Refutation of the opinions of Apollinaris (anti-rhetic)

Composition by St. Gregory of Nyssa, “Refutation of the Opinions of Apollinaris (Antiritik)” (59 chapters, 378-379) was written in response to the work of Apollinaris of Laodicea, “Proof of the Divine Incarnation in the Likeness of Man.” This is the most important surviving anti-Apollinarian treatise of the 4th century. St. Gregory speaks of the union of two natures in Jesus Christ and refutes two provisions of Apollinaris, that the body of Christ descended from heaven and that the place of the rational soul in Christ was occupied by the Word of God. Copying this or that proposition from the work of Apollinaris, St. Gregory makes a refutation. Antirritik had an undoubted significance in the history of Christological disputes. It was used by entire cathedrals and individual church writers. The Fathers of the VI Ecumenical Council, for example, read excerpts from the treatise of St. Gregory and accepted them as an accurate disclosure of Orthodox teaching. Antirritik was quoted by such Orthodox theologians as St. John of Damascus, Leontius of Byzantium and Euthymius Zigabenus. *The title of the work in Greek is Πρὸς τὰ ᾿Απολλιναρίου ἀντιῤῥητικὸς [λόϒος]. *The title of the work in Latin is Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarium. 1. A good beginning for our word could be the voice of the Lord commanding us to beware of “the lying prophets who come to you,” he says, “in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. By their fruit you will know them” (Matthew 7:15–16). So, if the fruit distinguishes both the true sheep and the destroyer of the sheep, who, in a meek form, without fear, penetrates into the midst of the flock and (here) discovers the enemy’s mouth covered with meekness; then we must pay attention to the fruits, both good and bad, through which the deceitfulness of appearance is exposed. For, he says, “by their fruit you will know them” (Matthew 7:16). In my opinion, the good fruit of any teaching is the increase of those saved in the Church, and the disastrous and destructive fruit is the rejection of those who are in it. So, if someone, by the word of teaching, increases the flock and spreads the vineyard in all directions of the house, and plants those who go astray around the Lord’s table, as if turning a wild olive into a new plant of olives; whoever casts the mystical rods into the sweet and drinkable stream of teaching, through which the flocks multiply, so that Laban's acquisition decreases, and Jacob's portion increases and multiplies with significant offspring - if someone shows this kind of fruit of teaching (for fruit, as it is said, is the increase of truth), then he is truly a prophet, prophesying by the spirit according to the Divine intention. And if someone pulls up the branches of the grapes, devastates the Divine table, uprooting plants, harbors evil plans against the spiritual reservoir, so that the sheep no longer conceive according to the rods of the patriarch and the flock does not multiply with significant offspring, but moves away from the nutritious pasture, that is, the fatherly traditions, and seeks refuge outside the fence and is scattered among strangers pastures, then if this is the fruit of the teaching, the appearance of a wolf hidden under the skin of a sheep will clearly appear. 2. So, let us examine what the teaching of Apollinaris the Syrian has produced for us: the addition of herds or the decrease, the gathering of the scattered or the scattering of those united, the defense or perversion of fatherly dogmas. Therefore, if the efforts of the above-mentioned are directed towards the better, then he is, of course, a sheep and not a wolf, but if on the contrary, then “take heed from lying prophets” (Matthew 7:15), says the Lord. Let the lips not hide, armed with the sharp teeth of innovation to harm and destroy the body approaching them and tormenting the healthy body of the Church of God. And so that what has been said does not seem like slander, we will offer one of his common words, the inscription of which is as follows: “Proof of the divine existence in the flesh (σαρκωσις) in the likeness of man.” Whoever carefully reveals the meaning of the inscription will perhaps not need the writing itself to expose the absurdity of his teaching. “Proof,” he says, “of the divine existence in the flesh in the likeness of man.” It is good to offer Divine words to denounce this new invention of names. Scripture says: “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14), and: glory dwelt in “our land” (Ps. 84:10), and: “God appeared in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16), so that by each of these sayings we would learn that the immutable, always unchangeable in essence, the Divinity appears in a changeable and changeable nature, so that its own with immutability to heal our changeability to evil. But he says that it was not God who appeared in the flesh, or, what is the same thing, it was not the Word that became flesh, in the likeness and image of man (Phil. 2.7) through the perception of the face of a slave, having lived the life of people; but he invents for the Word some kind of divine existence in the flesh, I don’t know what this statement means - whether the transformation of the Divine, from its simple and uncomplicated nature changed into fleshly materiality, or admitting that the Divine essence abides in itself, declares another kind of divine existence in the flesh, average between human and Divine nature, which is neither man nor God, but, as it were, involved in both; To the extent it is being in the flesh, it has an affinity with humanity, and to the extent it is Divine (being in the flesh), it is higher than human. But it cannot be God, for the Divinity is simple by nature and uncomplicated, and what does not have simplicity is, of course, equally alien to Divinity. Again, neither is it a man, for one who consists of a rational soul and body is called a man, but to one in whom both are not understood to be united together, how can the name of man be applied? For we say: the body of man and the soul of man, while we mentally imagine each of these (parts) by itself, and the combination of both of these is what is called man. 3. So, what is the divine being in the flesh, which is neither man nor God and which depicts the inscription of the word, this cannot be learned from (previous) research. “Proof,” he says, “of the divine existence in the flesh in the likeness of man.” Again, what does it mean: “in the likeness of man?” That divine existence in the flesh is accomplished similarly to human existence? When is this? In recent days? But where is the secret of virginity? For the Lord does not become flesh in the likeness of man, as the author says, but by Divine power and the Holy Spirit, as the Gospel says. Before centuries? But how can a being be likened to a non-being? Man is the last of creation, but the Lord is King before the ages. So, in the likeness of what kind of person is this divine existence in the flesh, if it is pre-eternal? In the likeness of Adam? But it wasn't there yet. In the likeness of any other person? But who is this man conceived before Adam, so that like the image that was presented, being in the flesh of God could be accomplished? For something like something that exists, of course, cannot be like something that doesn’t exist. Thus, in his words two absurdities appear: either the creature turns out to be the oldest of the creator, or the Divinity existing in the flesh is likened to the non-existent; for the Godhead was from the beginning, but Adam was not. So, if the Divine nature has flesh in the likeness of man, then the divine being in the flesh is likened to the non-existent; and what is likened to the carrier and itself, of course, does not exist. But Apollinaris says that this existence in the flesh was in some other way, different from human. But what is the similarity between foreign (objects)? So, if it is impossible to admit either that the divine existence in the flesh was accomplished in the likeness of man before the ages, or that (this) incarnation occurred in the likeness of man in recent times, when, according to God’s dispensation for man, God appeared in the flesh (for such a thought does not allow the mystery of the birth from the Virgin), then whether he wrote the inscription of his work in one sense or another, it is (equally) absurd. So, I think that what has been said is sufficiently explained for attentive listeners that the inscription was not thought out and is not based on any solid reasoning. 4. It’s time to offer research and the essay itself, designated by this inscription. I will convey, firstly, in my own words, briefly outlining the meaning, those parts of his work in which there is no danger of missing anything without research. “Only,” he says, “one pious faith should be considered good, for faith without research did not bring any benefit to Eve, so the Christian faith should also be examined, so that somewhere it does not imperceptibly coincide with the opinions of the Greeks or Jews.” Having expanded quite a lot about this at the beginning, he continues his speech, saying that among infidels and heretics there is a widespread opinion that it is impossible for God to be a man and suffer like a man; such an opinion, under the guise of faith, is introduced by heretics who say that Christ became a divine (ενθεον) man through birth from a wife and through suffering. What heretics are known to him who call Christ a divine man, let him and his disciples know about this, but we, having lived in many places and carefully discussed both with those who shared (our) teaching and with those who disagreed regarding questions about the Word, have not yet heard anyone who would utter such an expression about the mystery that Christ was a divine man. So, anyone intending to correct false concepts of dogma and introduce more pious ones in their place should not invent for himself something that does not exist, and fight with what does not exist, but arm himself against what is actually said by opponents. For even doctors who know the matter do not contrast their art with non-existent suffering, but apply knowledge to a disease that has already become apparent. So, either let him indicate who said that it was not God who appeared in the flesh, but Christ became a divine man, then we will accept his work as not written in vain, or, until such a disease is found, everyone will admit that it is in vain to get involved in a fight with what does not exist. 5. But it is not without purpose that in his essay he pretends that he needs to refute such an opinion; in order to pave a certain way and begin consistently to reveal his own teaching, he assumed the unsaid as said, in order, appearing to refute it with the help of a feigned contradiction, to prove that the Divinity is mortal. For the whole purpose of his work is aimed at proving that the Divinity of the Only Begotten Son is mortal and that it was not humanity that suffered in him, but the impassive and unchangeable nature was changed to participate in suffering. Hence, what his work means is useful for him, it is not difficult for those who have penetrated its secrets to know; and the consequences from this, clear even for infants, are of such a kind that even the most godless of the Hellenes would not have expressed them. For if the very Divinity of the Only Begotten died, then with it died, of course, life, and truth, and righteousness, and goodness, and light, and power, for with all these, in various respects, the Only Begotten God is and is called. But since He is simple, indivisible and uncomplicated, and everything that is said about Him is entirely, and not partly this and partly another, so that if one of these properties is in it, all the others are understood, and if one is not there, then all are destroyed at the same time; then if the Divinity is destroyed by death, everything that is mentally imagined to be united with His Divinity is destroyed by death. But Christ is not just power, but the power of God and the wisdom of God. So, when all this with the Divinity of the Son was destroyed through death, then the Father had neither the wisdom of God, nor power, nor life, nor anything else that is called perfection in Him. For all these things belong to God, and all the things of the Father, as we believe, are in the Son; so that all (these perfections) are in the Father, if there is a Son, but if there is no Son, then, of course, they do not exist either, because we confess everything of the Father to be in the Son. So, if power is destroyed by death, and Christ is the power of God, then what kind of power is again called out of non-existence, when the existing one is destroyed by death, and there is no other left? For even our opponents admit that the power of the Father is in the Son. So, if there is one power, and it, having fallen under the dominion of death, turned into insignificance during the economy of suffering, then what other power does he imagine that calls upon that power from death? If they say that one died and the other remained immortal, then they will no longer recognize that the power of the Father has existence in the Son, and thus are consistently rejected as untrue the words of the Lord himself, which testify that everything that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son (John 16:15, 17:10). For he who has everything that the Father has, of course, also has in himself the immortality of the Father; and immortality, while it is what is called (by this word), does not allow confusion and communication with death. So, if they say that the Divinity of the Son is mortal, then they assert that He does not have in Himself the immortality of the Father. But He who says the truth speaks, that He has the whole Father in Himself; Consequently, he who claims that he is mortal in whom the entire eternity of the Father is seen speaks falsely. So, since, according to the pious, the power of the Father and the Son is one, for in the Father we see the Son and in the Son the Father, it is clearly proven that what is subject to suffering by nature accepts death, and what is inaccessible to suffering in the passionate acted dispassionately. 6. But let's move on to the next thing in his work. Again I will speak in his words, briefly setting out their content. He says that “to call Christ the Divine Man is contrary to the apostolic teaching, alien to (the definitions of) the Councils, and that the beginning of such perverted thinking was laid by Paul, and Photinus, and Marcellus.” Then, following the example of strong fighters, as if getting closer to his interlocutor and having found the real culprit of this saying, he says this: “How do you call Him a man from the earth, of whom it is testified that He is a man who descended from heaven and who is called the Son of man?” Again, in these (words) the affirmation of what was previously accepted is the beginning of another absurdity. For in order to prove that God died, He absolutely does not allow any speculation about His earthly nature. since it is apparently quite characteristic of the earth to undergo death, he says: “the man who came down from heaven is not a man from the earth. However, he is a man, although he came down from heaven, for the Lord does not deny such a name in the Gospels.” How does he maintain consistency in what he says? If man does not come down from earth, but from heaven, how can he who descends from heaven be called the Son of Man? Of course, he must admit that just as on earth the idea of ​​sons is preceded by the idea of ​​fathers, so a person coming, in his opinion, from heaven, since he is called the son of man, is not without reason called so by his patronymic; but that he has a father in heaven who is mentally imaginable before him in a human way - another man. For if he relies on this saying: “no one ascends into heaven, except he who came down from heaven, the Son of man” (John 3:13), and therefore removes him from his affinity with earthly man, calling (however) the one who comes from heaven the Son of man; then, of course, he allows for the one who descended to us some other similar father in heaven, and in heavenly life, tribes of people and peoples and everything that is in real life are assumed (for him). So, if he who came from heaven is the Son of man, and who was born of Mary from the seed of David according to the flesh is called the Son of man in the same way as he who came down from above, then falsely, in their opinion, he is called the Son of God, since neither heavenly nor earthly (man) has anything in common with the Divine. But bringing what he said to one main point, he concludes the speech: “if the Son of man is from heaven, and the Son of God is from a woman, then how is it not the same God and man”? That the same thing should be recognized by both man and God, this is what I say, and this is recognized by every reader of the right faith, although not in the same sense as the writer, for neither the Divine is earthly, nor the heavenly is human, as he thinks; but from above the power of the Most High through the Holy Spirit took possession, that is, was imagined in human nature; from the immaculate Virgin a carnal part was added, and thus what was born in her was called the Son of the Most High; so that God's power acquired (the flesh) an affinity with the Most High, and the flesh (the Divine) an affinity with man. 7. “But he is God,” he says, “according to the Spirit that was in the flesh, and man is according to the flesh received from God.” Again, what is being in the flesh of the spirit outside of union with our flesh? Where did man come from, if not from the first man, whose first origin from the earth, and not from heaven, is known to us from Moses, who tells about his genealogy? For God “takes away from the earth; God created man” (Gen. 2:7). And that another creation of man from heaven took place, we do not know from anyone. Then he adds to what was said: “the mystery has appeared in the flesh,” he says this well, this is our word. Then: “The Word became flesh through unity,” and these sayings are spoken sensibly. For whoever says that the Word was united with the flesh expresses nothing more than a combination (συνδρομην) of two (natures). “But the flesh is not soulless,” he says, “for it is said that it fights against the spirit and fights against the law of the mind.” Oh, extreme foolishness! Clothes God with soulless flesh. So, let us ask: if God the Word took on animate flesh, as the author says, and we also call the bodies of dumb people animate, then he who ascribes to the Word human flesh and, moreover, animate flesh, unites with Him nothing other than the whole man; for besides the rational nature, there is no other feature in the human soul, because everything else we have in common with the dumb. The capacity for lust, the power of passion, the desire for food, satiation, sleep, digestion, change, the eruption of unnecessary things - everything is the same for us and for dumb people, which is accomplished through a certain spiritual force. So, he who says that what is perceived (by the Word) is a man, and recognizes it as animate, has done nothing but attribute to Him the rational power that is characteristic of the human soul, (as can be seen) from the very apostolic sayings that he offered us. For he who said that “the wisdom of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God” (Rom. 8, 7), speaks of the obvious features of the selective and rational abilities; for to obey or resist the law is characteristic of will; and no one can separate the very name “philosophy” (φρονημα) from the action of thinking; and that “to think” (φρωνειν) is the same as to understand, this, of course, no one will contradict even infants; also the one who fights and takes captivity (Rom. 7:23) how can he be alien to the action of understanding? For the fact that the arbitrariness of the evil tends towards evil does not prove that they have no mind, but that (although) they are far from good understanding, they nevertheless think; since even about that serpent, whom Scripture portrays to us as the leader and inventor of evil, the divinely inspired word says that he is not unreasonable when he ascribes to him wisdom greater than that of others (Gen. 3:1). 