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| To Julian, Bishop of Cos.
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Letter
XXXV.
To Julian, Bishop of Cos343
| 343 See Lett. XXXIV.,
chap. ii. n. 5. | .
Leo, bishop of the city of Rome to his well-beloved
brother, Julian the bishop.
I. Eutyches’ heresy involves many
other heresies.
Although by the hands of our brothers, whom we
have despatched from the city on behalf of the Faith, we hare sent a
most full refutation of Eutyches’ excessive heresy to our brother
Flavian, yet because we have received, through our son Basil, your
letter, beloved, which has given us much pleasure from the fervour of
its catholic spirit, we have added this page also which agrees with the
other document, that you may offer a united and strenuous resistance to
those who seek to corrupt the gospel of Christ, since the wisdom and
the teaching of the Holy Spirit is one and the same in you as in
us: and whosoever does not receive it, is not a member of
Christ’s body and cannot glory in that Head in which he denies
the presence of his own nature. What advantage is it to that most
unwise old man under the name of the Nestorian heresy to mangle the
belief of those, whose most devout faith he cannot tear to
pieces: when in declaring the only-begotten Son of God to have been so born of the blessed Virgin’s
womb that He wore the appearance of a human body without the reality of
human flesh being united to the Word, he departs as far from the right
path as did Nestorius in separating the Godhead of the Word from the
substance of His assumed Manhood344
| 344 The Gk. version here
adds and “from the very conception of the Virgin,” but this
is probably only a repetition of the words “of the Virgin’s
womb,” just above. | ? From
which prodigious falsehood who does not see what monstrous opinions
spring? for he who denies the true Manhood of Jesus Christ, must needs
be filled with many blasphemies, being claimed by Apollinaris as his
own, seized upon by Valentinus, or held fast by Manichæus:
none of whom believed that there was true human flesh in Christ.
But, surely, if that is not accepted, not only is it denied that He,
who was in the form of God, but yet abode in
the form of a slave, was born Man according to the flesh and reasonable
soul: but also that He was crucified, dead, and buried, and that
on the third day He rose again, and that, sitting at the right hand of
the Father, he will come to judge the quick and the dead345
| 345 It can escape no one
that he is here, and frequently throughout this letter, quoting from
the Creed. | in that body in which He Himself was
judged: because these pledges346
of our
redemption are rendered void if Christ is not believed to have the true
and whole nature of true Manhood.
II. The two natures are to be found in
Christ.
Or because the signs of His Godhead were
undoubted, shall the proof of his having a human body be assumed false,
and thus the indications of both natures be accepted to prove Him
Creator, but not be accepted for the salvation of the creature347
| 347 i.e. shall the
signs of His being God, which are undoubted, and the signs that He had
a body of some sort be allowed to prove Him one with the Creator of the
world, but not go so far as to show that that body which He had was a
fully human one? | ? No, for the
flesh did not lessen what belongs to His
Godhead, nor the Godhead destroy what belongs to His flesh. For
He is at once both eternal from His Father and temporal from His
mother, inviolable in His strength, passible in our weakness: in
the Triune Godhead, of one and the same substance with the Father and
the Holy Spirit, but in taking Manhood on Himself, not of one substance
but of one and the same person [so that He was at once rich in poverty,
almighty in submission, impassible in punishment, immortal in
death348
| 348 So
that—in death, bracketed by the editors as not being
translated in the Gk. version, and perhaps here we have a gloss to
explain the somewhat obscure words that precede it: but
throughout this letter large portions are so bracketed, in each case
the Gk. version omitting them. | ]. For the Word was not in any
part of It turned either into flesh or into soul, seeing that the
absolute and unchangeable nature of the Godhead is ever entire in its
Essence, receiving no loss nor increase, and so beatifying the nature
that It had assumed that that nature remained for ever glorified in the
person of the Glorifier. [But why should it seem unsuitable or
impossible that the Word and flesh and soul should be one Jesus Christ,
and that the Son of God and the Son of Man
should be one, if flesh and soul which are of different natures make
one person even without the Incarnation of the Word: since it is
much easier for the power of the Godhead to produce this union of
Himself and man than for the weakness of manhood by itself to effect it
in its own substance.] Therefore neither was the Word changed
into flesh nor flesh into the Word: but both remains in one and
one is in both, not divided by the diversity and not confounded by
intermixture: He is not one by His Father and another by His
mother, but the same, in one way by His Father before every beginning,
and in another by His mother at the end of the ages: so that He
was “mediator between God and men, the
man Christ Jesus349
,” in whom
dwelt “the fulness of the Godhead bodily350
:” because it was the assumed
(nature) not the Assuming (nature) which was raised, because
God “exalted Him and gave Him the Name
which is above every name: that in the name of Jesus every knee
should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under
the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ the
Lord is in the glory of God the Father351
.”
