and God with the Father, and if we declare that the universe was made by him, then he who is, and who is the cause of all created things, was not made of a woman. He is by nature God, self-existent, infinite, beyond comprehension; and of a woman he was made man, formed in the Virgin’s womb by the Holy Spirit.” From the same work: “For the tabernacle of the Word according to the flesh is a temple wholly holy and undefiled, in which God visibly made his home and dwelt. We do not say this from guesswork. He who is by nature the Son of this God, when he foretold the destruction and the raising up of the temple, teaches us plainly by his own words, when he says to the murderous Jews, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’” [c] From the same work: “So when the Word had built a temple and carried the humanity, living among men in a body, he invisibly displayed various miracles and sent out the apostles as heralds of his everlasting kingdom.” From the same writer’s interpretation of the ninety-second Psalm: [d] “It is plain, then, that if ‘he who anoints’ means God, whose throne he calls ‘everlasting,’ the one who anoints is plainly God by nature, begotten of God. But the one anointed took on an acquired virtue, being adorned with a chosen temple of the Godhead that dwelt in it.”

The testimony of the holy Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria and confessor, from his defense of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria: [e] “‘I am the vine, you are the branches. My Father is the vinedresser.’ For according to the body we are kin to the Lord, and that is why he himself said, ‘I will declare your name to my brothers.’ And just as the branches are of one substance with the vine and come from it, so we too, since we have bodies akin to the Lord’s body, receive them from his fullness, and have it as a root for our resurrection and salvation. And the Father is called the vinedresser, because he himself, through the Word, tended the vine, which is the Lord’s body.” [f] From the same writer, in the same treatise: “The Lord was called a vine because of his bodily kinship with the branches, which are ourselves.” From the same writer’s longer discourse on the faith: “The scripture ‘In the beginning was the Word’ plainly points to the Godhead. The passage ‘The Word was made flesh’ shows the Lord’s human nature.” [g] From the same discourse: “‘He will wash his garments in wine’: that is, his body, which is the garment of the Godhead, in his own blood.” [h] From the same writer, in the same discourse: “The word ‘was’ refers to his divinity, and the words ‘was made flesh’ to his body. The Word was made flesh not by being reduced to flesh but by bearing flesh. It is just as someone might say that a certain man became, or was made, an old man, though he was not born so at the beginning; or that a soldier became a veteran, though before he was not what he became. John says, ‘I became,’ or ‘I was, in the island of Patmos on the Lord’s day.’ He does not mean that he was made or born there. He says ‘I became,’ or ‘I was, in Patmos,’ in place of saying ‘I arrived.’ So too the Word ‘arrived’ at flesh, as it is said, ‘The Word was made flesh.’ Listen to the words ‘I became like a broken vessel,’ and ‘I became like a man who has no strength, free among the dead.’” [i] From the same writer’s letter to Epictetus: [j] “Who ever heard such things? Who taught them? Who learned them? ‘Out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ But where did these things come from? What hell spewed them out? To say that the body taken from Mary was of one substance with the Godhead of the Word, or that the Word was changed into flesh and bones and hair and a whole body! Who ever heard, in a church or among Christians at all, that God bore a body by adoption and not by birth?” [k] From the same writer, in the same letter: “But who, hearing that the Word made for himself a body capable of suffering, not from Mary but from his own substance, would call the one who says such things a Christian? Who has devised so groundless an impiety as even to think, and to say, that those who declare the Lord’s body to be from Mary no longer think of a Trinity but of a Quaternity in the Godhead? As though those who hold this view described the flesh that the Savior put on from Mary as being of the substance of the Trinity. [l] From where, besides, have some men spewed out an impiety as bad as the one before, alleging that the body is not later in time than the Godhead of the Word, but has always been coeternal with it, since it was formed from the substance of Wisdom?” From the same writer, in the same letter: “So the body taken from Mary was human, according to the scriptures, and real, because it was the same as ours. For Mary was our sister, since we are all from Adam. No one who remembers the words of Luke could doubt this.” [m]