8. So, the very sayings offered to us, with which he thinks to confirm his words, expose the wickedness of his teaching. For it is not in these alone sayings that the Apostle contrasts the flesh with the spirit, that is, the evil will of a more correct life, but also to the Corinthians, condemning their devotion to passions, he says that “you are of the flesh” (1 Cor. 3:3). So, at the time at which the word was addressed to them, according to the tripartite division of people by Apollinaris, people were not involved in action according to the mind? Or are they generally called carnal by Paul because of their immeasurable affection for the flesh, having received such a name from what was in abundance in them? And this meaning is indicated by the connection of speech in what is written: “wherefore,” he says, “there is in you envy and zeal and strife, if you are not of the flesh” (1 Cor. 3:3). Envy and arguing are (part of) actions according to the mind. The work that follows (Apollinaria) contains evidence based on many evidences that man consists of three parts: flesh, soul and mind, which is not far from our opinion; for it is the same thing: whether to say that a person consists of a rational soul and body, or, considering the mind especially in itself, to divide what we mentally imagine in a person into three parts, although such a division gives heretics many reasons for error regarding this (subject). For if anyone considers the faculty of understanding to be separate, he can say that the faculty of irritation, and again the faculty of concupiscence, are also separate. Or maybe someone, calculating other movements of the soul according to such a concept (about them), instead of the tripartite nature of a person, will begin to prove that he is some multipart and polysyllabic (being). 9. But let’s leave this, so that by dwelling on particulars, we do not spread the refutation immensely, but let’s move on to the next one. Having established, with the help of many reasonings, the tripartiteness, or tripartiteness, or whatever one wants to call human complexity; he mentions some of the definitions of the Councils collected against Paul of Samosata, where it is said that the Lord appeared as God from heaven (αποτεθεωσθαι), also about the symbol proclaimed at Nicaea, presenting the saying of it, literally expressed in this way: “who came down from heaven, and became incarnate, and became man.” And with these words, as if preparing what he intends to express, he reveals the meaning of his intention, and, as if relying on what has already been proven, he literally says: “and instead of spirit, that is, mind, having God, Christ with soul and body is rightly called a man from heaven.” What does this have in common with the above? Where did the Council decide this against Samosatsky? But I will leave what relates to the antiquity of our teaching. What does faith teach in the words of the Nicene dogmas: he who came down from heaven and became incarnate, if not to not understand about the flesh that it is before the descent, but to recognize it as subsequent to the descent? These sayings: the one incarnate and the one made man are preached by everyone in the churches, and this is ours, or, better, the Church’s word. Where is it in what has been said that instead of spirit, that is, mind, having God, Christ with soul and body is called a man from heaven? Will you consider in this expression simply the letter or the meaning of what was said: in neither one nor in the other you will find what they say. For those expressions are as far removed from the expression of Apollinaris as “the east are, in the words of the psalm, from the west” (Ps. 102:12). And the meaning of what he said, what does it have in common with that which is expressed (in the symbol)? Apollinaris says that Christ incarnate in human flesh, instead of the spirit, that is, the mind, has God in himself. (This is said by the one who commands not to call Christ divine ( ενθεον) man, while he himself first of all affirms that He has God in himself as another in another). The voice of the Council says: He came down from heaven. So, let (this) great and impartial (man) understand the descent to us from heaven; for we do not disagree at all regarding this concept, although reason here also reveals a higher meaning, namely, that it does not speak of the local descent of the Divine, existing everywhere and containing everything, but condescension to the humiliation of our nature is meant. But in whatever sense someone wishes to accept the descent, the word of the Council goes on to say: incarnate; This is well said, for how could it more appropriately interpret birth from a wife? For He was born of a woman, not as God in himself. He who exists before creation through birth according to the flesh does not accept existence itself, but by the Holy Spirit, having prepared the entrance of his power and not having any need for material help to build his own dwelling, according to what was said about wisdom, He Himself “created a house for Himself” (Prov. 9:1), forming dust in man from the Virgin, dust through which He united with humanity. 10. So, where in these words (of the symbol) does it say what seems to Apollinaris: “instead of the spirit, that is, the mind, Christ having God with soul and body is rightly called a man from heaven”? If it is permissible for him to arbitrarily cite divine sayings in his favor and, like interpreters of dreams, to apply to this scripture the meaning that he wants, then let him give this or that meaning to the divine words. If, as the Apostle says, “women’s fables” (1 Tim. 4:7) and “bad talk” (1 Tim. 6:20) should be denied in every possible way, then he should in no way be allowed to harmonize what is different and unite what is dissimilar. But in the very thing with which he arms himself against what has been said, he is rather an accomplice to ourselves in refuting his teaching, for he says that Paul also calls the first Adam a soul (1 Cor. 15:45), united with the body; This he speaks well and for the truth. So, “the first man who lives in soul,” mentioned by Paul, had some kind of unreasonable soul? However, history testifies to his considerable gift of understanding, for God brought animals to him, and he was the culprit inventing names, coming up with an appropriate and fitting name for each. But disobedience, and a tendency to do what is wrong, and shame about what has been done, and the ability to find justification when making accusations - all this serves as proof of the activity of the mind. But why is Paul now silent about the rationality in the soul of Adam? Is it not because, obviously, that along with the part the rest is also named, as in the words: “all flesh will come to you” (Ps. 64:3) through the flesh David means all of humanity? And Jacob, who moved to the Egyptians “with seventy and five souls” (Deut. 10:22), is not depicted in Scripture as either devoid of mind or incorporeal at this time. 11. But the writer says that “the second man from heaven is called spiritual (1 Cor. 15:45), and this means that a person united with God has no mind.” But the denunciation of absurdity is ready in the very words he proposed. For he who said: “Yakov is heavenly, but also those who are heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48) removes us far from such an opinion. Because if those who believed in the coming from heaven and Paul themselves are called heavenly, having, as he says, transferred their residence to heaven (Phil. 3:20), and if such is the heavenly one, such are these heavenly ones, says the Apostle; and none of those who have accepted faith is devoid of intelligence, then it is absolutely necessary to consider this comparative likeness as proof that in Him, in the likeness of people, there is intelligence. For “Jacob,” he says, “is heavenly, and so are those who are heavenly”; so they must necessarily admit that either there is a mind in everyone, or in no one. For just as the characteristics of earthly are seen in those who came from it, so it is necessary, according to the saying of the Apostle, that “temptation in every way” of our life, “in the likeness of sin” (Heb. 4:15) (the mind is not sin), should have the properties of all our nature. Thus, the apostolic word that we are as He is will then be true when it is recognized that He also became like us, so that by being made like us, He might make us like Him. 12. Let us again recall what Apollinaris said: “That is why Paul calls the first Adam a soul, existing with the body, and not without the body, and giving the name to the whole (man), although in itself, due to its union with the spirit, it is also called soul.” In saying this, he admits that by union the name soul is used to name three (parts of a person), as if the same concept of soul contained within itself the meaning of both body and spirit. “But the latter,” he says, “Paul calls the life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:45).” But as he gave the name to this (the first man) according to the peculiarity that was more abundant in him than the others, then, of course, the same reason applies to the latter. If Adam is called a soul because he sinned, then a person united with God is called entirely a spirit, because “thou shalt not commit sin; flattery will be found in his mouth” (Isa. 53:9). But he does not accept such an understanding, for he says that “he is ringed from the earth, because in him a body formed from dust is animated.” Therefore, the mind, which he calls spirit, was not given to Adam along with the formation (of his body)? So, what is his similarity with God? What then (with him) comes from Divine inspiration, if you do not believe that it is the mind? “And this one,” he says, “is called heavenly, because the heavenly Spirit was incarnate.” What Scripture says this? Which saint is credited with saying that the Spirit became incarnate? This is not what we hear in the Gospel, this is not what the great voice of the Apostle teaches us; The Apostle preaches that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14), and the Gospel story says that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove (Matthew 3:16); None of those who received the secret in spirit spoke about the incarnation of the Spirit. Glory has taken root in our land “and truth has risen from the earth” (Ps. 84:10, 12), “God has appeared in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16), “righteousness has come from heaven” (Ps. 84:12) and many other similar things (says Scripture), but the inspired Scripture does not know the incarnate Spirit. “And first there existed,” he says, “the man Christ, not as if there were another Spirit besides Him, that is, God, but as if the Lord in the nature of God of man was the Divine Spirit.” These are the literal expressions of the writer. since, as if due to a lack of ability to write intelligibly, the thought here is not very clear, then first I will expose the meaning found in them from the darkness of expressions, and then I will examine what they say. 13. “First there is,” he says, “the man Christ.” He understands, together with the Word, existing in the beginning, the man who appeared as a pre-existing phenomenon (in the flesh) and reveals this thought in what follows (further). For he says that “there is no other Spirit besides Him,” thereby affirming that the very Divinity of the Son is from the beginning man, which is more clearly shown by the following words, for he says that “the Lord in the nature of God man was the Divine Spirit.” He made God and man one nature and named the union of two people. So, the idea of ​​​​what has been said is that He who appeared through the flesh from the Virgin, not only according to the eternity of the Divinity, as we all believe, but also according to the flesh itself is thought (having being) before all that exists. For to prove his opinion he cites what has been said (scriptures): “before even Abraham was not, I am” (John 8:58); the words of John: “before me” (John 1:15); “there is one Lord..., who is all things” (1 Cor. 8:6); “He is first of all” (Col. 1:17) and some words of Zechariah, which we will omit as being forcibly drawn to this goal. If the absurdity he asserts were hidden by the twist of some thoughts, then it would be good for me to take care of exposing what was hidden, but since he clearly proclaims wickedness, I don’t know what more could come out of our words. If the flesh is pre-eternal, if “Abraham was not before” and was (born) of the Virgin, then it follows that the Virgin is older than Nahor, therefore Mary is older than Adam. And what am I saying? It seems that it is older and more ancient than the centuries themselves, the very creation of (everything) that exists. For if he became incarnate from the Virgin, and the flesh is called Jesus; The Apostle testifies that He is first of all, then, as it seems, this notorious man leads to the idea that Mary should also be considered co-eternal with the Father. But I am silent about the extreme inconsistency to which the absurdity of his new words consistently reaches. The discerning can see the absurdity of the consequences (of his opinions), even if we do not discover the ugliness in the letter (of his writings). 14. But let us pass by the stench of these thoughts, noting only that if the flesh is eternal, then neither the Divinity was exhausted, nor the Son appeared in the form of God and did not put on the face of a servant, but what He was by nature, He appeared now, without annihilating Himself. May the Word forgive my word, but I will keep silent about the rest. If the flesh comes first, then everything came from weakness, and not from strength, “For the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). So, this is how far his absurdity extends! And who, from the consistent course of his thoughts, will not understand what follows from here! For, of course, in the One who exists with the flesh from eternity, he will understand, along with the flesh, all its properties: fatigue, sadness, tears, thirst, sleep, the feeling of hunger and other even greater incongruities. since “we were born as a child” (Isa. 9:6), as the divine word says, and the shepherds found the Lord in swaddling clothes, and as Luke says: “Jesus abounded in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52) in growth until he came to the measure of a perfect man, following the natural path, then what will those who see the flesh from eternity say - at what age of body was He before? century? For in human life He passed through all ages. Was this man a child, who existed before every creature, or a baby, or a young man, or directly in a perfect body? If they say: a youth, then, of course, they must also present the reason why, over the course of so many centuries, He did not come to perfect age. And if they call it age, then may they deign to teach us how in human birth it is compressed to the smallness of an infant? Where does excess body leave it? How is the volume reduced to a small circle? Then, how does the volume of a body return again to its own measure? Do I take on the same body that I had from the beginning through gradual increase, or do I give myself something different through nutrition? But if they say: what he had from the beginning, then they will show that the food was completely unnecessary, and if they do not deny that the Lord took food, then what will they say about the flesh left in heaven? For in justice, most of (this flesh) was left and as much was taken from it as the Virgin’s womb could contain. Of course, something wonderful will be told about her, and from this they will form other dogmas, to which their sequence of absurd fables will necessarily lead. 15. But let’s leave that out too. But this is what everyone has the right to ask those who accept the doctrine of the pre-eternal incarnation. If they think that the Lord always had flesh, then they claim that God was flesh, but all flesh turns out to be elastic when touched, and what is elastic is material and complex; what is complex is subject to destruction, hence, of course, it is absolutely necessary to recognize Him Himself as material and composed of different parts and, naturally, subject to destruction. For we know what His body was made of when He lived as a human among people; that it also consisted of flesh, bones and blood, like that of other people, we conclude from the signs of nails, from the blood shed from the blow of a spear, and from the fact that to those who did not believe, when He appeared after the resurrection, the Lord said: “Handle Me and see: for a spirit has not possessed flesh and bones, but as you see Me having” (Luke 24:39). So, if the Divine Incarnation, as Apollinaris says, had its beginning not from the Virgin, but was before Abraham and before every creature, then, of course, His body was always the same as it appeared to the disciples - that is, solid, elastic, composed of flesh and bones. So, all this has always been, and there was no descent of Him into humiliation; but what was hidden as Divine by nature appeared during the incarnation. Did Arius or his worst Eunomius conceive anything similar to what Apollinaris presents to us in this work for the destruction of the glory of the Only Begotten? God, incarnate from eternity, somehow composed of bones, skin, nerves, flesh and fat, composed of various substances, having in Himself neither simplicity nor uncomplexity, (appears to him) the Word, existing in the beginning and with God, and the Word, the very existing God (Jn. 1, 1–2); Who in the last days, through communion with the ugliness of our nature, became flesh out of love for mankind and, uniting through it with man, took into Himself all of our nature, so that through merging with the Divine (nature) the human would be deified and through the firstfruits thereof the entire composition of our nature would be sanctified. 16. I think, however, that there is no need to talk about his misunderstanding of certain divine sayings that he cites in defense of his teaching. Since this is clear in itself, it would be unnecessary to lengthen our investigation. For as evidence that the Word always abides in flesh and blood, he offers an apostolic saying, which says that through Him we have received “deliverance through His blood, and the remission of sins” (Eph. 1:7) through His flesh. That these words point to another thought, I think, no one with intelligence doubts. For who does not know that Divine secret that the Leader of our salvation seeks the lost sheep (Luke 15:4)? This sheep is us people, cut off by sin from a reasonable hundred sheep. And he takes a whole sheep for his own money, for it was not part of the sheep that was led astray, but since the whole sheep has gone astray, it returns the whole thing. He doesn’t wear just the skin, but leaves what’s underneath, as Apollinaris wants. Through perception he makes this (sheep) on the Shepherd’s shoulder, that is, abiding in the Divinity of the Lord, one with himself, desiring through this to seek and save what was lost. When he found what he was looking for, he took what he found upon himself; for the sheep did not move with its own feet, which had already lost its way, but was carried by the Divine. Therefore, what is visible (in Him) is a sheep, that is, a man, “but His footprints,” as it is written, “are not known” (Ps. 76:20). For He who carried a sheep on Himself did not imprint a single trace of sin or error in His human life; but whatever traces of God were worthy of imprinting during life, such He showed, such as: teachings, healings, resurrections of the dead and other miracles. So, having taken this sheep upon Himself, the Shepherd became one with it, and therefore speaks with the voice of the sheep. For how could human weakness accommodate the impact of the Divine voice? But in a human and, so to speak, sheepish way, He speaks to us: “My sheep hear My voice” (John 10:3, 16). Himself a sheep and speaking to us through it, there is both a sheep and a Shepherd - the sheep in what is received, and the Shepherd in the one who received. 