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| To the Monks of Palestine.
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Letter
CXXIV.
To the Monks of Palestine.
Leo, the bishop, to the whole body of monks settled
throughout Palestine.
I. They have possibly been misled by a
wrong translation of his letter on the Incarnation to
Flavian.
The anxious care, which I owe to the whole Church
and to all its sons, has ascertained from many sources that some
offence has been given to your minds, beloved, through my
interpreters515
| 515 It will be remembered
that Leo himself knew not a word of the language, which will account
for his uncertainty, consequent helplessness, and uneasiness in this
and other cases where a knowledge of the language would have served him
in excellent stead. | , who being either
ignorant, as it appears, or malicious, have made you take some of my
statements in a different sense to what I meant, not being capable of
turning the Latin into Greek with proper accuracy, although in the
explanation of subtle and difficult matters, one who undertakes to
discuss them can scarcely satisfy himself even in his own tongue.
And yet this has so far been of advantage to me, that by your
disapproving of what the catholic Faith rejects, we know you are
greater friends to the true than to the false: and that you quite
properly refuse to believe what I myself also abhor, in accordance with
ancient doctrine516
| 516 I.e. so much good at
all events has come from your objection that we know you are strongly
opposed to Eutyches, at present my own special abhorrence. | .
For although my letter addressed to bishop Flavian, of holy
memory, is of itself sufficiently explicit, and stands in no need
either of correction or explanation, yet other of my writings harmonize
with that letter, and in them my position will be found similarly set
forth. For necessity was laid upon me to argue against the
heretics who have thrown many of Christ’s peoples into confusion,
both before our most merciful princes and the holy synodal Council, and
the church of Constantinople, and thus I have laid down what we ought
to think and feel on the Incarnation of the Word according to the
teaching of the Gospel and Apostles, and in nothing have I departed
from the creed of the holy Fathers: because the Faith is one,
true, unique, catholic, and to it nothing can be added, nothing taken
away: though Nestorius first, and now Eutyches, have endeavoured
to assail it from an opposite standpoint, but with similar disloyalty,
and have tried to impose on the Church of God
two contradictory heresies, which has led to their both being
deservedly condemned by the disciples of the Truth; because the false
view which they both held in different ways was exceedingly mad and
sacrilegious.
II. Eutyches, who confounds the persons,
is as much to be rejected as Nestorius, who separates them517
| 517 The whole of chap. ii.
will be found repeated in Ep. clxv. chap. ii. | .
Nestorius, therefore, must be anathematized for
believing the Blessed Virgin Mary to be mother of His manhood only,
whereby he made the person of His flesh one thing, and that of His
Godhead another, and did not recognize the one Christ in the Word of
God and in the flesh, but spoke of the Son of
God as separate and distinct from the son of
man: although, without losing that unchangeable essence which
belongs to Him together with the Father and the Holy Spirit from all
eternity and without respect of time, the “Word became
flesh” within the Virgin’s womb in such wise that by that
one conception and one parturition she was at the same time, in virtue
of the union of the two substances, both handmaid and mother of the
Lord. This Elizabeth also knew, as Luke
the evangelist declares, when she said: “Whence is this to
me that the mother of my Lord should come to
me518
?” But Eutyches also must be
stricken with the same anathema, who, becoming entangled in the
treacherous errors of the old heretics, has chosen the third dogma of
Apollinaris519
| 519 Cf. Ep. xxii. chap. 3
“conatus-antiqua impii Valentini” (the adherent of
Apollinaris and head of one of the sections of the Apollinarians after
his death) “et Apollinaris mala dogmata
renovare.” The third dogma of Apollinaris was that
“Christ’s manhood was formed out of a divine
substance.” Bright, 147. | : so that he
denies the reality of his human flesh and soul, and maintains the whole
of our Lord Jesus Christ to be of one nature,
as if the Godhead of the Word had turned itself into flesh and
soul: and as if to be conceived and born, to be nursed and grow,
to be crucified and die, to be buried and rise again, and to ascend
into heaven and to sit on the Father’s right hand, from whence He
shall come to judge the living and the dead—as if all those
things belonged to that essence only which admits of none of
them
without the
reality of the flesh: seeing that the nature of the Only-begotten
is the nature of the Father, the nature of the Holy Spirit, and that
the undivided unity and consubstantial equality of the eternal Trinity
is at once impassible and unchangeable. But if520
| 520 Eutyches had expressly
tried to guard himself against this imputation: Ep. xxi. chap. 3,
“anathematizans Apollinarium Valentinum, Manem et Nestorium,
&c.” See Bright’s valuable notes 32, 33, 34,
and esp. 35, where he shows that “it was polemical rhetoric to
say that he was reviving Apollinarian or Valentinian
theories.” |
this heretic withdraws from the perverse views of Apollinaris, lest he
be proved to hold that the Godhead is passible521
| 521 It must be clearly
understood that this ugly word is here and elsewhere employed to
translate passibilis (παθητός) for no
reason, except the necessity of the case: pati and
πάσχειν are both of
far wider and broader signification than “suffer” or its
synonyms: they are simply the passive of facere and
ποιεῖν (πράσσειν),
and there is no proper equivalent in ordinary English parlance.
