Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Counter-statements of Theodoret.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Counter-statements of Theodoret.
————————————
(Opp. Ed. Schulze. V. I. seq.
Migne, Lat. 76. col. 391.)
Against I.—But all we who follow the words of the evangelists
state that God the Word was not made flesh by nature, nor yet was
changed into flesh; for the Divine is immutable and invariable.
Wherefore also the prophet David says, “Thou art the same, and
thy years shall not fail.”174
And this the
great Paul, the herald of the truth, in his Epistle to the Hebrews,
states to have been spoken of the Son.175
And
in another place God says through the Prophet, “I am the Lord: I
change not.”176
If then the Divine
is immutable and invariable, it is incapable of change or alteration.
And if the immutable cannot be changed, then God the Word was not made
flesh by mutation, but took flesh and tabernacled in us, according to
the word of the evangelist. This the divine Paul expresses clearly in
his Epistle to the Philippians in the words, “Let this mind be in
you which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no
reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant.”177
Now it is plain from these words that the
form of God was not changed into the form of a servant, but, remaining
what it was, took the form of the servant. So God the Word was not made
flesh, but assumed living and reasonable flesh. He Himself is not
naturally conceived of the Virgin, fashioned, formed, and deriving
beginning of existence from her; He who is before the ages, God, and
with God, being with the Father and with the Father both known and
worshipped; but He fashioned for Himself a temple in the Virgin’s
womb, and was with that which was formed and begotten. Wherefore also
we style that holy Virgin θεοτόκος, not because she gave birth in natural manner to God, but
to man united to the God that had fashioned Him. Moreover if He that
was fashioned in the Virgin’s womb was not man but God the Word
Who is before the ages, then God the Word is a creature of the Holy
Ghost. For that which was conceived in her, says Gabriel, is of the
Holy Ghost.178
But if the only begotten Word of
God is uncreate and of one substance and co-eternal with the Father it
is no longer a formation or creation of the Spirit. And if the Holy
Ghost did not fashion God the Word in the Virgin’s womb, it
follows that we understand the form of the servant to have been
fashioned, formed, conceived, and generated. But since the form was not
stripped of the form of God, but was a Temple containing God the Word
dwelling in it, according to the words of Paul “For it pleased
the Father that in him should all fulness dwell”
“bodily,”179
we call the Virgin
not mother of man (ἀνθρωποτόκος) but mother of God (θεοτόκος), applying the former title to the fashioning and
conception, but the latter to the union. For this cause the child who
was born is called Emmanuel, neither God separated from human nature
nor man stripped of Godhead. For Emmanuel is interpreted to mean
“God with us”, according to the words of the Gospels; and
the expression “God with us” at once manifests Him Who for
our sakes was assumed out of us, and proclaims God the Word Who
assumed. Therefore the child is called Emmanuel on account of God Who
assumed, and the Virgin θεοτόκος on account of the union of the form of God with the
conceived form of a servant. For God the Word was not changed into
flesh, but the form of God took the form of a servant.
Against II.—We, in obedience to the divine teaching of the
apostles, confess one Christ; and, on account of the union, we name the
same both God and man. But we are wholly ignorant of the union
according to hypostasis180
as being strange
and foreign to the divine Scriptures and the Fathers who have
interpreted them. And if the author of these statements means by the
union according to hypostasis that there was a mixture of flesh and
Godhead, we shall oppose his statement with all our might, and shall
confute his blasphemy, for the mixture is of necessity followed by
confusion; and the admission of confusion destroys the individuality of
each nature. Things that are undergoing mixture do not remain what they
were, and to assert this in the case of God the Word and of the seed
of David
would be most absurd. We must obey the Lord when He exhibits the two
natures and says to the Jews, “Destroy this temple and in three
days I will raise it up.”181
But if there had
been mixture then God had not remained God, neither was the temple
recognised as a temple; then the temple was God and God was temple.
This is involved in the theory of the mixture. And it was quite
superfluous for the Lord to say to the Jews, “Destroy this temple
and in three days I will raise it up.” He ought to have said,
Destroy me and in three days I shall be raised, if there had really
been any mixture and confusion. As it is, He exhibits the temple
undergoing destruction and God raising it up. Therefore the union
according to hypostasis, which in my opinion they put before us instead
of mixture, is superfluous. It is quite sufficient to mention the
union, which both exhibits the properties of the natures and teaches us
to worship the one Christ.