17. Since the good Shepherd had to lay down His life for the sheep in order to destroy death by his own death, then the Leader of our salvation becomes both one and the other - both a priest and a lamb in that he is able to participate in suffering by committing death. For since death is nothing other than the resolution of soul and body, he who has united both in himself, that is, soul and body, is not separated from either one or the other. “Unrepentant for the gift” of God (Rom. 11:29), as the Apostle says. But having given Himself to both body and soul, through the soul He opens paradise to the thief, and through the body He stops the effect of corruption; This is the destruction of death, to render corruption ineffective, destroying it in life-giving nature. For what is done through the body and soul becomes a blessing and a gift for our nature, everything in general; and thus, through the resurrection, He unites everything that is separated by He Who is one with both, Who, as it is written, by His own power gave the body to the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:40), and laid down the soul “for himself” (John 10:18). When He says to the Father, “Into Your hands I commend My spirit” (Lk. 23:46), and to the thief: “to paradise” (Luke 23:43), then he affirms the truth to both; for this Divine stay, otherwise called paradise, must be believed, is located in no other place than in the all-encompassing hand of the Father, as the Prophet says, broadcasting the word to the heavenly Jerusalem from the face of the Lord; “Your walls have been written in My hands, and you remain before Me forever” (Is. 49:16). In this way the Lord is subject to death, and death has no dominion over Him. For the complex is divided, and the uncomplicated does not allow destruction, but when the complex is divided, the uncomplicated nature remains and, after the separation of the soul from the body, is not separated from either one or the other. The proof is the action that produces, as it is said, incorruptibility in the body and stay in paradise in the soul. The simple and uncomplicated is not separated when the soul and body are separated, but, on the contrary, brings about their unification; by its own inseparability, it brings the divided into unity; This is what he points out when he said that God “raised Him from the dead” (Col. 2:12). For regarding the resurrection of the Lord, one cannot think that He, like Lazarus or any other of the revived, returns to life by an alien force; but the Only Begotten God Himself resurrects the person united with Him, first separating the soul from the body, then again uniting both, and thus the salvation of the nature (our) of everything in general occurs, which is why He is called “the author of life” (Acts 3:15). For the Only Begotten God in (nature), who died for us and rose again, “reconciled the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19), all of us who became fellow-partners with Him in flesh and blood, having redeemed through the blood akin to us, as if we were prisoners of war; which is also indicated by the apostolic saying, which says: “that we are deliverance through His blood, and forgiveness of sins” through His flesh (Eph. 1:7). This is what we say on the basis of the (correct) understanding of the presented words of the Apostle, and not as Apollinaris (interprets them). Let him who is able to judge evaluate what is more pious, either, as we say, that Glory lived on our earth according to the economy, or, as he asserts, that the flesh was not received only by the Divine for good (to people), but was co-essential and co-natural with Him. 18. I think that there is no need to investigate whether the prophet Zechariah leans towards one or the other of these opinions in his mysterious sayings, that is, to the Lord or to whomever the meaning of his words indicates. He says: “To the sword, rise up against my shepherd and against the husband of my fellow tribesman” (Zech. 13:7). We think that the word (of the Prophet) threateningly raises a sword against those who act unjustly towards their fellow tribesmen. Apollinaris, on the basis of the name shepherd, says that the sword is raised against the Lord, not knowing that in many places of Scripture the word (of God) calls shepherds and shepherds those to whom it is entrusted authorities. As for the passages from the Epistle to the Hebrews, which he forcibly draws to the same goal, the absurdity is so clearly demonstrated in his evidence that it is easy to understand for anyone who has even a small amount of understanding, since it is written that “in these last days God spoke to us in many parts and in manifold ways, the Father of old as a prophet” (Heb. 1:1-2). says, serves as proof that the human nature of the God who appeared to us is pre-eternal. For, explaining the Apostle, he literally says this: “from this it is clear that this man, who spoke to us about the works of the Father, is God, the Creator of the ages, the radiance of glory, the image of His Hypostasis, who by His own spirit is God, and does not have God in Himself as another, different from Himself, but by Himself, that is, by the flesh, cleansed the world from sins.” This is literally what Apollinaris says, and we have not changed anything in what he said. Therefore, if the “verb-headed” man is the Creator of the ages, as it seems to this writer, and the flesh is radiance, and the image of a servant depicts the Hypostasis of God, then it seems to me unworthy to fight against what has been said, but it is much better to mourn the madness of those who accepted such a new teaching. The man who spoke to us humanly with our voice, who spit with his mouth and made clay with his hand, who put his fingers in the ears of the deaf, who touched the sick and the dead, who calmed down from labor through sleep and sitting, who cried, yearned and grieved, who felt hunger, who took food and demanded water - this man in his very flesh and humanity seems to exist before the origin of all things, and The complex, hard and elastic nature of the flesh is called God! Let every ear of the pious be blocked, and let not the Divine and pure dogmas be defiled by those who disgrace them, boldly attributing the most carnal infirmities to the Divine. For who does not know that God, who appeared to us in the flesh, according to the teaching of pious tradition, is immaterial, invisible, uncomplicated, was and is unlimited and infinite, omnipresent and permeates all creation, but in what appeared to people, he was visible in human form? For it is absolutely necessary that every body be determined by some surface, thus the surface itself is the limit of the body contained in it. However, what is embraced by the limit is contained in a certain definite quantity, and the definite cannot be infinite. And the Prophet says that “His greatness has no end” (Ps. 144:3). So, if the Divine nature is flesh, as the writer says, and the flesh is necessarily embraced by the limit of the surface, then how does the greatness of God, according to the word of the Prophet, extend to infinity? Or how can one understand infinity in the definite, and infinity in the limited? And even more, what has already been said before, how power came from death? For if, as Apollinaris says, the most spoken man is the Creator of the ages, by himself, that is, by the flesh (as he explains), who created everything; and yet the very word of God calls the flesh weak, then this writer thinks nothing more than that strength, strength, power and other high perfections worthy of God come from weakness. 19. And no matter how terrible this is, our word, following further the consistent conclusion from his teaching, finds in him blasphemy against the Father himself. He says that man is the radiance of the glory of God and that in the “fleshly god”, which he, as if an idol, created in his vain thoughts, the Hypostasis of God is depicted. Therefore, just as a ray has an affinity with the sun, and the light shining from a lamp has an affinity with a lamp, and the image of a man indicates a human being; so, of course, (if what appeared to us shone from the glory of the Father, and the image of His Hypostasis is flesh) and the nature of the Father, according to strict consistency, must be recognized as carnal. For it cannot be said that the incorporeal is represented by the body and that the visible shines out of the invisible. But such is the glory, such is obviously the radiance, and such is the image, such, of course, is the Hypostasis, so that if the first is a body, then, of course, the last cannot be represented as incorporeal. He also mentions the dogma (established) in Nicaea, where the Council of All Fathers proclaimed consubstantiality. But no one will call heterogeneous things consubstantial, and for those (persons) whose essence is understood to be identical, of course, consubstantiality also befits. So, if the Son, the “flesh god,” exists and is called flesh from eternity by nature itself, and that He is consubstantial with the Father, the writer himself has no doubt about this; If those objects are consubstantial with each other, the concept of the essence of which is identical, it follows that Apollinaris must admit the assumption that the nature of the Father is in some way human and carnal, in order to preserve the name of consubstantiality in relation to both. So one of two things: either, calling the Father incorporeal and the Divinity of the Son flesh, he will allow their different essences, or, recognizing the community of Divinity and essence equally in the Father and the Son, he will make the nature of the Divinity in the Father flesh. But as if wanting to correct such an absurdity, above, where he arbitrarily explains the saying of Zechariah, he says that on behalf of the Father it is said about the Son “fellowman” (συμφυλος) (Zech. 13:7), which means: co-natural and consubstantial. Whether he understood Zechariah’s words correctly or not is another question, but what he deduces from here is this: “the prophetic word,” he says, “shows that the Son is consubstantial with God, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit united with the flesh.” But how is his fleshly God united with the flesh before the creation of the world? For when there were no centuries, there was nothing else from creation, but in the series of created things the flesh appeared after all and last. So, with what flesh was the Son united when human nature had not yet come into being? But Apollinaris knows some other flesh besides human. How does he affirm that the very man who spoke to us about the works of the Father is this God, the Creator of the ages? Who will explain to us the absurdity of these new mysteries? Man before the existence of man, the flesh existing before it itself was created, and the pre-eternal things that happened in recent times, and everything else similar to this, which he talks about randomly! 20. But let our writer wander at will through the crossroads of his reasoning; We, in denouncing wicked thoughts, having proposed the apostolic teaching, and which he himself mentioned, will move on to what follows. “Who is in the image of God” (Phil. 2:6), says (the Apostle); did not say: having an image like God, as is said about one created in the likeness of God, but in the very “image of God”; for in the Son is everything that belongs to the Father, therefore eternity, and immateriality, and immateriality, and incorporeality; so that in the Son the image of the Father's properties is preserved in everything. And being “equal to God,” does equality allow for the thought of any difference and annulment? How can equality befit something that is different by nature? For if one is by nature carnal, and the other is free from carnality, then how can anyone consider the former to be equal to the latter? “I have humbled myself,” says the Apostle, “and I have taken on the form of a servant.” What is the "vision of a slave"? Of course, the body, for we hear from the fathers that this image is nothing other than the body. So, saying that He took on the form of a slave, and the form is flesh, we affirm that, being something different in the Divine image, He took on the form of a slave, as something different by nature. However, the word “belittled” clearly represents that He was not always what He appeared to us, but in the fullness of the Divine He is equal to God, unattainable and unapproachable, and even more so inconceivable in the insignificant human smallness; He became compatible with the mortal nature of the flesh only when, as the Apostle says, he diminished the ineffable glory of his own Divinity and humbled Himself to our smallness; so that what he was was great, perfect and immense, and what he accepted was equal to the measure of our nature. For he says: “I became in the likeness of humanity” and in the image (Phil. 2:7), obviously, as from the beginning not having in himself the likeness of such a nature and not clothed in any bodily image. For how can a sensible image be imprinted on something incorporeal? But then he appears in an image when, putting on himself, he places it on himself, and this image is the nature of the body. 21. So, “you will be found as a man.” For He is also a man, although not in everything a man, but “like a man”, due to the sacrament of birth from the Virgin; so that from this it is clear that He did not in everything submit to the laws of human nature, but having divinely received life and not having the need for the action of marriage to form His own body, He is not in everything found by an ordinary person according to the peculiarity of His origin, but “like a man,” and thus diminished Himself, becoming a man without changing (His nature). For if he had been one from the beginning, what would be the derogation? Now, through union with the humiliation of our nature, the Almighty has diminished Himself, for having united with the image of a slave accepted by Him and becoming one with him, He assimilates the infirmities of the slave. And as happens with the connection between members, if something happens to the tip of the nail, then the whole body shares the pain with the suffering member, since sympathy passes through the whole body; Thus, one who is united with our nature assimilates our infirmities, as Isaiah says: “You have received our illnesses and suffered our illnesses” (Matt. 8:17), having suffered stripes for us, so that by His stripes we would be healed (Isa. 53:4-5); It was not the Divinity that suffered wounds, but man, united with the Divinity through unity, whose nature could be susceptible to wounding. This is done in order to destroy evil in the same way as it entered. since death entered the world through the disobedience of the (first) man, it is driven out by the obedience of the second man (Rom. 5:12-19). Therefore (the Lord) becomes obedient “even to death” (Phil. 2:8), in order to heal by obedience the crime of disobedience, and by the resurrection from the dead to destroy the death that entered through disobedience, for the resurrection of a person from death is the destruction of death. “In the same way,” he says, “God has exalted Him” (Phil. 2:9), these words serve as a kind of seal of the previous reasoning. For it is clear that the highest does not need exaltation, but the humble rises to heights, as soon as it now becomes what it was not before. For human nature, united with the Lord, rises to an equal height along with the Divinity, and it is precisely that which rises from humiliation that ascends, and that which is humiliated is the image of a servant, who through ascension becomes Christ and Lord. since the person perceived by Christ, as follows among people, was called by a special name as a result of the mysterious announcement to the Virgin from Gabriel, and the human in Him was called, as it is said, Jesus (Luke 1:31); The divine nature cannot be embraced by a name, meanwhile, through the dissolution of the two they became one, therefore God is called from human (nature) by a borrowed name. For “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow” (Phil. 2:10), and man becomes above every name, which is characteristic of the Divine, Who cannot submit to a naming designation, so that just as the high appears in the lowly, so the lowly receives in its place high properties. For just as the Divinity receives a name through man, so the one raised from humiliation to Divinity becomes above the name; and just as the dishonor of the slave image relates to God united with the slave, so the worship of the Divine, rendered from all creation, is offered to the Divine united (man); and thus, “in the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11). Amen. 22. But as if blushing before himself and ashamed of the absurdity of what was said, Apollinaris seems to in some way cancel what he proved before, and intends to admit that the likeness of the Son with men is what came afterward (επιγεννητικη). For he says: “behold, the equality of the same Jesus Christ with the Father existed before, but the likeness with men subsequently arose...” Apparently, he repents of what he said before, and if he had done this, if only he had rejected the absurd opinion from his heart, then we would have stopped denouncing him. But from what he has done, it turns out that the good thought contained in these words gives him a reason for another absurdity; because he literally says this: “and what is clearer than this, that not another was united with another, that is, a perfect God with a perfect man?” That these words have nothing in common with the previous ones is obvious to everyone capable of following the meaning of the words. For how does equality with the Father, which existed before, and the likeness with men that has arisen afterward, as he himself says, prove that he was not a perfect man, through whom the perfect God became man? This is as if someone, having said that the sky is distant from the earth, then began to assert that from this it is clear that lead of equal volume is heavier than tin, and would consider the weight to be the celestial distance. In the same way, no one will say that the imperfection of humanity, through which God appears in our nature, is proven by the fact that the likeness of the Son with people is recognized after the coming. But I will put off for now proving the wickedness and madness of such an opinion, but now I will try to turn the research to what he literally wrote in order further, so that his errors will be revealed the first time. He says that (Christ) is not a perfect God with a perfect man. Hitherto he left in doubt which of those said he called imperfect, so that, due to the unclearness of the designation, the thought can apply equally to one and the other, and from what was heard, it is impossible to know who he considers imperfect - God or man, or whether he thinks the same about both. “He,” he says, “in spirit is God, possessing the glory of God, but in body he is a man who bore the inglorious image of man.” He named God, he also named man, but everyone knows that the meaning of these names is not the same, but that the word “Divinity” has a special meaning and a special meaning – “humanity”. For God is always the same guilt of all good things, which has always been and will never cease to be; Man, in some respects, has an affinity with the nature of the dumb, like them he lives with the help of flesh and sensations, but being separated from the dumb by the addition of the mind, in this he has a peculiarity of nature; for no one, defining a person, will define him by flesh, bones and sense organs; no one, speaking about the power of nutrition and digestion, will indicate in this the peculiarities of human nature, but the sign of a person is the ability to think and rationality. So, it is the same thing whether to designate nature by means of a name or by means of a feature belonging to nature; for whoever says: man, will point to rationality; whoever names rationality will use the same word to indicate a person. So Apollinaris, having named God and man, if by the (first) expression he understood all those signs that are revealed in the Divinity, then with the help of (his) interpretation he could not also destroy what is meant by the word man; but if a person is called, then, of course, this name is true, and not false; the truth of the name is expressed in the fact that he is a rational animal. And rationality, of course, comes from the mind, so if it is a man, then it is necessary and reasonable, but if it is not reasonable, then it is not a man. 23. “But in body,” he says, “there was a man who bore the inglorious image of man.” This he offers us from himself, and not from the teaching of Scripture. However, in order to turn these very words into the opposite of what he means, let us consider his words in this way. “He wore,” he says, “an inglorious human image.” Let us first see what the glory of a person consists of, and thus, from what follows from here, we will understand what dishonor is. The glory of man, that is, true glory, is, of course, living according to (the rules of) virtue; for only the effete tend to determine the glory or disgrace of people by the healthy complexion, or the freshness of the flesh, or, conversely, by the ugliness of the body. So, if virtue is considered glorious among people, then vice, of course, is inglorious. Meanwhile, Apollinaris says that God took on an inglorious human form. So, if dishonor is in vice, and vice is a shameful direction of arbitrariness, understanding wills, and understanding is a certain movement of the mind; it follows that whoever sees human dishonor in God cannot take away reason from the person through whom God lived human life. And this is in accordance with Divine Scripture, namely, that He became sin for our sake (2 Cor. 5:21), that is, He united with Himself the human soul capable (in itself) of sin (αμαρτικην). “The Lord,” he says, “appeared in the form of a slave,” but was this servant, whose form the Lord took upon himself, perfect or incomplete? For insufficiency and mutilation in relation to the fullness of a living being should rightly be called damage. “Not a man,” he says, “but “like a man,” because he is not one in essence with a man in His sovereign part.” If not of the same essence, then, of course, of a different essence; what has a different essence cannot have a common nature and name. One is a creature of fire and another of water, and both have different names. And Peter and Paul, since they have one nature, they also have a common name of being, for each of them is a man. So, if in essence (the Lord) was something else - not a man, but only apparently took on an image similar to a man, but in fact distinguished himself by nature, then he must say that everything was just some kind of illusory and deceptive dream; His eating was false, His sleep was false, all the miracles of healing were not significant, there was no cross, there was no position in the tomb, there was no resurrection after suffering; but everything appeared only ghostly, and, in the opinion of the writer, there was nothing of what was imagined. For if He was not a man, then how was it that was told about Him? How can anyone call someone who is alien to the human being a human? “He was not,” he says, “one of the same essence with man in terms of his sovereignty.” But whoever takes away the dominant part from a person, which is the mind, sees the rest as cattle, but cattle is not a person. Then he says: “lowly according to the flesh, but exalted from God to Divine heights.” Here again, besides wickedness, there is even more madness than in what was said before. One, he says, is humiliated, the other is exalted. The flesh, he says, is humiliated, although it had no need for humiliation at all, being humiliated by nature; The deity, he says, is exalted, although the highest does not need exaltation. So, where is the Divinity exalted, which surpasses everything and is above all exaltation? On the contrary, whether the author wants to admit it or not, what is humiliated by nature is elevated, as we discussed this a little higher in our discourse. 