This tendency of terms to become more and more narrow and of particular
application is constantly meeting and baffling one in translating the
Latin and Greek languages. | and
mortal: and yet dares to pronounce the nature of the Incarnate
Word that is of the Word made Flesh one, he undoubtedly crosses over
into the mad view of Manichæus522
| 522 Leo elsewhere also
makes this hardly justifiable inference that Eutychianism is a new form
of Docetism as this view was called; chap. vi. below, and Serm. lxv. c.
4 “isti phantasmatici Christiani,” also xxviii. 4,
and lxiv. 1, 2. That the Manichæans naturally held Docetic
views on the Incarnation is obvious when we remember that their
fundamental misconception was that matter is identical with evil. | and
Marcion523
| 523 Marcion was the
founder of one of the most formidable Gnostic sects towards the close
of the second century: Tertullian wrote a famous treatise (still
extant) against him. Like other Gnostics, his views involved him
in Docetism. | , and believes that the man Jesus Christ,
the mediator between God and men, did all
things in an unreal way, and had not a human body, but that a
phantom-like apparition presented itself to the beholders’
eyes.
III. The acknowledgment of our nature in
Christ is necessary to orthodoxy.
As these iniquitous lies were once rejected by the
catholic Faith, and such men’s blasphemies condemned by the
unanimous votes of the blessed Fathers throughout the world, whoever
these are that are so blinded and strange to the light of truth as to
deny the presence of human, that is our, nature in the Word of
God from the time of the Incarnation, they
must show on what ground they claim the name of Christian, and in what
way they harmonize with the true Gospel, if the child-bearing of the
blessed Virgin produced either the flesh without the Godhead or the
Godhead without the flesh. For as it cannot be denied that
“the Word became flesh and dwelt in us524
,” so it cannot be denied that
“God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself525
.” But what reconciliation can
there be, whereby God might be propitiated for
the human race, unless the mediator between God and man took up the cause of all? And in what
way could He properly fulfil His mediation, unless He who in the form
of God was equal to the Father, were a sharer
of our nature also in the form of a slave: so that the one new
Man might effect a renewal of the old: and the bond of death
fastened on us by one man’s wrong-doing526
| 526
Prævaricatio: this is a legal term which is often
used of sin (esp. in connexion with Adam’s transgression).
Its original technical meaning is the action of an advocate who plays
into the enemy’s hand. In theology the devil (διάβολος) is
man’s adversary, and man himself is befooled into collusion with
him by breaking God’s Law. |
might be loosened by the death of the one Man who alone owed nothing to
death. For the pouring out of the blood of the righteous on
behalf of the unrighteous was so powerful in its effect527
| 527 Potens ad
privilegium: privilegium is another legal term signifying
technically a bill framed to meet an individual case generally in a
detrimental way, such bills being against the spirit of the Roman
law: here Leo uses it in a sense more nearly approaching our
English idea of “privilege.” | , so rich a ransom that, if the whole body
of us prisoners only believed in their Redeemer, not one would be held
in the tyrant’s bonds: since as the Apostle says,
“where sin abounded, grace also did much more abound528
.” And since we, who were born
under the imputation529
| 529 Sub peccati
præiudicio: yet a third legal term:
præiudicium in Roman law was a semi-formal and anticipatory
verdict by the judge before the case came on for final decision in
court; in chapter vi. we have the verb præiudicare. | of sin, have
received the power of a new birth unto righteousness, the gift of
liberty has become stronger than the debt of slavery.
