Against Beron and
Helix.
Fragments of a discourse,
alphabetically divided,1711
| 1711
κατὰ
στοιχεῖον.
The Latin title in the version of Anastasius renders it “ex
sermone qui est per elementum.” |
on the
Divine Nature1712
and the
Incarnation, against the
heretics Beron and Helix,
1713
| 1713 For
῞Ηλικοςthe Codex Regius et
Colbertinus of Nicephorus prefers “῝Ηλικίωνος.
Fabricius conjectures that we should read ηλικιωτῶ
αἱρετικῶν, so
that the title would be, Against Beron and his fellow-heretics.
[N.B. Beron = "Vero".] |
the beginning
of which was in these words, “Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of
Sabaoth, with voice never
silent the seraphim exclaim and
glorify
God.”
Fragment I.
By the omnipotent will of God all things are made,
and the things that are made are also preserved, being maintained
according to their several principles in perfect harmony by Him who is
in His nature the omnipotent God and maker of all things,1714
His
divine will
remaining unalterable by which He has made and moves all things,
sustained as they severally are by their own
natural laws.
1715
| 1715
τοῖς
ἕκαστα
φυσικοις
διεξαγόμενα
νόμοις. Anastasius makes it
naturalibus producta legibus; Capperonnier, suis quæque
legibus temperata vel ordinata. |
For the
infinite cannot in any manner or by any account be susceptible of
movement, inasmuch as it has nothing towards which and nothing around
which it shall be moved. For in the case of that which is in its
nature infinite, and so incapable of being moved, movement would be
conversion.
1716
| 1716
τροπὴ
γὰρ τοῦ κατὰ
φύσιν
ἀπείρου, κινεῖσθαι
μὴ
πεφυκότος
, ἡ κίνησις; or may the
sense be, “for a change in that which is in its nature infinite
would just be the moving of that which is incapable of
movement?” |
Wherefore
also the Word of
God being made truly man in our manner, yet without
sin, and acting and enduring in man’s way such sinless things as
are proper to our
nature, and assuming the circumscription of the
flesh
of our
nature on our behalf, sustained no conversion in that aspect in
which He is one with the
Father, being made in no respect one with the
flesh through the exinanition.
1717
| 1717
μηδ᾽
ἑνὶ παντελῶς
ὃ ταυτόν ἐστι
τῷ Πατρὶ
γενόμενος
ταυτὸν τῇ
σαρκὶ διὰ τὴν
κένωσιν. Thus in
effect Combefisius, correcting the Latin version of Anastasius.
Baunius adopts the reading in the Greek Codex Nicephori, viz.,
ἕνωσιν for κένωσιν, and renders
it, “In nothing was the Word, who is the same with the Father,
made the same with the flesh through the union:” nulla re
Verbum quod idem est cum Patre factum est idem cum carne propter
unionem. |
But as He was without
flesh,
1718
| 1718
δίχα
σαρκὸς, i.e., what He was before
assuming the flesh, that He continued to be in Himself, viz.,
independent of limitation. |
He remained
without any circumscription. And through the
flesh He
wrought
divinely
1719
those things
which are proper to
divinity, showing Himself to have both those
natures in both of which He
wrought, I mean the
divine and the human,
according to that veritable and real and
natural subsistence,
1720
| 1720 Or
existence, ὕπαρξιν.
Anastasius makes it substantia. |
(showing Himself
thus) as both being in reality and as being understood to be at one and
the same time infinite
God and finite man, having the
nature1721
of each in
perfection, with the same activity,
1722
that is to say, the same
natural
properties;
1723
whence we know
that their distinction
abides always according to the
nature of each,
and without conversion. But it is not (i.e., the distinction
between
deity and
humanity), as some say, a merely comparative (or
relative) matter,
1724
| 1724
κατὰ
σύγκρισιν.
Migne follows Capperonnier in taking σύγκρισις
in this passage to mean not “comparison” or
“relation,” but “commixture,” the
“concretion and commixture” of the divine and human, which
was the error of Apollinaris and Eutyches in their doctrine of the
incarnation, and which had been already refuted by Tertullian,
Contra Praxeam, c. xxvii. |
that we may
not speak in an unwarrantable manner of a greater and a less in one who
is ever the same in Himself.
1725
| 1725 Or,
“for that would be to speak of the same being as greater and less
than Himself.” |
For comparisons can be instituted
only between objects of like
nature, and not between objects of unlike
nature. But between
God the
Maker of all things and that which is
made, between the infinite and the finite, between infinitude and
finitude, there can be no kind of comparison, since these differ from
each other not in mere comparison (or relatively), but absolutely in
essence. And yet at the same time there has been effected a
certain inexpressible and irrefragable union of the two into one
substance,
1726
which entirely
passes the understanding of anything that is made.
For the divine is just the
same after the incarnation that it was before the incarnation; in its
essence infinite, illimitable, impassible, incomparable, unchangeable,
inconvertable, self-potent,
1727
and, in short, subsisting in essence
alone the infinitely worthy good.
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