The testimony of the holy Basil, bishop of Caesarea: [n] From his interpretation of Psalm 60: “All foreigners have bowed down and been put under the yoke of Christ. That is why he also ‘casts out’ his ‘shoe over Edom.’ Now the shoe of the Godhead is the flesh that bore God, by which he came among men.” [o] From the same writer’s work on the Holy Spirit, written to Amphilochius: “He uses the phrase ‘of whom’ instead of ‘through whom,’ as when Paul says ‘made of a woman.’ He made this distinction plain to us in another place, where he says that being made of the man belongs to the woman, while being made through the woman belongs to the man, in the words ‘For as the woman is of the man, so is the man through the woman.’ But his aim is at once to point out the different use of these expressions and to correct, in passing, the error of certain men who supposed that the Lord’s body was spiritual. So, to show that the flesh that bore God was formed out of human matter, he gives prominence to the more emphatic expression. For the expression ‘through a woman’ was in danger of suggesting that the birth was a mere passing through, while the phrase ‘of the woman’ makes plain enough that the child shares a common nature with the mother.” [p]

The testimony of the holy Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, from his first letter to Cledonius: “If anyone says that the flesh came down from heaven, and not from this earth and from us, let him be anathema. For the words ‘The second man is from heaven,’ and ‘As is the heavenly, so are those who are heavenly,’ and ‘No one has ascended up to heaven except the Son of Man who came down from heaven,’ and any other passage like them, must be understood as spoken because of the union with the human. So too the statements that ‘all things were made through Christ’ and that ‘Christ dwells in our hearts’ must be understood not in the way the senses perceive things, but in the way the mind conceives of the Godhead. The terms are blended together, just as the natures are.” [q] From the same writer, in the same work: “Let us see from their own words what reason they give for his becoming man, that is, for the incarnation. If it was so that God, who otherwise cannot be contained in space, might be contained in space, and might talk with men in the flesh as though from behind a veil, then their mask and their play-acting are exquisite! Not to mention that he could have talked with us in other ways, as he did in the past, in a burning bush and in human form. But if it was so that he might undo the condemnation of sin by taking hold of like with like, then just as he needed flesh because of the condemned flesh, and a soul because of the soul, so too he needed a mind because of the mind. For the mind in Adam not only fell but, to use a term that physicians use about diseases, was the part first affected. For what received the commandment was what did not keep the commandment. What did not keep the commandment was what dared to transgress. What had transgressed was what most needed salvation. And what needed salvation was what was taken on. So the mind was taken on. This point has been proved, whether they like it or not, by proofs that are, so to speak, mathematical and necessary. But you are acting as if a man had a diseased eye and a lame foot, and you cured the foot but left the eye uncured; or as if a painter had painted a picture badly, and you altered the picture but left the painter alone, as though he did his work well. But if they are so hard pressed by these arguments that they take refuge in saying that God can save man even without a mind, then plainly he could have done so without flesh as well, by a mere act of his will, just as he works, and has worked, in the universe without a body. Away, then, with the flesh as well as with the mind! Let there be no inconsistency in your absurdity.” [r]

