Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Further concerning volitions and free-wills: minds, too, and knowledges and wisdoms.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XVIII.—Further concerning volitions and
free-wills: minds, too, and knowledges and
wisdoms.
When we say that Christ is perfect God2185
| 2185 Against the
Apollinarians and the Monotheletes. Cf. Max., ut
supra, II. p. 151. | and perfect man, we assuredly attribute
to Him all the properties natural to both the Father and mother.
For He became man in order that that which was overcome might
overcome. For He Who was omnipotent did not in His omnipotent
authority and might lack the power to rescue man out of the hands of
the tyrant. But the tyrant would have had a ground of complaint
if, after he had overcome man, God should have used force against
him. Wherefore God in His pity and love for man wished to reveal
fallen man himself as conqueror, and became man to restore like with
like.
But that man is a rational and intelligent animal, no
one will deny. How, then, could He have become man if He took on
Himself flesh without soul, or soul without mind? For that is not
man. Again, what benefit would His becoming man have been to us
if He Who suffered first was not saved, nor renewed and strengthened by
the union with divinity? For that which is not assumed is not
remedied. He, therefore, assumed the whole man, even the fairest
part of him, which had become diseased, in order that He might bestow
salvation on the whole. And, indeed, there could never exist a
mind that had not wisdom and was destitute of knowledge. For if
it has not energy or motion, it is utterly reduced to nothingness.
Therefore, God the Word2186
| 2186 Greg.
Naz., Carm. sen. adv. Apollin., Epist. ad
Cled., and elsewhere. | , wishing to restore that which was in
His own image, became man. But what is that which was in His own
image, unless mind? So He gave up the better and assumed the
worse. For mind2187
| 2187 See also ch. 6
above, and Gregory’s lines against the Apollinarians. | is in the
border-land between God and flesh, for it dwells indeed in fellowship
with the flesh, and is, moreover, the image of God. Mind, then,
mingles with mind, and mind holds a place midway between the pureness
of God and the denseness of flesh. For if the Lord assumed a soul
without mind, He assumed the soul of an irrational animal.
But if the Evangelist said that the Word was
made flesh2188
, note that in
the Holy Scripture sometimes a man is spoken of as a soul, as, for
example, with seventy-five souls came Jacob into Egypt2189
: and sometimes a man is spoken of as
flesh, as, for example, All flesh shall see the salvation of
God2190
. And
accordingly the Lord did not become flesh without soul or mind, but
man. He says, indeed, Himself, Why seek ye to kill Me, a Man
that hath told you the truth2191
? He,
therefore, assumed flesh animated with the spirit of reason and mind, a
spirit that holds sway over
the flesh but is itself under the dominion of the divinity of the
Word.
So, then, He had by nature, both as God and as
man, the power of will. But His human will was obedient and
subordinate to His divine will, not being guided by its own
inclination, but willing those things which the divine will
willed. For it was with the permission of the divine will that He
suffered by nature what was proper to Him2192
| 2192 Sophron.,
Epist. Synod. | . For when He prayed that He might
escape the death, it was with His divine will naturally willing and
permitting it that He did so pray and agonize and fear, and again when
His divine will willed that His human will should choose the death, the
passion became voluntary to Him2193
| 2193 See Cyril,
In Joann., ch. x. | . For
it was not as God only, but also as man, that He voluntarily
surrendered Himself to the death. And thus He bestowed on us also
courage in the face of death. So, indeed, He said before His
saving passion, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from
Me2194
,”
manifestly as though He were to drink the cup as man and not as
God. It was as man, then, that He wished the cup to pass from
Him: but these are the words of natural timidity.
Nevertheless, He said, not My will, that is to say, not
in so far as I am of a different essence from Thee, but Thy will be
done2195
, that is to say,
My will and Thy will, in so far as I am of the same essence as
Thou. Now these are the words of a brave heart. For the
Spirit of the Lord, since He truly became man in His good pleasure, on
first testing its natural weakness was sensible of the natural
fellow-suffering involved in its separation from the body, but being
strengthened by the divine will it again grew bold in the face of
death. For since He was Himself wholly God although also man, and
wholly man although also God, He Himself as man subjected in Himself
and by Himself His human nature to God and the Father, and became
obedient to the Father, thus making Himself the most excellent type and
example for us.
Of His own free-will, moreover, He exercised His divine
and human will. For free-will is assuredly implanted in every
rational nature. For to what end would it possess reason, if it
could not reason at its own free-will? For the Creator hath
implanted even in the unreasoning brutes natural appetite to compel
them to sustain their own nature. For devoid of reason, as they
are, they cannot guide their natural appetite but are guided by
it. And so, as soon as the appetite for anything has sprung up,
straightway arises also the impulse for action. And thus they do
not win praise or happiness for pursuing virtue, nor punishment for
doing evil. But the rational nature, although it does possess a
natural appetite, can guide and train it by reason wherever the laws of
nature are observed. For the advantage of reason consists in
this, the free-will, by which we mean natural activity in a rational
subject. Wherefore in pursuing virtue it wins praise and
happiness, and in pursuing vice it wins punishment.
So that the soul2196
| 2196 Max.,
Dial. cum Pyrrh.; Greg. Naz., Ep. 1, ad
Cledon. | of the Lord being moved of its own
free-will willed, but willed of its free-will those things which His
divine will willed it to will. For the flesh was not moved at a
sign from the Word, as Moses and all the holy men were moved at a sign
from heaven. But He Himself, Who was one and yet both God and
man, willed according to both His divine and His human will.
Wherefore it was not in inclination but rather in natural power that
the two wills of the Lord differed from one another. For His
divine will was without beginning and all-effecting, as having power
that kept pace with it, and free from passion; while His human will had
a beginning in time, and itself endured the natural and innocent
passions, and was not naturally omnipotent. But yet it was
omnipotent because it truly and naturally had its origin in the
God-Word.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