IV. They only benefit by the blood of
Christ who truly share in His death and resurrection.
What hope then do they, who deny the reality of
the human person in our Saviour’s body, leave for themselves in
the efficacy of this mystery? Let them say by what sacrifice they
have been reconciled, by what blood-shedding brought back. Who is
He “who gave Himself for us an offering and a victim to
God for a sweet smell530
:” or what sacrifice was ever
more hallowed than that which the true High priest placed upon the
altar of the cross by the immolation of His own flesh? For
although in the sight of the Lord the death of
many of His saints has been precious531
, yet no
innocent’s death was the propitiation of the world. The
righteous have received, not given, crowns: and from the
endurance of the faithful have arisen examples of patience, not the
gift of justification. For their deaths affected themselves
alone, and no one has paid off another’s debt by his own
death532
| 532 The idea of vicarious
death was not unfamiliar to the Greeks and Romans: e.g. Alkestis
dying for her husband Admetos, and the fairly numerous examples of
“devotion” of Roman Generals on the battlefield. | : one alone among the sons of
men, our Lord Jesus Christ,
stands out as One in whom all are crucified, all dead, all buried, all
raised again. Of them He Himself said “when I am lifted
from the earth, I will draw all (things) unto Me533
.” True faith also, that
justifies the transgressors and makes them just, is drawn to Him who
shared their human natures and wins salvation in Him, in whom alone man
finds himself not guilty; and thus is free to glory in the power of Him
who in the humiliation of our flesh engaged in conflict with the
haughty foe, and shared His victory with those in whose body He had
triumphed.
V. The actions of Christ’s two
natures must be kept distinct.
Although therefore in our one Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God and man, the person of the Word and of the flesh is
one, and both beings have their actions in common534
| 534 It is scarcely
necessary to point out that the old story of the ‘communicatio
idiomatum’ is here again discussed: cf. the Tome,
chapters iv. and v. | : yet we must understand the
character of the acts themselves, and by the contemplation of sincere
faith distinguish those to which the humility of His weakness is
brought from those to which His sublime power is inclined: what
it is that the flesh without the Word or the Word without the flesh
does not do. For instance, without the power of the Word the
Virgin would not have conceived nor brought forth: and without
the reality of the flesh His infancy would not have laid wrapt in
swaddling clothes. Without the power of the Word the Magi would
not have adored the Child that a new star had pointed out to
them: and without the reality of the flesh that Child would not
have been ordered to be carried away into Egypt and withdrawn from
Herod’s persecution. Without the power of the Word the
Father’s voice uttered from the sky would not have said,
“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased535
:” and without the reality of
the flesh John would not have been able to point to Him and say:
“Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him that
beareth away the sins of the world536
| 536 S. John i. 29: the repetition of the Ecce
(behold) is in accordance with the old Latin versions: cf.
Westcott in loc. | .”
Without the power of the Word there would have been no restoring of the
sick to health, no raising of the dead to life: and without the
reality of the flesh He would not have hungered and needed food, nor
grown weary and needed rest. Lastly, without the power of the
Word, the Lord would not have professed
Himself equal to the Father, and without the reality of the flesh He
would not also have said that the Father was greater than He: for
the catholic Faith upholds and defends both positions, believing the
only Son of God to be both Man and the Word
according to the distinctive properties of His divine and human
substance.
VI. There is no confusion of the two
natures in Christ537
| 537 Considerable
portions of this chapter are found repeated word for word in Sermon
LXIV. chap. i. and iv. | .
Although therefore from that beginning whereby in
the Virgin’s womb “the Word became flesh,” no sort of
division ever arose between the Divine and the human substance, and
through all the growth and changes of His body, the actions were of one
Person the whole time, yet we do not by any mixing of them up confound
those very acts which were done inseparably: and from the
character of the acts we perceive what belonged to either form.