The testimony of the holy Gregory, bishop of Nyssa, from his sermon on Abraham: [s] “So the Word came down not bare but having been made flesh; not in the form of God but in the form of a servant. This, then, is the one who said that he could do nothing of himself. For not being able belongs to powerlessness. As darkness is opposed to light, and death to life, so weakness is opposed to power. Yet Christ is the Power of God, and power has nothing in common with not being able. For if power were powerless, what would be powerful? So when the Word declares that he can do nothing, it is plain that he does not attribute his powerlessness to the Godhead of the only Son, but links his not being able with the powerlessness of our nature. The flesh is weak, as it is written, ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’” [t] From the same writer’s book On the Perfection of Life: “Again, the true Lawgiver, of whom Moses was a type, cut for himself out of our earth the stone tablets of nature. No marriage shaped for him the flesh that was to receive the Godhead. He himself became the stonecutter of his own flesh, engraved as it was by the finger of God. For the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. And when this had happened, nature once again took on its indestructible character, made immortal by the marks of the divine finger.” [u] From the same writer’s book against Eunomius: [v] “We say, then, that when he said above that Wisdom built herself a house, he points by the phrase to the forming of the Lord’s flesh. For Wisdom itself made its home in no stranger’s dwelling, but built its own dwelling from the Virgin’s body.” [w] From the same writer, in the same treatise: “The Word was before the ages, but the flesh came into being in the last times. And no one would turn this around and say either that the flesh was before the ages or that the Word came into being in the last times.” From the same writer, in the same treatise: “The expression ‘created me’ is not to be understood of what is divine and undefiled but, as has been said, of our created nature, in keeping with the plan of salvation by which he became flesh.” [x] From the same writer’s first sermon on the Beatitudes: “‘Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself and took the form of a servant.’ What is poorer, for God, than the form of a servant? What is more lowly, for the King of all, than to come into fellowship with our poor nature? The King of kings and Lord of lords willingly puts on the form of slavery.” [y]

The testimony of the holy Flavian, bishop of Antioch, from his sermon on John the Baptist: “Do not think of any bodily union, and do not entertain the idea of married relations. For your Creator is creating his own bodily temple, which is now being born of you.” [z] From the same writer’s book on “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”: “Hear him saying, ‘The Spirit is upon me, because he has anointed me.’ You do not know what you are reading, he says, for I, the one anointed with the Spirit, have come to you. Now it is what is akin to us, and not the invisible nature, that is anointed with the Spirit.” [aa] The testimony of Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium, from his discourse on “My Father is greater than I”: [ab] “Now distinguish the natures for me, the divine and the human. For man was not made from God by falling away, nor was God made from man by advancement. I am speaking of God and man. When, however, you attribute the sufferings to the flesh and the miracles to God, you must of necessity, even against your will, assign the lowly titles to the man born of Mary, and the exalted and divine ones to the Word, who in the beginning was God. That is why in some places I speak exalted words and in others lowly ones: so that by the lofty I may show the nature of the indwelling Word, and by the lowly acknowledge the weakness of the lowly flesh. That is why I sometimes call myself equal to the Father and sometimes greater than the Father. I am not contradicting myself, but showing that I am God and man, for God belongs to the lofty and man to the lowly. But if you want to know how my Father is greater than I, I said it of the flesh, not of the person of the Godhead.” [ac] From the same writer’s discourse on “The Son can do nothing of himself”: [ad] “How was Adam disobedient in heaven? And how was he, the first-formed, formed of a heavenly body beside the first forming? But it was the Adam of earth who was formed in the beginning. The Adam of earth disobeyed. The Adam of earth was taken on. And that is why the Adam of earth was saved, so that in this way the plan of the incarnation might be shown to be necessary and true.” [ae]

The testimony of the holy John, bishop of Constantinople, from the speech he made after the Gothic envoy had spoken before him: [af] “See what he does from the beginning. He clothes himself in our nature, powerless and defeated as it was, so that by means of it he may fight and struggle; and from the beginning he tears out by the root the very nature of rebellion.” From the same writer’s sermon on the feast of the Nativity: “Is it not the height of stupidity for them to bring their own gods down into stones and cheap wooden images, shutting them up as if in a kind of prison, and to imagine that there is nothing shameful in anything they say or do, and then to find fault with us for saying that God made himself a living temple by the Holy Spirit, through which he brought help to the world? For if it is shameful for God to dwell in a human body, then it is much more shameful for him to dwell in stone and wood, as much more as stone and wood are more worthless than man. But perhaps to them mankind seems of less value than these senseless objects. They bring the substance of God down into stones and into dogs, and many heretics into fouler things than these. But we could never bear even to hear of such things. What we say is that from a virgin’s womb Christ took pure flesh, holy and spotless, and made impervious to all sin, and restored the body that was his own.” [ag] A little further on: “And we declare that when the divine Word had fashioned a holy temple for himself, through it he brought the life of heaven into our life.” From the same writer’s discourse That the Lowly Words and Deeds of Christ Were Not Spoken and Done from Lack of Power, but for the Different Purposes of His Plan of Salvation: “Why, then, were many lowly things said about him, both by himself and by his apostles? The first and greatest reason is that he had clothed himself with flesh, and wanted all who lived in his time, and all who have lived since, to believe that he was not a shadow, and that what was seen was not merely an appearance, but a real nature. For even though he himself and his apostles spoke about him so often in lowly and human terms, the devil still had the power to persuade some wretched and miserable men to deny the plan of the incarnation, to dare to say that he did not take flesh, and so to destroy the whole ground of his love for mankind. How many, then, would have fallen into this pit if he had never said anything of the kind?”