Against III.—The sense of the terms used is misty and obscure. Who
needs to be told that there is no difference between conjunction and
concurrence? The concurrence is a concurrence of the separated parts;
and the conjunction is a conjunction of the distinguished parts. The
very clever author of the phrases has laid down things that agree as
though they disagreed. It is wrong, he says, to conjoin the hypostases
by conjunction; they ought to be conjoined by concurrence, and that a
natural concurrence. Possibly he states this not knowing what he says;
if he knows, he blasphemes. Nature has a compulsory force and is
involuntary; as for instance, if I say we are naturally hungry, we do
not feel hunger of free-will but of necessity; and assuredly paupers
would have left off begging if the power of ceasing to be hungry had
lain in their own will; we are naturally thirsty; we naturally sleep;
we naturally breathe; and all these actions, I repeat, belong to the
category of the involuntary, and he who is no longer capable of them
necessarily ceases to exist. If then the concurrence in union of the
form of God and the form of a servant was natural, then God the Word
was united to the form of the servant under the compulsion of
necessity, and not because He put in force His loving kindness, and the
Lawgiver of the Universe will be found to be a follower of the laws of
necessity. Not thus have we been taught by the blessed Paul; on the
contrary, we have been taught that He took the form of a servant and
“emptied Himself;”182
and the
expression “emptied Himself” indicates the voluntary act.
If then He was united by purpose and will to the nature assumed from
us, the addition of the term natural is superfluous. It suffices to
confess the union, and union is understood of things distinguished, for
if there were no division an union could never be apprehended. The
apprehension then of the union implies previous apprehension of the
division. How then can he say that the hypostases or natures ought not
to be divided? He knows all the while that the hypostasis of God the
Word was perfect before the ages; and that the form of the servant
which was assumed by It was perfect; and this is the reason why he said
hypostases and not hypostasis. If therefore either nature is perfect,
and both came together, it is obvious that after the form of God had
taken the form of a servant, piety compels us to confess one son and
Christ; while to speak of the united hypostases or natures as two, so
far from being absurd, follows the necessity of the case. For if in the
case of the one man we divide the natures, and call the mortal nature
body, but the immortal nature soul, and both man, much more consonant
is it with right reason to recognise the properties alike of the God
who took and of the man who was taken. We find the blessed Paul
dividing the one man into two where he says in one passage,
“Though our outward man perish yet the inward man is
renewed,”183
and in another
“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.”184
And again “that Christ may dwell in
the inner man.”185
Now if the apostle
divides the natural conjunction of the synchronous natures, with what
reason can the man who describes the mixture to us by means of other
terms indite us as impious when we divide the properties of the natures
of the everlasting God and of the man assumed at the end of
days?
Against IV.—These statements, too, are akin to the preceding. On
the assumption that there has been a mixture, he means that there is a
distinction of terms as used both in the holy Gospels and in the
apostolic writings. And he uses this language while glorifying himself
that he is at war at once with Arius and Eunomius and the rest of the
heresiarchs. Let then this exact professor of theology tells us how he
would confute the blasphemy of the heretics, while applying to God the
Word what is uttered humbly and appropriately by the form of the
servant. They indeed while thus doing lay down that the Son of God is
inferior, a creature, made, and a servant. To whom then are we,
holding as
we do the opposite opinion to theirs, and confessing the Son to be of
one substance and co-eternal with God the Father, Creator of the
Universe, Maker, Beautifier, Ruler, and Governor, All-wise, Almighty,
or rather Himself, Power, Life and Wisdom, to refer the words “My
God, my God why hast thou forsaken me;”186
or “Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me;”187
or “Father save me from this
hour;”188
or “That hour no man
knoweth, not even the Son of Man;”189
and all the other passages spoken and written in lowliness by Him and
by the holy apostles about Him? To whom shall we apply the weariness
and the sleep? To whom the ignorance and the fear? Who was it who stood
in need of angelic succour? If these belong to God the Word, how was
wisdom ignorant? How could it be called wisdom when affected by the
sense of ignorance? How could He speak the truth in saying that He had
all that the Father hath,190
when not having the
knowledge of the Father? For He says, “The Father alone knoweth
that day.”191
How could He be the
unchanged image of Him that begat Him if He has not all that the
Begetter hath? If then He speaks the truth when saying that He is
ignorant, any one might suppose this of Him. But if He knoweth the day,
but says that He is ignorant with the wish to hide it, you see in what
a blasphemy the conclusion issues. For the truth lies and could not
properly be called truth if it has any quality opposed to truth. But if
the truth does not lie, neither is God the Word ignorant of the day
which He Himself made, and which He Himself fixed, wherein He purposes
to judge the world, but has the knowledge of the Father as being
unchanged image. Not then to God the Word does the ignorance belong,
but to the form of the servant who at that time knew as much as the
indwelling Godhead revealed. The same position may be maintained about
other similar cases. How for instance could it be reasonable for God
the Word to say to the Father, “Father if it be possible let this