24. Like those who speak in a dream, he, abandoning consistency in reasoning, again uses our words in action and inserts into his speeches what someone sensibly reasoning about dogma could say. He distinguishes between that which is glorified and the one who has the glory. “He is glorified,” he says, “as a man, and had glory before the world, like God, who was before the world.” Until now he has been reasoning sensibly; if his words had been limited to this, perhaps someone would have thought that he, having repented, had reached thoughts more consonant with piety. But now, as if in some roundabout way bypassing this sound thought in his speech, he again returns to the field of error, and, having addressed us with many curses and equating us in teaching with Jews and Greeks, he again returns in his word to the vomit that he had previously spewed out with the help of vain speculations, inventing for Christ the eternal flesh and asserting that the Son who was born of Virgo, was the embodied mind; not having received flesh in the Virgin, but having passed through it as through a channel (παροδικως), He appeared in external image to be the same as before the age, that is, a god of flesh or, as he puts it, the incarnate mind. he says, and the crucified one is called “Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8) and “Lord of hosts”, according to the prophetic word (Is. 8:13); therefore, He also uttered such sayings, testifying to His self-sovereignty and dominion: “I speak to you” (Luke 7:14), “I command you” (Mark 9:25), “I do” (John 5:17) and many others with the same highest meaning. But what will this eminent man say, where he will place the nipples, the swaddling clothes (midwives), the ebb and flow of vitality, the gradual growth of the body, sleep, fatigue, submission to parents, melancholy, sorrow, the desire for Easter, the demand for water, eating, bonds, strangulation, wounds from scourges, wearing thorns on the head, putting on purple, beating with a cane, spear, octet, nails, bile, shroud, burial, coffin, stone? How will he attribute all this to God? For if his fleshly god was always what he appeared through Mary, and what was revealed to the eye was the Divinity, then the Divinity endures everything mentioned - sucks, swaddles, is fed, becomes tired, grows, is filled, spews out, sleeps, yearns, mourns, groans, feels thirst and hunger, comes in haste to the fig tree, does not know whether there is or is a time for fruit to be on the tree, does not know the day and hours, is beaten, endures chains, is strangled, pierced with nails, sheds blood, dies, is buried, is placed in a new coffin. Does he really agree to admit that all this is characteristic and natural of the eternal Divinity, that It would not have grown if it had not been fed by the breasts, and that It would not have been able to live at all if (with the help of) nutrition it had not compensated for the depletion of strength? How can his fleshly god not know that day and hour? How does he not know the time of figs - that at Easter it is impossible to find fruit on the tree suitable for eating (Mark 11:13)? Tell me, who is this ignorant? Who is this mourner? Who is in a helpless position? Who cries out that he has been abandoned by God? If the Divinity of the Father and the Son is one, then from whom did this abandonment, which He proclaimed on the cross, follow? For if the Divinity suffered (and those who think piously recognize that the Father and the Son have one Divinity), and if the sufferer says: “My God, my God, you have forsaken Me forever” (Matthew 27:46), then how the single essence of the Divinity is divided during suffering, and one part of it leaves, and the other is abandoned; one undergoes death, and the other remains in life; one is killed, and the other resurrects what was killed? Or will he not confess the unity of the Divinity of the Father and the Son and therefore appear as a champion of Arius? If, rebelling against Arius, he says that (the Divinity of the Father and the Son) is one, then he will in no way remain in agreement with himself, unable to maintain the fiction he has invented; These exclamations and states of mind, testifying to suffering and humiliation, he will of necessity attribute to human nature and agree that the divine nature, even when communicating with human suffering, remained unchanged and dispassionate. Apollinaris himself testifies to this, saying about Him that “he is glorified as a man, rising from (a state of) dishonor, and has glory before (the creation) of the world, like God, who was before the age.” For dishonor, of course, is a carnal nature subject to suffering, therefore, eternal glory is alien to suffering and immortal power. 25. And in order not to appear to us as slanderers in our words, I will convey literally the same thing, the meaning of which was stated by us. “Greeks and Jews,” he says, “obviously fall into unbelief, not wanting to hear that God was born of a woman.” Why, speaking here about birth, did he remain silent about the flesh, although “that which was born of the flesh,” of course, was “flesh,” as the Lord says nowhere (John 3:6)? Wanting to prove that the most born flesh is the Divinity and that God did not appear in the flesh, he says: “God, being in the flesh before the ages, was later born of a woman and came (to the world) to experience suffering and to raise the needs of (human) nature.” Saying this, he does not even recognize humanity in Him, but as a person he subjects Him to suffering, although he does not assimilate human nature to Him. For how can he be a man of whom he says that He is not from the earth? Scripture says that the human race originated from Adam, and he was the first to be produced from the earth by Divine power. Therefore, Luke, outlining the genealogy of the imaginary son of Joseph, calls Him “Adam” (Luke 3:38), connecting the beginning of His birth with the name of each of the forefathers. So, someone who does not come from the human race is, of course, something other than a person. If He is not a man, since He does not have a beginning belonging to the human race, and is not God, since He is not incorporeal, then what is this god in the flesh, invented by the author - let the disciples and supporters of his false teaching answer this. “But,” he says, “the Greeks and Jews would have accepted us if we had said that the one who was born is a divine man, like Elijah.” But which of the Greeks accepted the miracles that happened to Elijah as true; then, for example, that fire, having received a double image - the form of a chariot and the form of horses, moves in a direction contrary to its nature, namely, rushing from top to bottom, and that Elijah, rising on a fiery chariot, rules the fire and remains unharmed among the flames, and the fire entails fire, that is, the fire of horses - the fire of the chariot? For if anyone understands all this as it should, he will thereby open the way to accepting the mystery (incarnation), seeing in this story some kind of figurative prophecy about the incarnation of the Lord, prefigured by events. For just as fire, by its nature striving upward, by the power of God approaches the earth, and Elijah, engulfed in heavenly fire, which has again assumed its natural movement, and himself ascends with it, so the immaterial and formless essence (ουσια) - the Power of the Most High, having assumed the form of a slave, nature (υποςτασις), born of the Virgin, raised it to its own height, transforming it into a Divine and perfect nature. Thus, someone who does not believe this will not believe the miraculous events with Elijah; and having previously learned the truth, hiddenly depicted in his life, will not be hostile to this very truth. 26. Then he turns his abuse against us, who do not accept the fable he has composed, and says: “under cover of faith, those who do not believe in God, born of a woman and crucified by the Jews, are ashamed, like them, therefore He Himself will be ashamed of them.” Who doesn’t know that using a curse in the fight against opponents is typical only for those who are powerless to defend what they have in mind? But we only say that there are two abysses: on the one hand, the abyss (false teachings) of Apollinarius, and on the other, of Ariev, and that those who fall into one or the other equally have to be broken, with the only difference being that if you choose from two evils, then, it seems, in Arieva you can be broken less. For although both of them reduce the pure being of the Only Begotten to a humiliated state, Arius equates the Lord of the angels with the incorporeal angelic nature, proclaiming that they are equally lower than the uncreated nature, that both He and they came into being through creation. But this one drives him so mad that he recognizes Him as equal in honor with man, lower than the angels, and decides that His nature is carnal. But just as incorporeal nature is superior to bodies, so is the wickedness of Arius preferable to the error of Apollinarius. Who (of them is the most) non-believer, under the cover of faith, is the interpreter of the mystery (of the Incarnation) from the Virgin? I will propose to the general court our faith, ridiculed by this writer, and his own opinion. We say that God, being essentially immaterial, formless and incorporeal, according to some kind of human-loving economy at the end of the fulfillment of everything, when evil has already increased to the highest degree, to destroy sin he unites with human nature, like the sun penetrating into a dark cave and destroying the darkness with the appearance of light. For, having received our uncleanness into Himself, He Himself is not defiled by the uncleanness, but in Himself cleanses this uncleanness. For “the light,” it is said, “shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot comprehend it” (John 1:5). This also happens in healing. When treatment is applied to a disease, the disease disappears, but does not move into the medical art. This is our word. And he says that God was in the flesh from the beginning; and thus, the visible and tangible body, born in the last days, gradually increasing from the reception of human food, was the same that existed before all things, which created both people and every creature, visible and invisible; it is the same one that feels tired and with languor accepts the test of death. I don’t understand why this sage does not attribute any fatigue to the Creator when the heavens, earth and all the wonders of creation were created, but says that He was tired when He walked from Judea to Galilee! For the Israelites, He turned rocks into receptacles of water, and He Himself asks the Samaritan wife for a drink! For forty years he does not tire of waiting for heavenly food for so many thousands of people, but He Himself flows to the fig tree in hope of food that did not exist. If this is the opinion of the dogma of both of us, then let the intelligent listener judge for himself which of us is unfaithful under the cover of faith. 27. According to him, we say that the crucified man had nothing Divine in his nature, not even the most important thing - the name of the spirit. It is easy to defend against this slander by denying it. For if Apollinaris thinks that the spirit is the mind, then none of the Christians says that the man united with God was half, but in his entirety entered into union with the Divine power. Therefore, let anyone call the parts of a person whatever names he wants: whether mind, spirit, or heart; for in Scripture three names are given for the sovereign part in man, namely: “Create in me a pure heart, O God” (Ps. 50:12); and again: “a wise man will complete the building” (Proverbs 1:5); and again: “What is the message from man, even in man, even the spirit that lives in him” (1 Cor. 2:11). Therefore, He who was born is not deprived of either spirit, mind, or heart through the overshadowing of the power of the Most High and the influx of the Holy Spirit. So, the abuse does not apply to us, as if we are saying that this person does not have a spirit, that is, intelligence, but to the culprit of the abuse himself, showering us with the censures that come to him. For, calling the mind spirit and saying that the man Christ has no mind, he himself asserts that the Lord does not have a spirit. What other accusation is being made? According to him, we are wrong when we say that, in addition to his own nature, (that) man had something more in himself, namely the Divinity living in him. If he accuses him of this, we do not evade the accusation, being exposed to it together with the Apostle. Because we, taught by him, believe that the image of God, existing in the mind, in the form of a servant receives existence in appearance (Phil. 2:6-7). If the image of God is superior to the image of a slave, then, of course, what is revealed is not equal to what is hidden. So, what was seen in the flesh and treated people contained something superior to itself. This is what the writer charges us with as a crime against faith. But the Apostle also says that “in Him dwells all the fulfillment of the physical Divinity” (Col. 2:9). Having said: “in That,” he did not mean half of what was revealed, but by the very meaning of this word he embraced the entire subject. If the body in which the Divinity lived was human, and this body is not soulless; the distinctive part of the human spirit is the mind (for if it were separated, only, as we have often said, the bestial part would remain); then it follows that this noble man showers reproaches not on us, but on the Apostle, or, better to say, on that saying of the great John, which says that “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us” (John 1:14). He did not (said) to any part of our nature, but, by putting the plural, he designated everything that is thought in our nature; and first he separated the Word from the flesh, and then he united it, because the Word was original and was with God, and what God was, the Word was also, for He was God. But when “he came” and shone in the darkness, then “the Word became flesh” (John 1:11,14), by His power becoming flesh in the (womb) of the Virgin. So, let him stop blaspheming us, so as not to insult the saints at the same time. 28. Having omitted the middle of his reasoning, where he expresses the idea that those who think with him differently deny the mystery (of the incarnation), I will mention only one of the things that he said in his enthusiasm to slander us. He says that if we are not saying this (but something else), then “we must say that Christ did not exist before being born on earth, did not exist first of all, and was not even akin to God.” But we confess that He had existence before His earthly birth, although there is no doubt that His flesh was of earthly origin. And we reject the expression “to be akin to God”; not a single Christian would create an expression so humiliating and alien to the greatness of God, since it expresses the idea that the truly existing God is only akin to God, and is not the true God. Even Eunomius would not have refused such an expression of yours about the Lord, for even he, rejecting the truth of His Divinity, could call Him akin to God, just as those who believe in Him are made members of the body of Christ and partakers of Him; they are not the same thing as the Lord, but they participate in Him, and are called by the same name as the One in Whom they participate. Thus, blaming us for not saying this, in accordance with the confession of the pious, he himself testified to the piety and impeccability of what we said. For this, to prove that the flesh is Divinity, he adds the following to what was said before: “for who,” he says, “is holy from birth?” As if he had not read what was written by Jeremiah, about whom the Lord said: “Before I created you in the womb, I sanctified you” (Jer. 1:5). Scripture testifies that He is holy not only from birth, but also before birth. And the baby, leaping in his mother’s womb, joyfully received the voice of the kiss of the Mother of the Lord, and he was holy from birth, as the voice of an angel proclaims about him: “and from his mother’s womb he will be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:15). To what has been said, Apollinaris adds the following: “Who is wise without receiving instruction?” But we say that the wisdom of God, which is Christ, was not received from teaching, but is teaching, and we do not doubt that the part of our flesh, united with Divine wisdom, through communion received the benefit of wisdom; we do not doubt, being assured by the Gospel, which tells that “Jesus excelled in wisdom and in stature and in grace” (Luke 2:52). Just as in the body gradual growth is achieved until the full development of the nature through nutrition, so in the soul, progress in the perfection of wisdom is achieved by those who participate in it through exercise. “Who,” he says, “has the power to do the works of God?” With what childish conclusions he wants to belittle the ineffable greatness of the Lord! The power to do the works of God also belongs to people who have been rewarded with the power of God, such as, for example, Elijah, who arbitrarily brought down and stopped rain for people, sent fire on enemies, produced flour in an earthen vessel, created an abundance of oil in a chvantz, gave life to the dead with a breath, and performed many other miracles recounted about him in the word of God. Thus, to perform any miracles with the Divine power, which are in the power of God, does not exceed human nature, but to be the power that is the highest of all – this exceeds. We believe in this, and so do all who have received the word of God in truth. 