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| To the Sozopolitans.
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Letter CCLXI.3167
| 3167 This letter is
placed in 377. Fessler styles it
“celeberrima.” The Benedictine heading is
“Cum scripsissent Basilio Sozopolitani nonnullos carnem
cœlestem Christo affingere et affectus humanos in ipsam
divinitatem conferre; breviter hunc errorem refellit; ac demonstrat
nihil nobis prodesse passiones Christi si non eandem ac nos carnem
habuit. Quod spectat ad affectus humanos, probat naturales a
Christo assumptos fuisse, vitiosos vero
nequaquam.” |
To the Sozopolitans.3168
| 3168
Sozopolis, or Suzupolis, in Pisidia (cf.
Evagrius, Hist. Ecc. iii. 33), has been supposed
to be the ancient name of Souzon, S. of Aglasoun, where ruins still
exist. On its connexion with Apollonia, cf. Hist.
Geog. A.M. p. 400. |
I have received the
letter which you, right honourable brethren, have sent me concerning
the circumstances in which you are placed. I thank the Lord that
you have let me share in the anxiety you feel as to your attention to
things needful and deserving of serious heed. But I was
distressed to hear that over and above the disturbance brought on the
Churches by the Arians, and the confusion caused by them in the
definition of the faith, there has appeared among you yet another
innovation, throwing the brotherhood into great dejection, because, as
you have informed me, certain persons are uttering, in the hearing of
the faithful, novel and unfamiliar doctrines which they allege to be
deduced from the teaching of Scripture. You write that there are
men among you who are trying to destroy the saving
incarnation3169
of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and, so far as they can, are overthrowing
the grace of the great mystery unrevealed from everlasting, but
manifested in His own times, when the Lord, when He had gone
through3170
| 3170 Here the Ben.
Ed. call attention to the fact that S. Basil may by this word
indicate the appearance of the Son to the patriarchs before the
Birth from the Virgin, and compares a similar statement in his Book
Cont. Eunom. II., as well as the words of Clemens Alex. in
the work Quis Dives Salvandus, n. 8, in which the Son is
described as ἀπὸ
γενέσεως
μέχρι τοῦ
σημείου τὴν
ἀνθρωπότητα
διατρέχων. | all things
pertaining to the cure of the human race, bestowed on all of us the
boon of His own sojourn among us. For He helped His own
creation, first through the patriarchs, whose lives were set forth
as examples and rules to all willing to follow the footsteps of the
saints, and with zeal like theirs to reach the perfection of good
works. Next for succour He gave the Law, ordaining it by
angels in the hand of Moses;3171
then the
prophets, foretelling the salvation to come; judges, kings, and
righteous men, doing great works, with a mighty3172
| 3172 κραταιᾷ
with the ed. Par. seems to make better sense than κρυφαί&
139·, which has better authority. | hand. After all these in the last
days He was Himself manifested ill the flesh, “made of a
woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons.”3173
2. If, then, the sojourn of the Lord in
flesh has never taken place, the Redeemer3174
| 3174 Λυτρωτής.
cf. Acts vii.
35, where R.V. gives
redeemer as marginal rendering. Λυτρωτής=payer of
the λύτρον, which is the
means of release (λύω). The word is used of Moses
in the Acts in a looser sense than here of the Saviour. |
paid not the fine to death on our behalf, nor through Himself destroyed
death’s reign. For if what was reigned over by death was
not that which was assumed by the Lord, death would not have ceased
working his own ends, nor would the sufferings of the God-bearing flesh
have been made our gain; He would not have killed sin in the
flesh: we who had died in Adam should not have been made alive in
Christ; the fallen to pieces would not have been framed again; the
shattered would not have been set up again; that which by the
serpent’s trick had been estranged from God would never have been
made once more His own. All these boons are undone by those that
assert that it was with a heavenly body that the Lord came among
us. And if the God-bearing flesh was not ordained to be assumed
of the lump of Adam, what need was there of the Holy Virgin? But
who has the hardihood now once again to renew by the help of
sophistical arguments and, of course, by scriptural evidence, that old
dogma3175
| 3175 On the
use of “dogma” for heretical opinion, cf.
De Sp. S. note on § 66. | of Valentinus,
now long ago silenced? For this impious doctrine of the
seeming3176
is no
novelty. It was started long ago by the feeble-minded
Valentinus, who, after tearing off a few of the Apostle’s
statements, constructed for himself this impious fabrication,
asserting that the Lord assumed the “form of a
servant,”3177
and not the
servant himself, and that He was made in the
“likeness,” but that actual manhood was not assumed by
Him. Similar sentiments are expressed by these men who can
only be pitied for bringing new troubles upon you.3178
| 3178 On the
Docetism of Valentinus vide Dr. Salmon in D. C.
Biog. i. 869. “According to V. (Irenæus i. 7)
our Lord’s nature was fourfold: (1) He had a
ψυχή or
animal soul; (2) He had a πνεῦμα or
spiritual principle derived from Achamoth; (3) He had a body, but
not a material body, but a heavenly one.…(4) The pre-existent
Saviour descended on Him in the form of a dove at His Baptism.
When our Lord was brought before Pilate, this Saviour as being
incapable of suffering withdrew His power;” (cf. the
Gospel of Peter, “The Lord cried, saying, ‘My
Power, my Power, Thou hast left me.’”) “and the
spiritual part which was also impassible was likewise dismissed; the
animal soul and the wonderfully contrived body alone remaining to
suffer, and to exhibit on the cross on earth a representation of
what had previously taken place on the heavenly Stauros. It
thus appears that Valentinus was only partially
docetic.” But cf. Iren. v. 1, 2, and iii.
22. |
3. As to the statement that human feelings
are transmitted to the actual Godhead, it is one made by men who
preserve no order in their thoughts, and are ignorant that there is a
distinction between the feelings of flesh, of flesh endowed with soul,
and of soul using a body.3179
| 3179 cf.
De Sp. S. § 12. p. 7. | It is the
property of flesh to undergo division, diminution, dissolution; of
flesh endowed with soul to feel weariness, pain, hunger, thirst, and to
be overcome by sleep; of soul using body to feel grief, heaviness,
anxiety, and such like. Of these some are natural and necessary
to every living creature; others come of evil will, and are
superinduced because of life’s lacking proper discipline and
training for virtue. Hence it is evident that our Lord assumed
the natural affections to establish His real incarnation, and not by
way of semblance of incantation, and that all the affections derived
from evil that besmirch the purity of our life, He rejected as unworthy
of His unsullied Godhead. It is on this account that He is said
to have been “made in the likeness of flesh of
sin;”3180
not, as these men
hold, in likeness of flesh, but of flesh of sin. It follows that
He took our flesh with its natural afflictions, but “did no
sin.”3181
Just as the
death which is in the flesh, transmitted to us through Adam, was
swallowed up by the Godhead, so was the sin taken away by the
righteousness which is in Christ Jesus,3182
so
that in the resurrection we receive back the flesh neither liable to
death nor subject to sin.
These, brethren, are the mysteries of the
Church; these are the
traditions of the Fathers. Every man who fears the Lord,
and is awaiting God’s judgment, I charge not to be carried
away by various doctrines. If any one teaches a different
doctrine, and refuses to accede to the sound words of the faith,
rejecting the oracles of the Spirit, and making his own teaching
of more authority than the lessons of the Gospels, of such an one
beware. May the Lord grant that one day we may meet, so
that all that my argument has let slip I may supply when we stand
face to face! I have written little when there was much to
say, for I did not like to go beyond my letter’s
bounds. At the same time I do not doubt that to all that
fear the Lord a brief reminder is enough. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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