For neither do His Divine acts affect538
| 538 Lat.
præiudicant, see note 3 to chap. iii., above. | His human,
nor His human acts His Divine, since both concur in this way and to
this very end that in their operation His twofold qualities be not
absorbed the one by the other, nor His individuality doubled.
Therefore let those Christian phantom-mongers539
| 539 Isti phantasmatici
Christiani, cf. note 5, above. |
tell us, what nature of the Saviour’s it was that was fastened to
the wood of the Cross, that lay in the tomb, and that on the third day
rose in the flesh when the stone was rolled away from the grave:
or what kind of body Jesus presented to His disciples’ eyes
entering when the doors were shut upon them: seeing that to drive
away the beholders’ disbelief, He required them to inspect with
their eyes and to handle with their hands the still open prints of the
nails and the flesh wound of His pierced side. But if in spite of
the truth being so clear, their persistence in heresy will not abandon
their position in the darkness, let them show whence they promise
themselves the hope of eternal life, which no one can attain to, save
through the mediator between God and man, the
man Jesus Christ. For “there is not another name given to
men under heaven, in which they must be saved540
.” Neither is there any ransoming
of men from captivity, save in His blood, “who gave Himself a
ransom for all541
:” who,
as the blessed apostle proclaims, “when He was in the form of
God, thought it not robbery that He was equal
with God; but emptied Himself, receiving the
form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men, and being found in
fashion as a man He humbled Himself, being made obedient even unto
death, the death of the cross. For which reason God
also
exalted Him, and gave Him a name which is above every name: that
in the name of Jesus every knee may bow of things in heaven, of things
on the earth, and of things under the earth, and that every tongue may
confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the
glory of God the Father542
.”
VII. It was as being “in form of a
slave,” not as Son of God that he was
exalted.
543
| 543 The whole of this
chapter is repeated with slight variations in his letter (CLXV.) to Leo
the Emperor (chaps. 8 and 10). | Although
therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is one, and
the true Godhead and true Manhood in Him forms absolutely one and the
same person, and the entirety of this union cannot be separated by any
division, yet the exaltation wherewith “God exalted Him,” and “gave Him a name which
excels every name,” we understand to belong to that form which
needed to be enriched by this increase of glory544
| 544 Quæ ditanda
erat tantæ glorificationis augmento acc. to Leo’s use of
the gerundive, see Tome, chap. i quod…omnium regenerandorum
voce depromitur. | . Of course “in the form of
God” the Son was equal to the Father,
and between the Father and the Only-begotten there was no distinction
in point of essence, no diversity in point of majesty: nor
through the mystery545
| 545 Here the word is
actually mysterium, not, as usual, sacramentum. | of the Incarnation
had the Word been deprived of anything which should be restored Him by
the Father’s gift. But “the form of a slave” by
which the impassible Godhead fulfilled a pledge of mighty
loving-kindness546
, is human weakness
which was lifted up into the glory of the divine power, the Godhead and
the manhood being right from the Virgin’s conception so
completely united that without the manhood the divine acts, and without
the Godhead the human acts were not performed. For which reason
as the Lord of majesty is said to have been
crucified, so He who from eternity is equal with God is said to have been exalted. Nor does it matter
by which substance Christ is spoken of, since the unity of His person
inseparably remaining He is at once both wholly Son of man according to
the flesh and wholly Son of God according to
His Godhead, which is one with the Father. Whatever therefore
Christ received in time, He received in virtue of His manhood, on which
are conferred whatsoever it had not. For according to the power
of the Word, “all things that the Father hath” the Son also
hath indiscriminately, and what “in the form of a slave” He
received from the Father, He also Himself gave in the form of the
Father. He is in Himself at once both rich and poor; rich,
because “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and God was the
Word. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without
Him was made nothing:” and poor because “the Word
became flesh and dwelt in us547
.” But
what is that emptying of Himself, or that poverty except the receiving
of the form of a slave by which the majesty of the Word was veiled, and
the scheme for man’s redemption carried out? For as the
original chains of our captivity could not be loosed, unless a man of
our race and of our nature appeared who was not under the prejudice of
the old debt, and who with his untainted blood might blot out the bond
of death548
, as it had from
the beginning been divinely fore-ordained, so it came to pass in the
fulness of the appointed time that the promise which had been
proclaimed in many ways might reach its long expected fulfilment, and
that thus, what had been frequently announced by one testimony after
another, might have all doubtfulness removed.
