To Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, on the Agnoetae and What the Son Knows

Gregory to Eulogius, and so on. [a] “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” But what can be good news to me, as far as the welfare of holy church is concerned, except to hear of the health and safety of your holiness, most sweet to me? For through your grasp of the light of truth you both light up that church with the word of preaching and shape it to a better way by the example of your conduct. And as often as I recall in my heart how one in mind you are with me, and feel that I remain fixed in your heart, I give thanks to Almighty God that love cannot be divided by distance of place. For though we are far apart in body, in soul we are undivided. [b]

Our common son Anatolius the deacon has informed me in his letters that nothing in church affairs has ever been disturbed in the royal city for earthly reasons. But I believe that he had already told me before how your blessedness had spoken in the cause of the church, and I rejoice to think that where you happened to be present, I do not consider that I was missed at all. For I know that you, as a minister of the truth, a follower of Peter, and a preacher of holy church, would say what ought to have been heard from the mouth of a teacher of the see of the apostle Peter. [c] Moreover, some time ago, when Abramius of Alexandria came to me, I had written in reply to your holiness both what I thought of the writings you issued against the Agnoetae and why I had been so late in replying. But this Abramius, held back by difficulties at sea, is reported to have stayed a long time in the city of Naples. So I write again in the same sense as I had written before, since in your teaching against the heretics called Agnoetae there was much for us to admire and nothing to displease us. I had already written at length in the same sense to our son Anatolius the deacon. Moreover, your teaching agreed in every respect with the Latin fathers, so that I find, and am not surprised to find, that in different languages the Spirit has not been different.

For as to what you have said about the fig tree, Augustine speaks aptly in the same sense. When the evangelist added, “For it was not yet the season for figs,” it is plainly shown that the figs the Lord had looked for were fruit in the synagogue, which had the leaves of the law but not the fruit of works. For the Creator of all things could not be unaware that the fig tree had no fruit, which was something anyone might know, since it was not the season for figs. But as to what is written, that neither the Son nor the angels know the day and the hour, your holiness has quite rightly seen that this is most certainly to be understood not of the Son as he is the Head, but of his body, which we are. The same blessed Augustine takes it in this sense in many places. He also mentions another way in which it may be understood of the Son: that Almighty God sometimes speaks in a human way, as when he says to Abraham, “Now I know that you fear God.” It was not that God then came to know that he was feared, but that he then made Abraham know that he feared God. For just as we speak of a glad day, not meaning that the day itself is glad, but that it makes us glad, so the Almighty Son says that he does not know the day which he causes not to be known. It is not that he himself does not know it, but that he does not allow it to be known. That is also why the Father alone is said to know it: because the Son, who is of one substance with him, has his knowledge of what the angels do not know from his divine nature, by which he is above the angels. So it may also be understood more precisely in this way. The only Son, having taken flesh and been made a perfect man for us, did indeed know the day and hour of the judgment in the nature of his humanity, but still it was not from the nature of his humanity that he knew it. What he knew in it, then, he did not know from it, because God, made man, knew the day and hour of the judgment through the power of his divinity. So also at the wedding, when the Virgin Mother said that the wine had run out, he answered, “Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” It was not that the Lord of the angels was subject to the hour, when among all the things he had created he had made the hours and the times. But because the Virgin Mother, when the wine ran out, wanted a miracle done by him, she was at once answered, “Woman, what have I to do with you?” As if to say plainly, “That I can work a miracle comes to me from my Father, not from my Mother.” For he who worked miracles from the nature of his Father had it from his mother that he could die. That is also why, when he was on the cross, in dying he acknowledged his mother, whom he entrusted to the disciple, saying, “Here is your mother.” So he says, “Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” That is, “In the miracle, which I do not have from your nature, I do not acknowledge you. When the hour of death comes, I will acknowledge you as my mother, since I have it from you that I can die.” And so the knowledge that he did not have from the nature of his humanity, by which he was a creature along with the angels, he denied having along with the angels, who are creatures. So he knows the day and the hour of the judgment as God and man, but for this reason: because God is man. It is, moreover, quite plain that whoever is not a Nestorian cannot in any way be one of the Agnoetae. For how can anyone who confesses that the very Wisdom of God took flesh say that there is anything the Wisdom of God does not know? It is written, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him.” If all things, then without doubt the day and hour of the judgment too. Who, then, can be so senseless as to presume to say that the Word of the Father made something he does not know? It is also written, “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands.” If all things, certainly both the day and the hour of the judgment. Who, then, is so foolish as to say that the Son received into his hands what he does not know? [d]

But as to the passage where he says to the women about Lazarus, “Where have you laid him?”, I felt exactly as you felt. If they say that the Lord did not know where Lazarus had been buried, and asked for that reason, they will undoubtedly be forced to admit that the Lord did not know where Adam and Eve had hidden themselves after their sin, when he said in Paradise, “Adam, where are you?” Or when he rebukes Cain, saying, “Where is Abel your brother?” But if he did not know, why did he at once add, “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground”? However, Severian of Gabala speaks differently on this passage. He says that the Lord spoke this way to the women as a kind of rebuke, in asking where they had laid the dead Lazarus; as if, with plain reference to the sin of Eve, he had said, “I placed in Paradise the man whom you have placed in the tomb.” [g]

But to these points our same common son Anatolius the deacon has replied by putting another question: “What if it should be objected to me that, just as he who is immortal was willing to die in order to deliver us from death, and he who is eternal before all time willed to become subject to time, so the Wisdom of God was willing to take on our ignorance in order to deliver us from ignorance?” But I have not yet given him any reply to this, having been confined until now by a severe illness. Now, however, through your prayers I have already begun to recover; and if I recover enough to be able to dictate, I will reply to him with the help of the Lord. To you it is not for me to say anything on this subject, lest I seem to teach you what you know, since even medicines lose their power to heal if they are applied to sound and strong limbs.

Furthermore, we let you know that here we suffer serious difficulty for want of good translators. For there are none who can express the sense; all of them always try to translate the words exactly, and so they confuse the whole sense of what has been said. So it comes about that we cannot understand what has been translated without hard labor. I have received the blessing of Saint Mark the evangelist and of your blessedness. And I have wanted to send you some timber, but the ship that came was too small to carry it. And yet even the timber the Alexandrians saw when they came is of small size. For I had prepared much larger timber for you, which has not yet been brought to the city of Rome. I was waiting for it to be brought when the Alexandrian ship arrived, and it has stayed in the place where it was felled. [h] May Almighty God long guard your life for the building up of holy church, and move you to pray earnestly for me, so that I, weighed down by my own sins, may be lifted up before Almighty God by your prayers.