cup pass from me, nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt”?192
The absurdities which necessarily thence
follow are not a few. First it follows that the Father and the Son are
not of the same mind, and that the Father wishes one thing and the Son
another, for He said, “Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou
wilt.” Secondly we shall have to contemplate great ignorance in
the Son, for He will be found ignorant whether the cup can or cannot
pass from Him; but to say this of God the Word is utter impiety and
blasphemy. For exactly did He know the end of the mystery of the
œconomy Who for this very reason came among us, Who of His own
accord took our nature, Who emptied Himself. For this cause too He
foretold to the Holy Apostles, “Behold we go up to Jerusalem; and
the Son of Man shall be betrayed…into the hands of the Gentiles
to mock and to scourge and to crucify Him, and the third day He shall
rise again.”193
How then can He
Who foretold these things, and, when Peter deprecated their coming to
pass, rebuked him, Himself deprecate their coming to pass, when He
clearly knows all that is to be? Is it not absurd that Abraham many
generations ago should have seen His day and have been glad,194
and that Isaiah in like manner, and
Jeremiah, and Daniel, and Zechariah, and all the fellowship of the
prophets, should have foretold His saving passion, and He Himself be
ignorant, and beg release from and deprecate it, though it was destined
to come to pass for the salvation of the world? Therefore these words
are not the words of God the Word, but of the form of the servant,
afraid of death because death was not yet destroyed.195
| 195 For
the view that the cup deprecated by the Saviour was death there is no
direct Scriptural authority and to adopt the exegesis of Theodoret and
of many others would be to place the divine humanity of the Messiah on
a lower level than that not merely of many a martyr and patriot but of
many men unconscious of martyr’s or patriot’s high calling,
who have nevertheless faced death and pain with calm and cheerful
fortitude. The bitterness of the cup which the Saviour prayed might if
possible pass from Him seems rather to have lain in the culmination of
the sin of the race and nation with which His love for men had
identified Him; the greed, the treachery, the meanness, the cruelty,
the disloyalty, shewn by the Sons of Israel to the Son of David, by the
sons of men to the Son of Man. |
Surely God the Word permitted the utterance of these expressions
allowing room for fear, that the nature of Him that had to be born may
be plain, and to prevent our supposing the Son of Abraham and David to
be an unreality or appearance. The crew of the impious heretics has
given birth to this blasphemy through entertaining these sentiments. We
shall therefore apply what is divinely spoken and acted to God the
Word; on the other hand what is said and done in humility we shall
connect with the form of a servant, lest we be tainted with the
blasphemy of Arius and Eunomius.
Against V.—We assert that God the Word shared like ourselves in
flesh and blood, and in immortal soul, on account of the union relating
to them; but that God the Word was made flesh
by any change we not only refuse to say, but accuse of impiety those
who do, and it may be seen that this is contrary to the very terms laid
down. For if the Word was changed into flesh He did not
share with us in flesh and blood: but if He shared in flesh and blood
He shared as being another besides them: and if the flesh is anything
other besides Him, then He was not changed into flesh. While therefore
we use the term sharing196
| 196 κοινωνία, in the sense of participation. | we worship both Him
that took and that which was taken as one Son. But we reckon the
distinction of the natures. We do not object to the term man bearing
God, as employed by many of the holy Fathers, one of whom is the great
Basil, who uses this term in his argument to Amphilochius about the
Holy Ghost, and in his interpretation of the fifty-ninth psalm. But we
call Him man bearing God, not because He received some particular
divine grace, but as possessing all the Godhead of the Son united. For
thus says the blessed Paul in his interpretation, “Beware lest
any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after
Christ. For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily.”197
Against VI.—The blessed Paul calls that which was assumed by God
the Word “form of a servant,”198
but since the assumption was prior to the union, and the blessed Paul
was discoursing about the assumption when he called the nature which
was assumed “form of a servant,” after the making of the
union the name of “servitude” has no longer place. For
seeing that the Apostle when writing to them that believed in Him said,
“So thou art not a servant but a son”199
and the Lord said to His disciples,
“Henceforth I will not call you servants but friends;”200
much more the first fruits of our nature,
through whom even we were guerdoned with the boon of adoption, would be
released from the title of servant. We therefore confess even
“the form of the servant” to be God on account of the form
of God united to it; and we bow to the authority of the prophet when he
calls the babe also Emmanuel, and the child which was born,
“Angel of great counsel, wonderful Counsellor, mighty God,
powerful, Prince of peace, and Father of the age to come.”201
Yet the same prophet, even after the union,
when proclaiming the nature of that which was assumed, calls him who is
of the seed of Abraham “servant” in the words “Thou
art my servant O Israel and in thee will I be glorified;”202
and again, “Thus says the Lord that
formed me from the womb to be his servant;”203
and a little further on, “Lo I have
given thee for a covenant of the people, for a light to the Gentiles,
that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.”204
But what was formed from the womb was not
God the Word but the form of the servant. For God the Word was not made
flesh by being changed, but He assumed flesh with a rational
soul.