III. The soul of Christ and the body of
Christ were real in the full human sense, though the circumstances of
His birth were unique.
[But as to that which Eutyches dared to say in the
court of bishops “that before the Incarnation there were two
natures in Christ, but after the Incarnation one352
| 352 Cf. the Tome, Lett.
XXVIII., chap. vi., n. 5. | ,” he ought to have been pressed by
the frequent and anxious questions of the judges to render an account
of his acknowledgment, lest it should be passed over as something
trivial, though it was seen to have issued from the same fount as his
other poisonous opinions. For I think that in saying this he was
convinced that the soul, which the Saviour assumed, had had its abode
in the heavens before He was born of the Virgin Mary, and that the Word
joined it to Himself in the womb. But this is intolerable to
catholic minds and ears: because the Lord who came down from heaven brought with Him nothing
that belonged to our state: for He did not receive either a soul
which had existed before nor a flesh which was not of his
mother’s body. Undoubtedly our nature was not assumed in
such a way that it was created first and then assumed, but it was
created by the very assumption. And hence that which was
deservedly condemned in Origen must be punished in Eutyches also,
unless he prefers to give up his opinion, viz. the assertion that souls
have had not only a life but also different actions before they were
inserted in men’s bodies353
| 353 Cf. Lett. XV., chap.
xi., n. 6. | ]. For
although the Lord’s nativity according
to the flesh has certain characteristics wherein it transcends the
ordinary beginnings of man’s being, both because He alone was
conceived and born without concupiscence of a pure Virgin, and because
He was so brought forth of His mother’s womb that her fecundity
bare Him without loss of virginity: yet His flesh was not of
another nature to ours: nor was the soul breathed into Him from
another source to that of all other men, and it excelled others not in
difference of kind but in superiority of power. For He had no
opposition in His flesh [nor did the strife of desires give rise to a
conflict of wishes354
| 354 Here again the second
clause (in brackets) seems a gloss on the first, see n. 2, above:
what is meant will be seen by comparing S. Paul’s famous
disquisition (Rom. vii.). | ]. His bodily
senses were active without the law of sin, and the reality of His
emotions being under the control of His Godhead and His mind, was
neither assaulted by temptations nor yielded to injurious
influences. But true Man was united to God and was not brought down from heaven as regards a
pre-existing soul, nor created out of nothing as regards the
flesh: it wore the same person in the Godhead of the Word and
possessed a nature in common with us in its body and soul. For He
would not be “the mediator between God
and
man,” unless God and man had co-existed
in both natures forming one true Person. The magnitude of the
subject urges us to a lengthy discussion: but with one of your
learning there is no need for such copious dissertations, especially as
we have already sent a sufficient letter to our brother Flavian by our
delegates for the confirmation of the minds, not only of priests but
also of the laity. The mercy of God
will, we believe, provide that without the loss of one soul the sound
may be defended against the devil’s wiles, and the wounded
healed. Dated 13th June in the consulship of the illustrious
Asturius and Protogenes (449).E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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