29. And the incomprehensible distinction he added to this, which is subject to careful analysis on our part, we leave to the judgment of experienced people. For what did he want to express with the words: “distinguishing between actions according to the flesh and equalizing (actions) according to the Spirit”? He added this to the Gospel saying, which reads: “My Father is working hitherto, and I am working” (John 5:17). If anyone has the strength to defend what is senseless, let him defend these words and say with what thought he adds to the words just spoken similar expressions, which literally are: “who again receives equality in power and difference of activity according to the flesh, according to which he did not quicken all, but some whom he pleased.” Extracting the simple and unartificial thought of divine Scripture, we adhere to the given words (of Scripture) of such a concept. When we hear the Lord’s words: “The Father raises the dead and lives, so the Son also wills and lives” (Jn. 5:21), we do not understand this as if some are rejected by life-giving will, but since we both hear and believe that everything that the Father has belongs to the Son (John 16:15), then it is clear that in the Son we see the will of the Father, the same for all. If the will of the Father is in the Son, and the Father, according to the word of the Apostle, “wants to be saved by everyone, and to come into the understanding of truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), then, obviously, He who possesses everything that belongs to the Father, and wholly has the Father in Himself, has in Himself, along with other perfections of the Father, the desire to save. So, if He does not lack this perfect will, then, of course, it is clear that those whom the Father wants to give life to, He also gives life to, not yielding to the love of mankind, as Apollinaris thinks, saying that He wanted to give life not to all, but to some. For it is not the will of the Lord that is to blame for the fact that some are saved and others perish - otherwise the guilt of destruction would have to be attributed to it - but the salvation or destruction of some depends on the will of those who accepted the word (of God). To his speculations, he adds that “no one died or rose again of his own free will,” and, having said this, he cites the saying of the Gospel: “No one will take My soul from Me, the Imam will place it in the area, and the Imam will again accept the area” (John 10:18). What kind of soul, rational or irrational, would I ask those who attribute to God a soul that does not have a mind? If they say: unreasonable, then they admit that Christ was clothed with the nature of cattle, and not man, but if they say: rational, then how else do they represent understanding, if not reason? For reason is not sound without meaning, but the movement of thinking, the beginning and foundation of rationality. Therefore, he who calls the soul rational recognizes it as capable of understanding, and understanding is the movement and action of the mind. How would a mind that does not exist act if the soul of the Lord is considered to be devoid of mind? So, if the Lord has a soul that He accepts and posits at will, a soul that is not bestial and (not) unreasonable, but characteristic of the human composition, then, of course, we must admit that He has accepted a human soul and endowed with reason. 30. What kind of thing does he say about a grain dying, and then growing again with many grains? I will gladly pass in silence, because his words lean in our favor and confirm our thought. For what kind of grain is this that dies and in its resurrected ear, along with itself, awakens many grains to life? I don’t think that anyone is so ignorant of Divine dogmas as not to see from here that the mystery of suffering relates to man. The proof of what has been said is that we die together with Him, and are buried, and are raised together. For those who wish, it is easy to imitate what is similar (with them), but imitation of what exceeds us is inaccessible. Therefore, if death is subdued by the flesh, then it will be easier for us who live in the flesh to imitate death by death. And if the Divinity suffered death, then how will we, who are in the flesh, die together with the Divinity? The flesh dies and is resurrected with the flesh. If the Divinity has undergone this, as Apollinaris wants, then one must look for other deities who would die along with the Divinity and rise with it; for just as Christ died and rose again, so, according to the word of the Savior, so do we (1 Cor. 15:22; 1 Thess. 4:14). What are we by nature? God's power or blood and flesh, as Scripture says (Heb. 2:14)? Therefore, for our sake He shared our flesh and blood, He who became like us for our sake. So, that in our essence we are, the same was He who died for us, whose imitation is due to us, belonging to the same race with Him. The proof of the wickedness of that opinion, which asserts that the Divinity is mortal, is what takes place in ourselves. For in ordinary human death, what dies and decays? Is it not that the flesh is resolved into the earth, and the mind remains with the soul, not suffering any loss in relation to being from the destruction of the flesh? Proof of this is that the rich man remembers those on earth and prays to Abraham for his kinship. And no one will consider it crazy that, having experienced the inevitability (of judgment), he indulges in caring for those close to him. So, if our mind remains unharmed and unchanged even after death, then why is it appropriate for the three-part God of Apollinaria to undergo bodily death? How could He die or in any way be destroyed by death? For everyone knows that death is the mutual separation of the soul from the body, and how can the soul and mind be separated from themselves so that the soul can also accept death? So, if our soul is inaccessible to death, then how can it die? Let those who crush Christ into pieces answer this. 31. “They are troubled,” he says, “by the trouble of the disbelievers.” It is he who blasphemes us, calling us embarrassed and unbelieving, unquestioningly heeding the voice of the Gospel, which says: “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me: neither is My will, but Thine be done” (Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:42). To these words he adds his own of this kind: “and they do not remember,” he says, “that here we are talking about the own will not of man from the earth, as they think, but of God who came down from heaven.” Who would have thought of saying something like that? I’m not talking about any of them, proven heretics, but I think that the father of wickedness and lies himself will not invent anything more terrible for blasphemy compared to what is said. Does this writer understand what he is saying? God, who descended from heaven, rejects the Divine’s own will and does not want to go to the work that (It) “wants.” So the wills of the Father and the Son were divided. How can both have a common will? How will the difference in will reveal the identity of their nature? For it is absolutely necessary that the will be in accordance with nature, as the Lord says nowhere: “A good tree cannot produce evil fruits, nor an evil tree produce good fruits” (Matthew 7:18). And the fruit of nature is will, so that a good nature has a good will, and an evil nature has an evil will. Therefore, if the fruit of the will of the Father and the Son is different, then it is necessary to recognize that the nature of both is different. Why is he rebelling against Arius? Why does he not join Eunomius, who, dividing the nature of the Father and the Son, cuts along with the nature and will, and this primarily proves the difference in their essence, cutting off at the same time the very concept of Divinity from (the Son as) the lower before the higher. 32. Let us repeat what he said again: “they do not remember,” he says, “that here we are talking about the own will not of man from the earth, as they think, but of God who came down from heaven.” What kind of will is the writer talking about? Obviously, about something that the Lord does not want to be fulfilled, saying to the Father: “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). Does Apollinaris understand what a contradiction his speech falls into? Suffering is approaching, and the traitor has not yet arrived with the multitude (of the people), at that time this prayer takes place. Who prays, man or God? If he thinks that the one praying is God, then he sees in Him weakness, the same as human weakness. And what kind of God is He when He has nothing good in Himself, but needs higher help? Further, how does the Divine condemn His own will? Was it good or evil what He wanted? If it is good, then why is not what He desired brought to an end? And if evil, then what kind of communication does the Divine have with evil? But, as I said, (the writer) does not understand that his speech runs into a contradiction. For if the saying: “Not my will, but thine be done” belongs to the Only Begotten God, then this speech, due to some contradiction, revolves in itself and has no firmness. Because he who does not want his will to be fulfilled desires, of course, the same thing, so that what he desires does not come true. To what end will such a prayer lead: I want what I want not to come true? Obviously, (the prayer) will turn into a contradiction of what is desired, and the one listening to such a prayer will have to come into difficulty in relation to both (the meaning of the prayer). No matter what He does, the outcome of the prayer will always disagree with the desire of the person praying. Will he fulfill the will of the one praying? But he prays that what he desires will not happen. Won't get what you want? But the one who prays wants something to happen to him that he does not want; so no matter how you accept the prayer, it will not have a definite meaning, contradicting itself and destroying itself. For such difficulties presented by speech, there can be one solution - the true confession of the mystery, namely, that the fear of suffering is part of human weakness, so the Lord says: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41), and the raising of suffering according to the economy is a matter of God’s will and power. So, since one is a human will, and another is a Divine will, then He who has assimilated our weaknesses to Himself speaks one thing as a person - that which is characteristic of the weaknesses of nature, and after that he adds another saying as He who wanted to bring into execution for the salvation of people a high and worthy desire of God, higher than the desires of man. Having said: “not Mine” (will), He meant with this word (the will) of man, and by adding: “Your”, He pointed to communication with the Father of His own Divinity, which, according to the communication of nature, has no difference in will, for, speaking about the will of the Father, He also meant the will of the Son. And this will is that He “wills to be saved as a whole man, and to come into the understanding of truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), which could only be fulfilled through the trampling of death, which was an obstacle to life. And the Lord assimilates humble sayings expressing human fear and state (of fear) to Himself in order to show that He truly had our nature, through communion with (our) infirmities, assuring the reality of His human nature. 33. “But,” says Apollinaris, “what was received into union with Him did not belong to man from earth, as they think, but to God who came down from heaven.” In these words, the unsatisfactory and obscurity of the presentation misleads the sequence of thought of the one who follows what is written, unless the thought is completely obscured by the confusion of expression. He says that “these words signifying suffering do not belong to man from the earth, but to God who came down from heaven.” From what has been said so far, Apollinaris’s desire is clearly to affirm the idea that the Divinity is subject to suffering. And then he obscures the thought with absurd expressions. For, having said: “that which was received into union with Him,” he adds: “belonged to God who came down from heaven.” Translating this into clearer speech, another would say that it was not man who spoke thus, but through man, God spoke, having received a visible image into unity with Himself. Where was this man taken from? From the ground? He denies it. And if he had existence in heaven, then it was not from man. It remains to say: from nowhere, which asserts that what is visible (in Christ) was imaginary and not true, for what is from nowhere does not exist at all. But in the words he added, he calls this man descended from heaven. However, Mary was on earth, on earth there was a den, earthly and manger. How does he move a person from heaven to earth to us? While all Scripture confesses the Virgin, birth, flesh, swaddling clothes, breasts, mangers, the human way of life, Apollinaris, rejecting all this, invents in his work another person who has no origin and is not related to our nature. 34. However, the insults that he weaves among his speech, believing that the more he showers us with slander, the more he strengthens his absurd teaching, I think every sane person should despise and leave it to the attention of the readers to judge who the distorter of the apostolic faith is: we, who, according to the word of Paul, understood Christ according to the flesh, but now we do not understand (2 Cor. 5:16), or he, who constantly, both before and after the salvation of people, introduces his “fleshly god” into his speeches. He adds to this the blasphemy against Christ on the part of the Jews, namely the name of Him “eater and wine drinker” (Matthew 11:19), and says that this is necessary in a person. So, what kind of person is this, condemned by the Jews for food and drink? Did He use them or not? But if He did not consume, then He was only a ghost of a person, and if He did, then the food and drink He consumed was earthly, but the heavenly does not feed on earthly things. What a contradiction in absurdity! When judging the same object, what opposite extremes does he fall into! Either he represents Him who appeared in the flesh above human nature, or he places Him below people, depriving Him of the best side of human nature. For the best part in our nature is the mind, but the flesh in which God appeared, he says, did not have it. And this is clearly demonstrated in the following reasoning, in which, so that a detailed examination of the absurdities does not seem unnecessary to anyone, we will trace what he said only briefly. For, again filling his work with many insults, he directs such speech against us - he says that those who say that the unity of the flesh and the perception of man are one and the same are wrong. I, although my speech may seem somewhat rude, will not hide the truth that our language cannot accurately define either one or the other of the said sayings. For what difference there is between the unity of the flesh and the perception of man is not easy to explain close to understanding, because unity is understood in many different ways: in relation to number, species, nature, occupations and sciences, in relation to the properties of virtue and vice and the aspirations towards them. So, it is necessary for us to be explained what kind of unity of the flesh is meant here: with itself or with another. Also regarding human perception - how it happens, who, where, how, by whom and in what way it is perceived, and what precedes it is also unknown to us. Therefore, as long as he utters words about the mystery that are not dissolved by the Divine salt of Scripture, we will leave the overwhelming salt of external wisdom to be trampled upon by the faithful. Which of the evangelists spoke about the unity of the flesh? What apostolic scripture taught us literally this expression: “the perception of man”? What law, what prophets, what inspired word, what council decree passed on! is it? However, of these two sayings, one he attributes to us, and the other he calls his own, but which of them he appropriates to himself, we still do not know for sure. For we either internalize neither one nor the other, or both, because no difference can be found in any of them in relation to the other; and unity happens with something, and perception, of course, is the perception of something; each indicates a relationship to the other: both the perceiver is united with the perceived, and the united is united through perception. 35. But he says that we recognize two persons: God and man perceived by God, but he thinks and speaks differently: he calls him made flesh (σαρκωθεντα) and not different from the incorporeal, but one and the same in the likeness of our life in the flesh. Again he presents us with untenable reasoning in defense of his nonsense. His “fleshly” “god,” naturally, cannot be simple, because no one can imagine flesh to be simple, and what is not simple cannot but be complex; he says that (the Divinity) is one, just as each of us is one, consisting, in his words, of spirit, soul and body. Now for the first time we are introduced to a new type of number, having learned that divided into three different kinds of parts makes up one. But we postpone talking about the spirit he invented until another time. According to the simplest division of man known to us, which is accepted by many, we recognize that he consists of a rational soul and body. How can we call two one, when the Apostle clearly sees two people in each of us in the place where he says: “even if our outer man decays,” meaning the body, “however the inner man is renewed all the days” (2 Cor. 4:16), indicating the soul. Even if, according to Apollinaris, there were three people - two, of course, invisible, and one visible, then even then, no matter how much he asserted his opinion an example of our nature, calling two one, Paul refutes it, dividing man in a dual meaning. So, since he confirms his words with an example taken from human nature, then with the refutation of it, of course, what he said is also refuted. He says the following: “as man is one, consisting of spirit, soul and body...” I would like Apollinaris to first determine from what body, from where it was taken and when it was formed, and from what soul, whether rational and human. unreasonable, i.e. bestial, he thinks, this person is made up, and then he would put into him the rational part, which he calls something different from the spirit, in us calling the mind, and in him - God. For if the opinion about some kind of formation of a heavenly man in the likeness of an earthly one were recognized as previously proven by him, then we, taught by this new wisdom, would consistently come to the absurd fiction that the earthly race of people consists of a rational soul and body, but there is also a race of heavenly people in whom the soul is irrational, the body is human, and instead of the mind, God is mixed into the essence of the soul and body. Among these people is Apollinaris, who appeared on earth (the Lord). But since the existence of this kind of people has not been proven, and indeed they do not exist, and the one born of the Virgin is rejected as not even participating in our nature; then I consider it absurd and inconsistent to call something that is not a body a body, and a human soul to call something that is not a soul. For whoever does not recognize the soul as rational will, of course, not agree to recognize it as human. If this is not so, then what application does this tripartite division of man have, two parts of which are man, and the third is God? “For,” he says, “he would not have been in the likeness of man if he had not been intellect clothed with flesh, like man.” Whether He, in whom God reconciled the world to himself, was deprived of his mind, I cannot say, but that the one who wrote this was out of his mind at the time he wrote this, about this, if I do not say, his very writings will cry out. How can He who is something other than man, completely different from our nature, become like a man? For if a person consists of a rational soul and body, and in the person he invented there is neither body nor soul, then how can something that is alien to our nature take on the likeness of a person? But he does not call him a man, but says that he was like a man without a mind, clothed in flesh. These words convince me of the madness of those who wrote them. How can something that is not at all involved in nature become like any nature? And what kind of mind is this, clothed with flesh, closely united with it, not separated from it, but always remaining so? Isn't that what he comes from? For the flesh cannot be born otherwise than from the flesh, as the Savior says somewhere that “what is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3:6). Or does it become so later? But what kind of flesh does he put on and appear in the flesh? Is it the one that exists? But she comes from the same flesh. Or to a non-existent one? But then he cannot be called having flesh (ενσαρκος), because he could not borrow this name from a non-existent. 