I have now set before you a few testimonies out of many from the heralds of the truth, so as not to overwhelm you with too many. They are quite enough to show the drift of these excellent writers’ minds. Now it is for you to say what weight their writings seem to you to carry. They have all spoken in harmony with one another, and those who work the vineyard in the West agree with those who farm in the lands of the rising sun. Yet I noticed a considerable difference in their sayings. They are successors of the divine apostles. Some of them were even privileged to hear the holy voice of those apostles and to see that goodly sight, and most of them were crowned with martyrdom as well. Do you think it right to wag a blaspheming tongue against them? [ah] I shrink from doing that. At the same time, I do not approve of how widely they differ. Then I will bring you a remedy you do not expect. I will bring forward one of your own fine heresy, your teacher Apollinarius, and I will show you that he understood the text “The Word was made flesh” just as the holy Fathers did. Hear now what he wrote about it in his Summary. [ai]

The testimony of Apollinarius, from his Summary: “If no one is turned into what he takes on, and Christ took on flesh, then he was not turned into flesh.” And immediately after he continues: “For he also gave himself to us in kinship, by means of the body, to save us. Now what saves is far more excellent than what is being saved. So in taking on a body he is far more excellent than we are! But he would not have been more excellent if he had been turned into flesh.” A little further on he says: “What is simple is one, but what is compound cannot be one. So whoever alleges that he was made flesh asserts a change in the one Word. But if what is compound can also be one, as a man is, then whoever says ‘the Word was made flesh’ because of the union with the flesh means one being who is compound.” And again, a little further on, he says: “To be made flesh is to be made empty. But being made empty points not to a man but to the Son of Man, who ‘emptied himself,’ not by undergoing change but by clothing himself.” [aj]

There! You see that the teacher of your own doctrines has brought in the word “clothing.” Indeed, in his little work on the faith he says, “We believe, then, that he was made flesh while his Godhead remained unchanged, for the renewal of humanity. For in the holy power of God there has been no alteration, no change of place, no confinement.” And then shortly after, “We worship God, who took flesh from the blessed Virgin, and for this reason is man in the flesh but God in the spirit.” And in another exposition he says, “We confess that the Son of God was made the Son of Man, not in name but in truth, by taking flesh from the Virgin Mary.” I did not suppose that Apollinarius held these views. I had other ideas about him. Well, now you have learned that not only the prophets and apostles, and those who after them were ordained teachers of the world, but even Apollinarius, the writer of heretical babble, confesses that the divine Word is unchangeable, and says that he was not turned into flesh but took on flesh, and says it over and over again, as you have heard. So do not struggle to throw your master’s blasphemy into the shade with your own. For the Lord says, “The disciple is not above his master.” [ak] Yes, I confess that the divine Word of God is unchangeable and took flesh. It would be the height of folly to stand against authorities so many and so great. Do you want a solution to the rest of the difficulties as well? Let us put off examining them until tomorrow. Very well. Our synod is dismissed. Let us go, and keep in mind what we have agreed on. [al]