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| Chapter X
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Chapter
X.
“But the nature of man,” it is said, “is narrow
and circumscribed, whereas the Deity is infinite. How could the
infinite be included in the atom1971
| 1971 τῷ ἀτόμῳ: here, the individual body of man: “individuo
corpusculo,” Zinus translates. Theodoret in his second
(“Unconfused”) Dialogue quotes this very passage about the
“infiniteness of the Deity,” and a “vessel,” to
prove the two natures of Christ. | ?” But
who is it that says the infinitude of the Deity is comprehended in the
envelopment of the flesh as if it were in a vessel? Not even in the
case of our own life is the intellectual nature shut up within the
boundary of the flesh. On the contrary, while the body’s bulk is
limited to the proportions peculiar to it, the soul by the movements of
its thinking faculty can coincide1972
at will with
the whole of creation. It ascends to the heavens, and sets foot within
the deep. It traverses the breadth of the world, and in the
restlessness of its curiosity makes its way into the regions that are
beneath the earth; and often it is occupied in the scrutiny of the
wonders of heaven, and feels no weight from the appendage1973
of the body. If, then, the soul of man,
although by the necessity of its nature it is transfused through the
body, yet presents itself everywhere at will, what necessity is there
for saying that the Deity is hampered by an environment of fleshly
nature, and why may we not, by examples which we are capable of
understanding, gain some reasonable idea of God’s plan of
salvation? There is an analogy, for instance, in the flame of a lamp,
which is seen to embrace the material with which it is supplied1974
| 1974 There
is a touch of Eutychianism in this illustration of the union of the Two
Natures; as also in Gregory’s answer (c. Eunom. iii. 265;
v. 589) to Eunomius’ charge of Two Persons against the Nicene
party, viz. that “the flesh with all its peculiar marks and
properties is taken up and transformed into the Divine nature”;
whence arose that ἀντιμεθίστασις
τῶν
ὀνομάτων, i.e. reciprocal interchange of the properties human and
Divine, which afterwards occasioned the Monophysite controversy. But
Origen had used language still more incautious; “with regard to
his mortal body and his human soul, we believe that owing to something
more than communion with Him, to actual union and intermingling, it has
acquired the highest qualities, and partakes of His Divinity, and so
has changed into God” (c. Cels. iii. 41). | . Reason makes a distinction between the
flame upon the material, and the material that kindles the flame,
though in fact it is not possible to cut off the one from the other so
as to exhibit the flame separate from the material, but they both
united form one single thing. But let no one, I beg, associate also
with this illustration the idea of the perishableness of the flame; let
him accept only what is apposite in the image; what is irrelevant and
incongruous let him reject. What is there, then, to prevent our
thinking (just as we see flame fastening on the material1975
| 1975 fastening on the material. The word
(ἅπτεσθαι) could mean either “fastening on,” or
“depending on,” or “kindled from” (it has been
used in this last sense just above). Krabinger selects the second,
“quæ a subjecto dependet.” | , and yet not inclosed in it) of a kind of
union or approximation of the Divine nature with humanity, and yet in
this very approximation guarding the proper notion of Deity, believing
as we do that, though the Godhead be in man, it is beyond all
circumscription?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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