36. But let us see the irresistible force of his syllogisms, by which he persuades us to agree that the Only Begotten God is the incarnate mind. “If,” he says, “the Lord is not the incarnate mind, then He is wisdom.” This is an insurmountable situation! One of two things, he thinks, is certainly the Lord: either the incarnate mind, or wisdom, therefore, he says, it is necessary for Him to be that, if this latter is not the latter, that if He is not the incarnate mind, then everything that is not the incarnate mind is wisdom. So what is a stone? What's a bug? What are the other objects that appear to us? Of course, one of two things will be said about them: that they are either the incarnate mind or wisdom, but neither of them is either mind or wisdom. Consequently, the position of our writer collapsed, and all false thinking fell apart, as soon as the destruction of the foundation fell along with all his conclusions. For there is nothing to prove that these concepts have such a sharp opposition to each other that where one is, there is no other, or, conversely, where one is not, there is certainly another; but nothing prevents both from being together or neither. And from the opposite side we will also see the inconsistency of this position. If it is accepted as true that if He is not the incarnate mind, then He is wisdom, then what follows from the opposite will also be true, namely, if He is wisdom, then He is not the incarnate mind. But everyone who professes faith recognizes that Christ is wisdom, therefore, according to the position of the sage (this one), it is necessary to admit that He is not the incarnate mind; So, by both sides of the evidence - the first and the second, and by what he now said to confirm his opinion, the writer himself proves that the Lord is not the incarnate mind. Such is the situation - such is the mediating proof, worthy of both and the conclusion, which says: “The coming of Christ to us was not the coming of God, but the birth of man.” Let the proud laugh at these words, but we, finding it more fitting to mourn the falsity of what was said, refuse to further denounce this teaching, so as not to appear mocking. For who would not justly laugh at an incoherently constructed syllogism? But I will present his very words in order; they are as follows: “if the Lord is not the incarnate mind, then He will be the wisdom that enlightens the mind of man, but it is also found in all people. If this is so, then the coming of Christ is not the coming of God, but the birth of man.” That the Lord is wisdom that surpasses all understanding, none of the pious men, guided in this by the words of the holy fathers and apostles, will deny. For Paul clearly cries out that Christ “has become unto us wisdom from God” (1 Cor. 1:30); we also hear from the lips of the Apostle that “the saving grace of God has appeared to us,” teaching us to reject “ungodliness,” and through holiness and righteousness to expect the “blessed hope” (Tit. 2:11-13). But that the only-begotten God, who is above all, through all and in all, is the incarnate mind - we have not heard this from any of the saints and will not allow this strange and new teaching to be introduced into the Divine Scriptures, especially bearing in mind the goal of this new writer, who, with the help of this disgusting false thinking, wants to overthrow the confession of the wisdom of the Lord, as we believe, which makes every mind wise, and in its place introduce a strange and new teaching, that the Only Begotten should be called intellect incarnate, and not wisdom. “For if,” he says, “we begin to believe that the Lord is wisdom, precisely that which is found in all who receive grace, then we must admit that the coming of Christ to us is no longer the coming of God,” as if it were alien to the wisdom of God. So, who will not regret the madness of this man? If, he says, we begin to believe that Christ is wisdom, then His coming “who received wisdom from God” (1 Cor. 1:30) will not be the coming of God, but the birth of man. If He were wisdom? Have you not heard the Prophet who proclaims: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son” (Is. 7:14), and: “of a child we are born,” and that the Son has authority on His frame, that He is strong and mighty and the Father not only of the past, but also of the future? (Isaiah 9:6). 37. But let us omit these dream-like nonsense, in which he proclaims that Christ should be called the incarnate mind, and not enlightening wisdom, and that His appearance into our lives did not take place through birth. Let's look at another conclusion. “If,” he says, “the Word was not the incarnate mind, but wisdom...” Here again, on what basis does this sage contrast the mind with wisdom as opposite objects? Those who carefully distinguish between things say that oppositely named objects in their mutual presence eliminate each other, as for example, life is death, and death is mutually life, vice is virtue, and the latter is the former, and everything else related in the same way. So, how does he, like opposite objects, oppose the mind to wisdom, as if it were impossible for both of them to be together in one and with the same object? For, “if He,” he says, “was not the incarnate mind, then wisdom,” just as someone would say, if there is no health, then illness. How does he prove his point? “If,” he says, “there was wisdom in the mind, then the Lord did not condescend to us and did not exhaust himself.” The proof is irrefutable! How, on the basis of the fact that the Lord was wisdom, he asserts that He did not come down to us. So, if, on the basis of the fact that the Lord is wisdom, one rejects His descent (to earth), then, recognizing it, one must necessarily affirm that He is not wisdom. But Apollinaris recognizes the descent of the Lord, therefore, he must admit at the same time that He is not wisdom. Such are the wise arguments of this glorious (writer) against the truth! Then, without a consistent connection, he adds to this position a conclusion of this kind that does not follow from the established grounds: “therefore there was a man, for man, according to Paul, is a mind in the flesh.” I ask readers not to think that we ourselves are writing this on behalf of Apollinaris as a joke, for laughter; You can find out from his writings themselves that these words were spoken by him literally as they are. So, in which Paul is a person called the incarnate mind? Let him tell us what other secret Paul has. For “Paul the servant of Jesus Christ, called an Apostle” (Rom. 1:1), did not say anything like that in all his writings. So, if neither the requirement of consistency nor (any) evidence confirms this teaching, then how can this strange fabrication of dogmas have credibility? To what has been said he adds another thought: “since,” he says, “this earthly man was a man and (moreover) a heavenly one...” But again, I say, he forgot about Mary, to whom Gabriel preaches, upon whom, as we believe, the Holy Spirit descended, upon whom the power of the Most High overshadows, from whom Jesus is born, having the rulership on his frame, that is, bearing the Beginning in Himself. The beginning, of course, is God the Word, who exists in the beginning, and who is (Himself) the Beginning, as the word of Scripture says somewhere: “I am the beginning” (Apoc. 1:8). So, let him either prove to us that the Virgin was not on earth, or stop inventing a heavenly man and not be afraid for ordinary people that they are sinning against the Divine; as if accepting (in Christ) humanity, they cannot at the same time recognize the Divinity in Him. For birth from a wife is a human matter, but the Virgin, who served this birth, revealed a superhuman matter; so that what is born of her is man, and the power to be born is not from man, but from the Holy Spirit and the power of the Most High. So, according to true understanding, He is both man and God - in the visible, man, in the intelligible, God. But in conclusion he does not say so, asserting that the Divinity is in the visible, and not in the intuited. 38. But let’s move on to his further conclusion. “If,” he says, “with God, who is the mind, the human mind was in Christ...” This is the first position! And we contrast what has been said with this: which of the saints defined the Divinity as the mind? From what scriptures do we know that the Divinity is the same as the mind, in order to recognize as the truth what he said, that man in Christ had no mind, but God is a mind for one without a mind? This offensive conclusion should be completely written out, but I am afraid that the readers will not consider us to be some kind of scoffers, as if we are exposing the writer’s ugliness to ridicule. However, so that this situation does not remain without a conclusion, I consider it necessary to give one conclusion, throwing away the rubbish that is placed in the middle. “If,” he says, “with God, who is the mind, there was also a human mind in Christ, then the work of incarnation in Him is not completed. If the work of incarnation is not accomplished in a self-motivated mind that is not forced by anyone, then this work, which is the resolution of sin, is accomplished in flesh moved by another and brought into action by the Divine mind; Our self-motivated mind participates in this resolution to the extent that it unites itself with Christ.” Look how these conclusions correspond to the first position! Perhaps, to explain these mysterious dreams, we need some kind of clairvoyant and soothsayer to tell us what these new sayings mean: “the self-moving mind, and moved by others, the flesh doing the work of resolution.” But let’s leave this to the ridicule of unbridled youth, and let’s move on to what follows in his essay. “If,” he says, “one acquires something more than another, then this is done through exercise, and in Christ there is no exercise, therefore (in Him) there is no human mind.” How does he not remember the inspired Scripture? What exercise taught Bezaleel the art? Where did Solomon know so much? “Robbing the buttocks” (Am. 7:14), Amos, being one of the shepherds, how did he receive such great power in prophecy? And yet none of the men mentioned came down from heaven, was not in the beginning and was not equal to God. 39. But let us also remain silent about the following conclusion, especially since it has similarities with the previous conclusion, which is literally this: “So the human race is not saved by the perception of the mind and the whole person, but by the reception of the flesh.” This is his conclusion, and let those who study grammatical subtleties explain the difference between perception (αναληψις) and acceptance (προσληψις) in order to teach young men to easily recognize the insignificant difference between those particles of speech that are called prepositions. For we think that he who is accepted is accepted and he who is accepted is accepted, having learned this use of these words from Scripture: “You have received me with glory” (Ps. 72:24), says David, and in another place: “David chose his servant, and they accepted him” from his father’s sheep (Ps. 77:70). So, he who is received with glory is received, and he who is received from the flock is received. Apollinaris uses two expressions about the same thing, so that he himself can hardly say what he means when he says that it was not by perception, but by acceptance that the Only Begotten accomplished the mystery of incarnation. I, fearing not to bury his speech in the mud of incoherent words, omit most of his idle talk, considering the most literal presentation of what he wrote sufficient to expose the absurdity of his teaching; so that anyone who wants to attack this heresy with special force would not so much expose its absurdity with his evidence as his own words expose it; because, trying to prove a lie, he clearly reveals the wickedness of his teaching by the weakness of his defense. “For,” he says, “if a perfect God were united with a perfect man, then there would be two.” Consequently, the imperfect in connection with the perfect is not taken by him as two. Has this famous husband never seen children, who, when counting the fingers on his hand, the small one together with the large one, the smaller one is called one and the larger one, but they say that there are two of them if they count both together. For every number is the addition of units, meaning in general the sum made up of them. Although a number, whatever it may be, from a connection with another number increases in number in size compared to the smaller one, however, the smaller number will also be one, although it will be inferior in size to the larger one. So, when we take two numbers of equal size, we call them two perfect, but when we combine the smaller with the larger, we also call them two, but one is insufficient, and the other is perfect. But this man, strong in arithmetic information, if he has in front of him two objects that are perfect in nature, says that they are called that way - two; if one object is flawed and the other is perfect, then he says that both are one; I don’t know how to connect the imperfect with the perfect and invent unity between objects that are incompatible in their opposite properties. For the perfect is with the perfect, and the imperfect with the imperfect is rather united by its similarity, but how can there be a unity of the opposite with the opposite, that is, of the imperfect with the perfect, let the compiler of the rules of this new arithmetic tell us. 40. But he considers it indecent to recognize a human mind in the Only Begotten God and puts forward the reason that the human mind is changeable. But for the same reason it should not be attributed to God. and (perception of) the flesh, for the writer himself will not contradict the fact that it is changeable, like clothing changes with different ages from youth to adulthood. And how can one be unchangeable, who was first carried in the arms of his mother, then was in adolescence, then in youth, and thus, little by little achieving perfection, finally came to the measure of the full age of man? So, if the mind is rejected because of changeability, then for the same reason the (perception of) the flesh should not be attributed to Him, and thus, according to the judgment of Apollinaris, the entire Gospel turns out to be false, preaching will be in vain and our faith will be in vain (1 Cor. 15:14). If he does not reject faith in the appearance of Christ in the flesh and, moreover, in this changeable one, then for the same reason, of course, he cannot reject the mind (in Him). But just as He, being in the flesh, was not defiled, so, having assumed the mind, He did not change into something else. I will speak about this subject again, having first stated his words literally. “Consequently,” he says, “the human race is saved not through the perception of the mind and the whole person, but through the acceptance of the flesh, which by its very nature tends to be under control; What is needed (for him) is an unchangeable mind, which would not submit to it due to weakness of knowledge, but would adapt it to itself without any violence.” Who does not know that someone who needs help is completely different in nature from someone who has no need for anything else; and that which by nature has the power to govern is different from that which by nature has the power to govern? In the same way, due to the difference in essence, it has been established that the nature of the dumb is subordinate to human nature, and man has this power over the dumb, not acquired, but essentially belonging to him. So, if the nature of the flesh is such that it must be governed, as Apollinaris says, and power by nature belongs to the Divine, then how, allowing this, believes that both are from the beginning one by nature; when everyone knows that the subordinate has a different essence and the superior has another, and that the other is that which is natural to be under control, and the other is what is natural to be governed? So, if in one and the other of these. that is, in the flesh and in the Divinity, opposite properties are seen, then how do these two natures constitute one? How does he clothe the Word with some Divine and heavenly flesh? Even more, he represents this Word with flesh before (the incarnation), as if It did not take on our image in the last days according to the dispensation, but has always been such and always remains in the same state. For whoever says that the flesh needs the unchangeable and requires a leader, points directly to our flesh, which, due to the changeability of nature, fell into sin. And if in the Word some kind of heavenly and divine (as he says) body is seen, then from this, of course, it follows that he does not attribute to Him any changeability or need for a leader; not ours, but the Divine voice, which says that “they do not require the health of a doctor, but the sick” (Matthew 9:12). For in heaven there is no disease (originating) from sin, but we, sick with sin, suffering from hereditary evil, because of our inclination towards evil, we had a need for the Unchangeable, having lost our way from the path of salvation, we demanded a Guide for good; so if the writer actually ascribes to the flesh of the Lord that which by nature is inherent in it to be subordinate to another and to need an unchanging leader, then in his speech he means nothing else but our composition. If he limits the Divinity by the flesh, and the Divinity, while It is what it is called, does not need another leader, because it does not allow change and change for the worse, then in vain he rants about what he has now said about the flesh; for if it is somehow divine, then it is obvious that it is not changeable, but if it is changeable, then, of course, it is not divine. 41. So, who can trace this confused but untenable fabrication of teachings, never constant, but like sleepy dreams appearing now one way or another? Sometimes he calls the flesh of the Word divine and co-eternal with Him, sometimes acquired and received; then he says that she has a nature completely different from ours, passionate and mortal; then again he imagines her as possessed by the weakness of change and change and in need of a guide, and for this purpose he deprives her of her mind so that she can be healed by the Divine; considering the mind as an obstacle to Divine providence for people and (believing) that God is more pleased with a creature devoid of mind. So, he thinks that it is more blessed not to have a mind, if, as he says, God accepts what is devoid of mind. Why doesn’t he correct Solomon, who says that “a wise man will build a building” (Proverbs 1:5)? I think that by tributary fortune-telling we are not talking about any other construction, as about our nature, overwhelmed by evil and shipwrecked, but through the care of the true Helmsman, the Divine will is directed to the pier. So, if a person is saved by deprivation of his mind, then how can a rational person achieve construction? And what should the Divinity be closer to by nature? With what does our thought presuppose more reciprocity in the Divine nature? The flesh is something rough and hard and has an affinity with earthly nature, and the mind is something spiritual, intangible and without outline. Which of them turns out to be more capable of uniting with God: that which is rough and earthy, or that which is intangible and has no outline? And how does the flesh unite with God, without violence, as he says, becoming a participant in pure virtue? For who does not know that virtue is what the will rightly does? The flesh is an instrument of the will, adapted to the aspirations of the mind and directed towards what the driving force (its principle) prompts; and will is nothing more than a certain mind and disposition towards something. So, if he says that a person in whom there is no mind participates in pure virtue, then what will it be (in him) to voluntarily perceive virtue? Does the writer understand that what he acts under compulsion does not tolerate any coercion? For if the body, not as a result of good aspiration and the consent of the mind, is removed from bad actions, then the correctness of action will be a matter of necessity, and not of free will, and the one who chooses good after discussion in thought is above all necessity and violence, because in himself he has a disposition for the best. So, how does the writer attribute ease to something that is deprived of the opportunity to make a choice, in which there is no personal reflection that would guide him to good? For sinlessness, which does not depend on arbitrariness, of course, does not deserve praise; So we do not praise those who are restrained from committing evil deeds by bonds, who are stopped from committing evil deeds rather than disposition. “But,” he says, “the Divine, without any violence, assimilates flesh to itself,” that is, he calls what is not violated voluntary. But how can something that does not have its own will acquire virtue voluntarily? For to choose and desire, to choose what is useful and reject what is harmful - all this is a matter of reason, and those without reason cannot reason. So, if the flesh does not forcibly assimilate itself to God, then the writer testifies that it is not deprived of the ability to make a choice and, not without reasoning and prudence, strives for what is useful for it; and no one would call this kind of (creature) devoid of intelligence, for how can there be any understanding in something unreasonable? Thus, by saying this, the writer agrees that not only does a person have intelligence, but it is also superior to others. For an arbitrary and spontaneous desire for good testifies to the perfection of the mind; and that the assimilation of the best is a matter of reason, this is best proven by the following words, which are literally as follows: “giving,” he says, “pure virtue to every subordinate mind!..”