Against VII.—If the nature of man is mortal, and God the Word is
life and giver of life, and raised up the temple which had been
destroyed by the Jews, and carried it into heaven, how is not the form
of the servant glorified through the form of God? For if being
originally and by nature mortal it was made immortal through its union
with God the Word, it therefore received what it had not; and after
receiving what it had not, and being glorified, it is glorified by Him
who gave. Wherefore also the Apostle exclaims, “According to the
working of His mighty power which he wrought in Christ when He raised
Him from the dead.”205
Against VIII.—As I have often said, the doxology which we offer to
the Lord Christ is one, and we confess the same to be at once God and
man, as the method of the union has taught us; but we shall not shrink
from speaking of the properties of the natures. For God the Word did
not undergo change into flesh, nor yet again did the man lose what he
was and undergo transmutation into the nature of God. Therefore we
worship the Lord Christ, while we maintain the properties of either
nature.
Against IX.—Here he has plainly had the hardihood to anathematize
not only those who at the present time hold pious opinions, but also
those who were in former days heralds of truth; aye even the writers of
the divine gospels, the band of the holy Apostles, and, in addition to
these, Gabriel the archangel. For he indeed it was who first, even
before the conception, announced the birth of the Christ according to
the flesh; saying in reply to Mary when she asked, “How shall
this be, seeing I know not a man?” “The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee;
therefore also that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be
called the Son of God.”206
And to Joseph he
said, “Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which
is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.”207
And the Evangelist says, “When as his
mother Mary was espoused to Joseph…she was found with child of
the Holy Ghost.”208
And the Lord Himself
when He had come into the synagogue of the Jews and had taken the
prophet Isaiah, after reading the passage in which he says, “The
spirit of the Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me” and so
on, added, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your
ears.”209
And the blessed Peter in his sermon to
the Jews said, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy
Ghost.”210
And Isaiah many ages before had
predicted, “There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of
Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots; and the spirit of the
Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of
the Lord;”211
and again,
“Behold my servant whom I uphold, my beloved in whom my soul
delighteth. I will put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth
judgment to the Gentiles.”212
This testimony
the Evangelist too has inserted in his own writings. And the Lord
Himself in the Gospels says to the Jews, “If I with the spirit of
God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon
you.”213
And John says, “He that sent
me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt
see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, the same is He which
baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.”214
So this exact
examiner of the divine decrees has not only anathematized prophets,
apostles, and even the archangel Gabriel, but has suffered his
blasphemy to reach even the Saviour of the world Himself. For we have
shewn that the Lord Himself after reading the passage “The spirit
of the Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me,” said to the
Jews, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
And to those who said that He was casting out devils by Beelzebub He
replied that He was casting them out by the Spirit of God. But we
maintain that it was not God the Word, of one substance and co-eternal
with the Father, that was formed by the Holy Ghost and anointed, but
the human nature which was assumed by Him at the end of days. We shall
confess that the Spirit of the Son was His own if he spoke of it as of
the same nature and proceeding from the Father, and shall accept the
expression as consistent with true piety. But if he speaks of the
Spirit as being of the Son, or as having its origin through the Son we
shall reject this statement as blasphemous and impious. For we believe
the Lord when He says, “The spirit which proceedeth from the
Father;”215
and likewise the very divine Paul
saying, “We have received not the spirit of the world, but the
spirit which is of God.”216
Against X.—The unchangeable nature was not changed into nature
of flesh, but assumed human nature and set it over the common high
priests, as the blessed Paul teaches in the words, “For every
high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things
pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for
sins: who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out
of the way; for that he himself also is encompassed with infirmity. And
by reason hereof he ought, as for the people so also for
himself.”217
And a little
further on interpreting this he says, “As was Aaron so also was
the Christ.”218
Then pointing out
the infirmity of the assumed nature he says, “Who in the days of
His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplication with strong
crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was