VIII. A protest against their
faithlessness and inconsistency in this matter.
And so, as all these heresies have been destroyed,
which through the holy devotion of the presiding Fathers have been cut
off from the body of the catholic unity, and which deserved to be
exiles from Christ, because they have made the Incarnation of the Word,
which is the one salvation of those who believe aright, a stone of
offence and a stumbling-block to themselves, I am surprised that you,
beloved, have any difficulty in discerning the light of the
Truth. And since it has been made clear by numerous explanations
that the Christian Faith was right in condemning both Nestorius and
Eutyches with Dioscorus, and that a man cannot be called a Christian
who gives his assent to the blasphemous opinion of either the one or
the other, I am grieved that you are, as I hear, doing despite to the
teaching of the Gospel and the Apostles by stirring up the various
bodies of citizens with seditions, by disturbing the churches, and by
inflicting not only insults, but even death, upon priests and bishops,
so that you lose sight of your resolves and profession549
through your fury and cruelty. Where
is your rule of meekness and quietness? where is the long-suffering of
patience? where the tranquillity of peace? where the firm foundation of
love and courage of endurance? what evil persuasion has carried you
off, what persecution has
separated you from the gospel of Christ?
or what strange craftiness of the Deceiver has shown itself that,
forgetting the prophets and apostles, forgetting the health-giving
creed and confession which you pronounced before many witnesses when
you received the sacrament of baptism you should give yourselves up to
the Devil’s deceits? what effect would “the Claws550
| 550 The Ungulæ
(Claws) were among the numerous instruments with which Christians were
tortured: cf. Tert. Apol. xii. 57, ungulis deraditis latera
christianorum; Cypr. de lapsis chap. xiii. (cum) ungula
effoderet, caro me in colluctatione deseruit. | ” and other cruel tortures have had on
you if the empty comments of heretics have had so much weight in taking
the purity of your faith by storm? you think you are acting for the
Faith and yet you go against the Faith. You arm yourselves in the
name of the Church and yet fight against the Church. Is this what
you have learnt from prophets, evangelists, and apostles? to deny the
true flesh of Christ, to subject the very essence of the Word to
suffering and death, to make our nature different from His who repaired
it, and to reckon all that the cross uplifted, that the spear pierced,
that the stone on the tomb received and gave back, to be only the work
of Divine power, and not also of human humility? It is in
reference to this humility that the Apostle says, “For I do not
blush for the Gospel551
,” inasmuch as
he knew what a slur was cast upon Christians by their enemies.
And, therefore, the Lord also made
proclamation, saying: “he that shall confess Me before men
him will I also confess before My Father552
.” For these will not be worthy
of the Son and the Father’s acknowledgment in whom the flesh of
Christ awakens no respect: and they will prove themselves to have
gained no virtue from the sign of the cross553
who
blush to avow with their lips what they have consented to bear upon
their brows.
IX. An exhortation to accept the catholic
view of the Incarnation.
Give up, my sons, give up these suggestions of the
devil. God’s Truth nothing can
impair, but the Truth does not save us except in our flesh. For,
as the prophet says, “truth is sprung out of the earth554
,” and the Virgin Mary conceived the
Word in such wise that she ministered flesh of her substance to be
united to Him without the addition of a second person, and without the
disappearance of her nature: seeing that He who was in the form
of God took the form of a slave in such wise
that Christ is one and the same in both forms: God bending Himself to the weak things of man, and man
rising up to the high things of the Godhead, as the Apostle says,
“whose are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh is
Christ, who is above all things God blessed
for ever. Amen555
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