. So, if the mind sees the purity of virtue, then how does the flesh, in which it sees (this) purity, deprive it of the mind? One of two things must necessarily be flawed in his word: either the mind participates in virtue, or the flesh, which assimilates virtue without coercion, has no mind. 42. And what he adds further without consistency and connection with the previous one, I consider it unnecessary to examine in detail. His words are of this kind: “and to all,” he says, “who are like Christ in mind and do not differ from Him in the flesh...” What the abomination of these words means, let those who revere this error study, but we will move on to what follows next. “And if God, perfect with perfect, were united with man,” he says, “there would become two, one the Son of God by nature, and the other by adoption.” With pleasure I would like to know from those who recognize this teaching: if they call a person who has intelligence and is perfect an adopted son, then what will they call a madman (ανοητον), for that is, of course, what they call a person who does not have intelligence? For the Only Begotten God, being in Himself without any defect and perfect, is called Son because nature itself assures the truth of this name; what is the name of the additions of a half-perfect man? For if, according to Apollinaris, a perfect man is called an adopted son, a half-perfect man, to what extent he is a man, will obviously be called a half-adopted son, since he has only half the name of an adopted son, so that, to be more precise, the adopted one is this perfect man, and this (half-adopted) is deprived of half of the tripartite composition by the will of those who divide a person into such small parts. But if it is indecent for God to have an adopted son, then, of course, it is equally indecent regarding both the perfect and the imperfect, and especially and most of all it is indecent to have him in a curtailed form. Because if even the best in human nature, in comparison with the Divine, seems to be something insignificant and far from a worthy concept of God, then it would be much more shameful to see a distorted nature with it. For the flesh is no closer to the nature of the Father because it is not the mind; but as far as nature is concerned, both the whole man and part of him are equally far from the essence of the Father; and neither one nor the other of what is in us - neither the mind nor the body - has a correspondence with the all-surpassing Nature in its very essence. Even if the fable (Apollinaria) invented for the Divinity some kind of heavenly form of flesh, nevertheless no one sane would agree to recognize this flesh as consubstantial with God and the Father. If the flesh is alien to the essence of the Father, then how can something alien to the Father be the Son? For it is absolutely necessary that the one who truly exists from someone should be in essence the same as the one who begat him. But the Father is not flesh, therefore what comes from Him, of course, will not be flesh, for what is born of the spirit is called spirit, and not flesh. Therefore, if the flesh is not from the Father, then it is not the Son (His). So, what should we call (this flesh)? Whatever name they come up with for this heavenly flesh invented by the author, we, acting consistently, will give the same to the flesh received from people, and whatever name they call ours (the flesh), that one will be called the same. The earthly body is not the Son, and, of course, neither will this (heavenly) one be the Son; What is earthly is an adopted son, and so will what is heavenly; two sons here, two, of course, there; one Son in this (heavenly) is flesh and Divinity, the same here (in the earthly). since all creation is equally far removed from the Divine essence, then both heavenly and earthly things must be recognized to the same extent as alien to the nature of the Father. It remains that the most reasonable thing to think about God is that which corresponds to the purpose of His love for mankind, and not to seek any special name for Him, but to name it according to that (property) that is abundant and predominant in Him. As happens at the sea, if someone puts a drop of vinegar into the sea, and this drop becomes the sea, changing in quality into sea water; so the true Son and Only Begotten God, unapproachable light, original wisdom, and sanctification, and power and everything that is high in name and concept, remains the same, having appeared to people in the flesh. since the flesh, being flesh by its nature, was transformed into a sea of ​​corruption (as the Apostle says, “the dead will be consumed with the belly” (2 Cor. 5:4)), then with it everything that then appeared as carnal was changed into the Divine and immortal nature; neither heaviness, nor appearance, nor color, nor hardness, nor softness, nor outline in size, nor anything else visible in it then - nothing remains; because, as a result of admixture with the Divine, the humiliation of the carnal nature is accepted into the communion of Divine properties. So, there is no danger for us to expand the concept of the Trinity to a quaternity, as Apollinaris says, and we do not enslave angels to man, as he says about us. For they do not serve man, bowing before the Lord, and are not ashamed to worship Him who appeared to the universe in the flesh. For the Scripture says: “When he again brings the Firstborn into the universe, he says: And let all the angels of God worship him” (Heb. 1:6). But there is only one entrance into the universe - through birth, and there is no other way to enter human life than through this entrance. That is why the word (of God) calls His birth in the flesh the entrance into the universe. So, if He, who entered the universe, is worshiped by all the angels, and His entry is birth in the flesh, then it is not we who submit to the Lord His own acquisition, but the very nature of the angels does not remain ignorant of the highest dominion. So, let him who speaks these empty words be silent, as if we are making things that are above to be below us, that we are enslaving God-bearing angels to God-bearing man. 43. To this Apollinaris adds the following: “if he who accepts God is the true God, then there would be many gods, because many accept God.” What do we say to this? That “God is in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19), the great Paul is a reliable witness to this. If the writer thinks that we introduce many gods into our teaching, because, confessing that God in Christ reconciles the world to himself, we admit that God was in other people in the same way; then we will say the following: if there were many mothers of virgins, and to many there was a revelation of the mystery (incarnation) by Gabriel, and over each there was the influx of the Holy Spirit and the presence of the power of the Most High; if the prophets preach the sermon about grace to many, so that in the plural they say: unto us children are born, and unto us sons are given, and (they say): virgins shall conceive, and the name of all those born by them shall be Immanuel; if everyone walks with their feet on the waves and with unspeakable strength feeds so many thousands in the desert, multiplying the bread to satiation, growing in the hands of the disciples; if all four-day dead are raised from their graves; if all be lambs of God and the Passover sacrificed for us (1 Cor. 5:7), and they nail sin to the cross, and destroy the power of death, and in the sight of the disciples they ascend into heaven and sit at the right hand of the Father; if everyone comes to judge the universe in truth, and the names of all are confessed by the tongues of heaven, and earth, and hell, then we admit that there are many gods, that is, if these signs will belong to many. But if there is one Lord Jesus, through whom are all things, if “from Him, and by Him, and in Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36), and to Him alone are related so many concepts befitting God, then is there any danger in inventing many gods when we say that God appeared in the flesh, having a (human) soul? For what was visible in Him was a man who was so ignorant of the Gospel teachings as not to know what the Savior himself said to the Jews: “Now you seek to kill Me, a man who told you the truth” (John 8:40)? Do you see that in these words the Savior indicated what was being killed, saying: “You seek to kill Me” - not the truth, but “a man”, through whom the truth spoke? For it was not man who spoke the truth, but it is clear that he who spoke the truth was God, and man mediated in conveying what he said to people in his own language, which is why he became a mediator between God and people; since human nature cannot enter into direct communication with God and therefore has a need for a voice akin to Him by nature, through which it could assimilate the heavenly power. But we must leave this and turn our speech to the next one. “Nothing,” he says, “is so united with God as perceived flesh.” Here is a cautious saying! Nothing is so united with God as the flesh: neither goodness, nor eternity, nor incorruptibility, nor omnipotence, nor any other of the concepts befitting God, but all this is lower than the flesh due to the union with God and the unity of God with the flesh, although after acquired. This is precisely what the author admits, for by calling the flesh perceived, he indicated that it is something that has come afterward. 44. But let us pass over in silence what follows (from him) further, since in the very thing he said there is proof of the inconsistency of fabulosity, and it is harmless to readers. For, supposing that none of the properties attributed to God is united with the Lord in the same way as the perceived flesh is united with Him; he drew the conclusion that what is not so united should not be so revered, then he adds the (final) conclusion: “and nothing is worthy of such worship as the flesh of Christ.” We intend to remain silent about this absurdity, as it is obvious even to children. For even children sitting in the streets and playing games will say that if nothing deserves such worship as the flesh, then the flesh of Christ should be honored more than the very majesty of the Father, His almighty power and dominion over everything and everything else that our nature can utter about Divine power; so that, having abandoned the worship of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we must honor and worship the flesh alone, which is preferable to everything else, and attribute omnipotence to it. His next reasoning is similar to the previous ones: “the flesh of the Lord is worshiped, since there is one person and one living creature with Him.” Having mentioned two objects: the Lord and the flesh of the Lord, he made one living being from these two (objects). Now it is clearly revealed what the title of his work means, in which he promises to teach us the doctrine of divine existence in the flesh in the likeness of man. since when the soul and body are united, human life is made up of the mixture and communication of these heterogeneous (essences), and no one can define our composition otherwise than by the union of soul and body, then, having imagined the same about the Divine nature, the writer immediately in the title of the work promises to show that the Divinity must also be imagined in the likeness of man in the flesh; and now in this part of the work he clearly tries to prove that the flesh and the Lord are one person and one living being, the same as saying that what is visible in Paul, due to the close connection of the soul with the body, is identical with the invisible in him. Should his words be examined in detail and refuted? And who has no right to accuse us of unreason if we dwell on the speculations he invented? So, let's move on to the following: “if,” he says, “no creature is worthy of such worship with the Lord as His flesh...” Who will be able to resolve the dispute between Apollinaris and Eunomius about primacy in wickedness? Which of them will be considered worthy of rewards for their great deeds against the truth? Perhaps, with equal forces and their equal zeal for wickedness, victory between both will remain unresolved. For this one, calling the Only Begotten God a creature, does not deny that He is gifted with intelligence and is alien to the corporeal nature, but he, presenting Him from the beginning as complex from two different natures, proves that He is one of flesh and Divinity, like human nature, a composite living being. So, they both equally worship the creature, but Eunomius says that it was created rational and incorporeal by nature, and he also adds that this creature has a corporeal nature and that this latter is worthy of greater worship than other creatures, as if allowing the worship of other creatures, which zealous admirers of the teachings of Eunomius recognize as impiety. So let him receive the reward for the victory over Eunomius and let him triumph, adorned with the crowns of wickedness. For to the extent that in human nature the body is lower than the soul, to that extent among those who worship creatures, he who legitimizes the worship of the flesh in the reasoning of wickedness is more senseless than those who worship a rational creature, especially if he considers other creatures worthy of worship, among whom the flesh deserves comparatively more worship. For “no creature,” he says, “is worthy of such reverence as the flesh of the Lord.” All beings that we recognize as created, whether they have flesh or incorporeal, are equally low before the power of God, but in relation to themselves, some have more merits, others less, so that the nature of incorporeal beings has inequality in comparison with the sensory and bodily nature. So, to the extent that Eunomius and Apollinaris consider the creature worthy of worship, in the reasoning of wickedness they are equivalent and equal, but he who ascribes an advantage to the flesh over the spiritual nature has more advantages in wickedness. Let the students of this false teaching know with whom and what their teacher is arguing about! 45. But let’s look at further fetters, in the words of the teacher Apollinariev himself, which he puts on the readers in a continuous chain of syllogisms. “If,” he says, “who thinks that man is united with God above all men and angels...” One should also find the meaning in these words, but to look for some internal meaning in the given sayings, I don’t say the correct one, but at least something that proves an ungodly teaching, it would mean the same as looking for a soul in a stone or a mind in a tree. The nonsense of what he said is especially proven by the connection of speech: “he,” he says, “will deprive angels and men of free will, just as flesh is deprived of it. Deprivation of freedom is death for a free living being; but the Creator does not destroy the nature He created, therefore, man is not united with God.” O what power of evidence! What insoluble webs of syllogisms! Union with God destroys the free will of men and angels, and deprivation of freedom becomes death for a living being endowed with freedom, and as soon as this is recognized, it is proven that man is not united with God! Do ventriloquists say anything like that? Do those who proclaim from the earth and who have learned to make magical sounds from within themselves prophesy something similar? Free will is destroyed in people and angels if human nature is united with God. Wasn’t He the One who said: “Now you are seeking to kill Me, a man who told you the truth” (John 8:40)? Did He really not have unity (ανεκραθη) with the Divine nature, He Who showed Divine power in Himself, freely doing whatever He pleased? But if this was not in Him, then the Gospel testimony will be rejected, Paul, the prophets and all those who foretold miracles about the Lord, as well as those who narrated what happened after, were completely convicted of lies. If this really happened, and God appeared in the flesh, and the flesh, uniting with the Divine nature, became one with Him, then from here, according to his pietistic fable, it follows that free will perished in human nature, the angels became slaves, deprived, because this happened, of the blessing of freedom! O unheard of teaching! What is also the conclusion - to say: “and the loss of spontaneous action is the death of a free living being.” Does he really not count servants among living beings, because they, being under the authority of masters, do not spontaneously dispose of life? The author defines a living being by the spontaneity of its activity, and he does not order anyone who does not have independent action of will to be considered even a living being. So, (in his opinion) this Canaan became dead when he became a slave of his brothers for disrespect, the servant of Abraham was dead, Gehazi, the youth of Elisha, was dead, and in subsequent times Onesimus was dead, and all the centurions who were under the authority of others were dead. And what can we say about this? All those who are subordinate to the power of their superiors and (those) whose free will encounters obstacles are dead. Even those whom Paul commands to obey the powers that be (Rom. 13:1), of course, are dead, although they have a soul, because, not having complete freedom, they perished and can no longer be living beings. For this is required by Apollinarius’ fable, invented by him for the purpose of uniting this soulless flesh with God, Who is above everything; and whether this flesh is deprived of soul or mind - this fable has the same meaning in both cases. A body without a soul is a dead thing, and what has a soul without a mind is cattle; which absurdity he himself does not avoid, depriving this flesh of free will, because it is common for (one) irrational animals not to control themselves, but to submit to the power of man. 46. ​​But let’s leave this aside and move on to what follows further in his work; for the sake of brevity, I will present the enemy’s opinion in my own words. He says that man consists of three parts: “spirit, soul and body,” as the Apostle teaches this in the Epistle to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 5:23), then he cites the following part of the song of the three youths: “bless the souls and souls of the righteous” (Dan. 3:86), then the expression: serve the Lord with the spirit (Rom. 1:9), and adds the words of the Gospel, which They teach that those who worship God “in spirit and in truth are worthy to worship” (John 4:24). Having stated this, he adds that there is something besides this - the flesh warring against the spirit; however, he does not call it soulless, in order to show that with the soul and body the spirit is the third. So, he says, if a person consists of three parts, and the Lord is a man, then, of course, the Lord also consists of three parts: spirit, soul and body. Now, so that the error of his understanding of the divine Scriptures becomes obvious, let us briefly consider separately what was said to them. And first let us examine what the Apostle has. For, in our opinion, Paul does not divide a person into three parts when he writes these words to the Thessalonians, praying to the Lord to completely sanctify them in body, soul and spirit (1 Thess. 5:23). But here lies some higher wisdom in the discussion of the moral structure of this life, and not only here, but also where he addresses the Corinthians (1 Cor. 2:14, 3:1, 15:44-47). For there he indicates a certain carnal man and again another - a spiritual one, and in the middle between both - a spiritual one. He calls a passionate and material man carnal, not burdened by the burden of the body, but abiding with his mind in heavenly things, he calls him spiritual, while he who is not completely neither one nor the other, but nevertheless has in common with both, is called spiritual. In saying this, he does not deprive the carnal of mental or spiritual activity, nor does he present the spiritual as detached from connection with the body and soul, nor does he present the spiritual as devoid of mind or flesh, but he assigns names to the states of life, judging by what is more in them. For “all” contends, and contends against no one (1 Cor. 2:15) and is in the flesh, and has a soul, and is called spiritual; and in the fury of carnal passion, he who encroached on his father’s bed (1 Cor. 5:1) was neither soulless nor devoid of reason; Likewise, the one who leads a middle way between a commendable and a reprehensible lifestyle is not devoid of either one or the other - he has both intelligence in himself and is surrounded by a carnal nature. But since, as it is said (by the Apostle), the name is precisely adapted to the visible signs of life, then sensualists, lovers of pleasure and prone to absurd quarrels are called carnal; nevertheless, those who judge and themselves do not present for those who wish to be judged any reason for condemnation based on the height of their way of life are called spiritual; he calls the spiritual one who stands in the middle between them, who is as much lower than this as he is greater than that. So, since (the Apostle) wants one who is perfect in virtue to testify to himself not only by what is sublime in life, but to turn his gaze to God, even if he produces something related to the body, and not to forget God, even if he does something in between (for “if you eat,” he says, “whether you drink, or if you do anything else, do everything for the glory of God” ( 1 Cor. 10:31), so that even during bodily activities you do not fall away from the goal - the glory of God); then to the Thessalonians, who were already striving for perfection in everything, he teaches through blessing complete sanctification, saying: “May the God of peace sanctify you, who are all perfect in everything: and your spirit and soul and body will be all perfect” (may it be preserved) (1 Thess. 