heard for His godly fear, though He was a son yet learned obedience by
the things that He suffered: and having been made perfect He became
unto all that obey Him the author of eternal salvation; named of God a
high priest of the order of Melchisedec.”219
Who
then is He who was perfected by toils of virtue and who was not perfect
by nature? Who is He who learnt obedience by experience, and before his
experience was ignorant of it? Who is it that lived with godly fear and
offered supplication with strong crying and tears, not able to save
Himself but appealing to Him that is able to save Him and asking for
release from death? Not God the Word, the impassible, the immortal, the
incorporeal, whose memory is joy and release from tears, “For he
has wiped away tears from off all faces,”220
and
again the prophet says, “I remembered God and was glad,”221
Who crowneth them that live in godly fear,
“Who knoweth all things before they be,”222
“Who hath all things that the Father
hath;”223
Who is the unchangeable image of
the Father,224
“Who sheweth the Father in
himself.”225
It is on the
contrary that which was assumed by Him of the seed of David, mortal,
passible, and afraid of death; although this itself afterwards
destroyed the power of death through union with the God who had assumed
it;226
which walked through all righteousness and
said to John, “Suffer it to be so now for thus it becometh us to
fulfil all righteousness.”227
This took the name of
the priesthood of Melchisedec, for it put on infirmity of
nature;—not the Almighty God the Word. Wherefore also, a little
before, the blessed Paul said, “We have not a high priest which
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all
points tempted like as we are yet without sin.”228
It was the nature taken from us for our
sakes which experienced our feelings without sin, not He that on
account of our salvation assumed it. And in the beginning of this part
of his subject he teaches us in the words “Consider the apostle
and high priest of our profession, Jesus, who was faithful to Him that
appointed Him as also Moses was faithful in all His house.”229
But no one holding the right faith would
call the unmade the uncreate, God the Word coeternal with the Father, a
creature; but on the contrary, Him of David’s seed Who being free
from all sin was made our high priest and victim, after Himself
offering Himself on our behalf to God having in Himself the Word, God
of God, united to Himself and inseparably conjoined.
Against XI.—In my opinion he appears to give heed to the truth,
in order that, by concealing his unsound views by it, he may not be
detected in asserting the same dogmas as the heretics. But nothing is
stronger than truth, which by its own rays uncovers the darkness of
falsehood. By the aid of its illumination we shall make his heterodox
belief plain. In the first place he has nowhere made mention of
intelligent flesh, nor confessed that the assumed man was perfect, but
everywhere in accordance with the teaching of Apollinarius he speaks of
flesh. Secondly, after introducing the conception of the mixture under
other terms, he brings it into his arguments; for there he clearly
states the flesh of the Lord to be soulless. For, he says, if any one
states that the flesh of the Lord is not proper flesh of the very Word
who is of God the Father, but that it is of another beside Him, let him
be anathema. Hence it is plain that he does not confess God the Word to
have assumed a soul, but only flesh, and that He Himself stands to the
flesh in place of soul. We on the contrary assert that the flesh of the
Lord having in it life230
was life-giving and
reasonable, on account of the life-giving Godhead united to it. And he
himself unwillingly confesses the difference between the two natures,
speaking of flesh, and “God the Word” and calling it
“His own flesh.” Therefore God the Word was not changed
into nature of flesh, but has His own flesh, the assumed nature, and
has made it life-giving by the union.
Against XII.—Passion is proper to the passible; the impassible is
above passions. It was then the form of the servant that suffered, the
form of God of course dwelling with it, and permitting it to suffer on
account of the salvation brought forth of the sufferings, and making
the sufferings its own on account of the union. Therefore it was not
the Christ231
| 231 For
“the Christ” we might expect here “the Word,”
for that the Christ suffered is the plain statement of Scripture
(1
Pet. ii. 21). But Theodoret uses the name Christ of the eternal word,
e.g. de Providentia x. 661. “When you hear Christ
mentioned, understand the only begotten Son the Word, begotten of His
Father before the ages, clad in human nature.” | who suffered, but the man assumed of
us by God. Wherefore also the blessed Isaiah exclaims in his prophecy,
“A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”232
And the Lord Christ Himself said to the
Jews, “Why seek ye to kill me, a man that hath told you the
truth?”233
But what is threatened with death
is not the very life, but he that hath a mortal nature. And giving this
lesson in another place the Lord said to the Jews, “Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”234
Therefore what was destroyed was the
(temple descended) from David, and, after its destruction, it was
raised up by the only begotten Word of God impassibly begotten of the
Father before the ages.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