5:23.); that is, so that every bodily, mental, and spiritual activity should be directed toward sanctification. Here's our thought. If Apollinaris says that the mind is specially blessed for this purpose, and also the body and soul separately, in order to distinguish the power of blessing in each of them, then how can the body, which is completely and completely destroyed by death, be preserved entirely? How can that be complete which becomes exhausted and thin from abstinence, and becomes exhausted from stricter enslavement? Can anyone say that poor Lazarus, who was covered with such wounds and wasted away from pus, was deprived of a blessing? But, although it is strange to say, in this body, disintegrating from wounds, Pavlovo’s blessing was achieved; for the body of Lazarus was preserved whole for the soul through the spiritual way of life, since he was not distracted from the heavenly hope by any obscene thoughts by the necessary demands of the flesh; the flesh did not entertain the soul, and the mind was not disturbed by bodily passions. 47. And the psalmody of the three youths, calling “the spirits and souls of the righteous” to participate in the doxology, does not command souls to especially sing a song of praise to the spirits separately from souls, as Apollinaris thinks. For what would the song of praise of one soul be if it were not filled with reason? A soul devoid of reason, as we have often said, is a beast to which the activity of thinking and understanding is alien. So what? If (Scripture), as Apollinaris says, separates the mind from our soul, then let us assume that it is possible to sing a song of praise to God for spirits, since he calls souls mind. If he thinks that the soul is something other than the mind, then how can one devoid of mind praise God? Will singing without thought be pleasing to God? And what need would there be for the soul for the mind if it alone were enough for divine praise, if it sang the song on its own, without at all needing the assistance of the mind? But this is not what we learned from our interpreters. But since souls separated from bodily bonds, as the Lord says, “are equal to angels” (Lk. 20:36), therefore, by uniting souls with spirits, the word of God shows the equality of souls with angels; for angels are spirits, according to the word of the Prophet: “Make your angels spirits” (Ps. 103:4). It is with them that the three youths consider the souls of the righteous worthy to sing a song of praise. The Savior, when he says that God is “worth worshiping in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24), the name spirit does not mean the mind, but something that should not have any sensory ideas about God. Since the Samaritan woman tells the Lord that God must be worshiped on a mountain, as if limited to a place that is not free from a sensual way of thinking; Therefore, the Word says to those who have lost their way from the truth that the spirit is God, that is, incorporeal, and that those who worship Him cannot physically approach the incorporeal, but must worship in spirit and truth. Thus, to correct the inclining speech, He contrasts the double ignorance (of the wife), contrasting the truth with the image, and the spirit with sensory ideas. That is why Paul says that he serves the Lord not in image or in body, but in “spirit” (Rom. 1:9), following the truth. And when he says that the flesh “does not submit to the law of God” (Rom. 8:7), then this exposes the falsity of their teaching; for to resist, to captivate, not to submit, and all the like are actions of will, and if there is no mind, there can be no will. So, Apollinaris recognizes the same flesh, which he speaks of as endowed with a soul and the ability of arbitrariness, not lacking in mind; although it is called only flesh, it nevertheless contains within itself everything that is essentially human; for one cannot be called a person who lacks something without which his nature would be incomplete. 48. But “man is made of three parts,” he says. Let us admit this, although there is nothing in his words that would necessarily lead us to agree with this opinion. “And the Lord,” he says, “being called a man, consists, just like this one, of three parts - spirit, soul and body.” Let us not contradict this for the time being, for it will not be a mistake if anyone says that this person also has everything that makes up our nature. “But He (says this about the Lord) is both a heavenly man and a life-giving spirit.” Let us accept this too, since this is our thought, if only he understood it as it should. For the one who has merged with the heavenly and through this admixture with the perfect has transformed the earthly should no longer be called earthly, but heavenly. The same must be said about (naming Him) the life-giving spirit, who produces the action (of life) in us, he is also the life-giving spirit. But let's see for what purpose the writer uses what is said. “If,” he says, “if a heavenly man consists of all those parts that we have on earth (so that he has the same spirit as those on earth), then he is not heavenly, but only the receptacle of the heavenly God.” There is a lot in these words that is unclear and difficult to understand due to the awkwardness of the presentation, but nevertheless he wants to say something that is easy to discover. For, he says, if this person is devoid of intelligence, then he is heavenly, and if he were integral, he would no longer be heavenly, but the receptacle of only the heavenly God. What is more disgusting in these words? Is it that integrity serves as an obstacle to the Divine, as if the flesh, devoid of mind, is more capable of unity with the Divine, or the conviction that God is heavenly, and that he who has received the heavenly God exists not where, as we believe, God has his existence, but in another place, different from heaven, and is called something else, and not this? For if, as Apollinaris says, he is the seat of the heavenly God, and “God is in heaven” (Eccl. 5:1), as Ecclesiastes says, it follows that the one who contains God exists together with what is contained, rightly called heavenly instead of earthly. So, what this writer says (if he knew how to maintain consistency in his own words) clearly confirms the teaching of truth, strengthening (even) the wisdom of his opponents. 49. But consider what follows. “If,” he says, “we consist of three parts, and he of four, then he is not a man, but a man-god (ανθρωποθεος).” Whoever happens to read this should not laugh at the stupidity and meaninglessness of this expression, but rather cry over the voluntary blindness of those enslaved to such unreason. If, with the infusion of Divine power, human nature is preserved entirely, then God the Word will be called a man-god; and just as mythology, through the addition of various natures, creates monstrous animals, their outlines and names, inventing and naming horse deer, goat deer, and the like, so this new myth-maker, following his mentors in such inventions, ridicules the Divine sacrament. And while the Apostle clearly proclaims that “by man is the resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor. 15, 21), - not half of a person or slightly more than half, but having perceived, in the full sense of the word, the whole nature denoted by the name of a person; through the shameful fiction of this name, instead of the sacrament, he creates a monstrous minotaur, giving with his words to those alien to the faith many reasons to laugh at the teachings of the faith. For it is impossible for anyone who wants to ridicule our teaching not to pay attention to this so absurdly composed name - whether it seems to him that the advantage is on the side of the author or on ours; Whether you say one way or another, you cannot take away from that word the meaning of the complexity of two natures. So, he who calls the flesh heavenly, nevertheless affirms that it is flesh; flesh, governed by some animate nature and containing within itself the vital force, as Apollinaris wants, is in the proper sense called man; and the one who has perceived it and through it revealed himself by nature is, of course, another, different from it; for the very name of perception shows the difference in the natures of the perceiver and the perceived. Therefore, even if this were so, would it serve as an obstacle to insulting the God who appeared in the flesh with that absurd accusation, that is, when someone with such a composition would be called, following the daring expression of Apollinaris, a man-god. For mythology called the goat-deer so not because something goat-like was partly attached to the whole deer, or, on the contrary, that in this mixture of animals it happened that part of the deer was attached to the whole goat; on the contrary, the very combination of names makes it clear that (this animal) has as much of one nature as the other. Therefore, if, according to the author, man and God are one and the same, then whatever the connection may be, whether it is a complete union of natures (both) or incomplete, he will in no way escape the absurdity of this compound name. And if the Greeks, having learned this from him, turn our sacrament into an object of ridicule, then he, as the one who gave rise to blasphemy, will certainly find himself under that prophetic curse, which says: woe to him through whom “My name is blasphemed among the nations” (Is. 52:5). 50. Let us also examine what else he adds to what has been said. “If,” he says, “he consists of two perfect ones, then where God is, there is no man, and where man is, there is no God.” But if, according to him, we allow confusion between the imperfect and the perfect, then those who dare to say such things will not say the same thing: that where God is, there is no man, and where man is, there is no God? For in all respects the concepts of Divinity and humanity are different, and no one would think of defining Divinity by truncation of humanity. Divinity does not consist in what humanity is not, or in what it is imperfect, but both are thought of in themselves and presented to the mind as a special concept. Whoever hears the word God, together with this name, accepts everything that is proper to think about God, and whoever hears the name man, together with this word, represents his entire nature; and the meaning of these names does not allow any confusion, so as to understand one of them as another; for neither this nor that is signified, but each of the names retains its natural meaning and in terms of meaning they can in no way be mutually interchangeable. The expressions imperfect and perfect evoke different concepts in the mind of the listener: we call perfect that which is complete in relation to its nature, and imperfect the opposite of this. Neither one nor the other of them, pronounced separately, means either God or man, but when combined in a name with any object or name, it makes it clear that what is signified (by these expressions) is either perfect or imperfect. So, how, if man (is) imperfect, does Apollinaris prove that (this) imperfect is God, as if the distortion of our nature is more consistent with the concept of the Divine? 51. But continuing his speech further, he again says: “He who is a man and is subject to corruption common to people cannot save the world.” This is what I affirm, for if human nature could by itself achieve perfection, then the sacrament (of the incarnation) would be unnecessary. But since it was impossible for her to avoid death if God had not given her salvation, therefore the light shines in the darkness through the flesh, in order to destroy with the flesh the destruction that came from darkness. But, he says, “we are not saved by God, if He does not mix with us.” In these words, the writer seems to be reasoning sensibly and elevating the mind to correct thoughts, for the word confusion (μιξις) means the unification of objects that are different in nature. “It mixes (μιγνυται) with us when it becomes flesh, that is, man, as the Gospel says: when it became flesh, then it dwelt in us (John 1:14).” And these words of his would not have been inconsistent with sound teaching, if after them he had not sowed a few tares. For our word, or, better to say, that of the truth itself, is such that He then “dwelled in us” when He became flesh, and, conversely, then became flesh when He “dwelled in us.” So, if He has been flesh since that time, from which the dwelling among us, then before Gabriel’s gospel to the Virgin, the Word was in no way flesh. Consequently, he is a liar who says that the humanity of God the Word came down to us from heaven and that before man accepted human nature there was something through which the Divinity was united with human life. “But,” he says, “he does not destroy the sin of people without becoming a sinless man, and does not destroy the dominion of death over all people, if not as a man He died and rose again.” If only he had thought so correctly and spoken words that were in agreement with the teachings of the Church until the end of his speech! But he again turns to his own and, condemning church teaching, says that we attribute suffering to humanity alone (Christ), but to refute our teaching he gives his own proof of this kind: “but death,” he says, “death cannot destroy man.” What does it mean to prove when you say this? The fact that the very Divinity of the Only Begotten, truth itself, life itself died during the suffering of the cross, so that during those three days there was no life, no power, no truth, no light, no truth, no Divinity itself. For he does not say that at the time of the death of one Divinity another remained, since, apparently, he often argues on this subject against Arius and proves that the Divinity of the Trinity is one, which when it died in Christ, then the other, as he himself asserts with his proof, of course, did not exist. And I cannot imagine how anyone can think that he does not make the Deity mortal. For death in a person is nothing other than the resolution of the complex, and when the body in us is destroyed into its component parts, the soul is not destroyed with the destruction of the body; but the complex is destroyed, while the uncomplicated remains undestroyed. So, if death does not extend to the soul, then how can the Divinity die - let those who do not know say, “Even as they say” (1 Tim. 1:7). 52. What follows after this and constitutes a continuation of the same proof, I will omit. For, proving in the following words that the very Divinity of the Only Begotten was dying, he says that “the death of a person does not destroy death and that he who is not dead does not resurrect; From all this it is obvious that God Himself died, which is why,” he says, “and it was impossible for death to hold Christ.” All this, as containing obvious absurdity, I consider it necessary to leave without examination, because anyone with intelligence can himself see the wickedness and stupidity of the one who openly declares that God Himself died, having suffered death by his own nature. However, it may not be superfluous to note here that even what he says on our behalf is not pure (admixture of) lies, but there is something in this that he insidiously invents himself to disgrace our teaching. He says, for example, that we affirm that Christ was not from the beginning, so that (only) the Word is God. But we do not deny that the power of God, and wisdom, and light, and life - all that Christ is, appeared through the flesh in the last days; to say that this once did not exist, that there once was no Lord and Christ, Who appears to us under these names and is called by them, we consider to be just as intolerable wickedness as the complete rejection of the name (of Christ). For whoever says that Christ is not from the beginning (and Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom and everything that His lofty and magnificent names express about Him), rejects everything that is meant by this highest name. For just as by the name of man is meant the ability to think and acquire information and other distinctive properties of his nature; and as soon as we say about something that it is not a person, along with the denial of this name, of course, other features of (human) nature are also denied; in the same way, Christ is power, wisdom, image and radiance, so whoever says that He is not from the beginning will, of course, reject everything that is understood with him (the name). Therefore, we, guided by the Holy Scriptures, say that Christ always exists and is mentally presented as co-eternal with the Father. For just as the Only Begotten God is always God, and is not made such through communion (of the Divinity) or through any ascent from a lower state to Divinity, so power, and wisdom, and every perfection divinely named is co-eternal with His Divinity, so that nothing was added to the glory of His nature that was not in Him from the beginning. We especially consider it appropriate to apply the name Christ to the Only Begotten from eternity, being led to such an opinion by the very meaning of this name; for the confession of this name concludes the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, because in this name each of the Persons we confess is divinely designated. And so that it does not seem that we are saying something on our own, let us add the prophetic words: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a scepter of righteousness, a scepter of your kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity: therefore, for the sake of Thy anointing, O God, Thy God is more than Thy partaker with the oil of joy” (Ps. 44:7-8). In these words of Scripture, the throne indicates His power over everything, the rod of righteousness signifies the impartiality of His judgment, and the oil of joy depicts the power of the Holy Spirit, with whom God is anointed from God, that is, the Only Begotten from the Father, since He loved righteousness and hated iniquity. So, if there was a time when He did not love righteousness and had no enmity towards iniquity, then it should be said that He who was called anointed was not once anointed because He loved righteousness and hated iniquity. If He always loved the truth (because He could not ever hate Himself, being Himself the truth), then it is clear that He must always be recognized and anointed. So, just as the righteous was never unrighteous, so the anointed one could never be without anointing, and never being unanointed, of course, is always anointed (Χριςτος). And that the anointing one is the Father, and the anointing is the Holy Spirit, anyone whose heart is not covered by the Jewish veil will agree with this. 53. So, how does he say that we do not recognize the existence of Christ from the beginning? But confessing that Christ has an eternal existence, on this basis we do not think that His flesh, invented by Apollinaris, was always with Him, but we know that He is Christ and Lord from eternity, and after His suffering we confess Him again in the same way, as Peter says to the Jews, that “God made His Lord and His Christ, this Jesus, Whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). We say this not because we represent two Christs and Lords in one person, but because the Only Begotten God, being God by nature, and the Lord of all, and the King of all creation, and the Creator of all things, and the restorer of the fallen, out of His greatest love for mankind, was pleased to not only not reject our nature fallen by sin from communion with Himself, but also to take it back into life. He Himself is life, therefore, when the human race was on the edge (of destruction), when the evil in us had increased to an extreme degree, then He, in order not to leave any evil unhealed, accepted admixture with our humiliated nature, and having taken man into Himself and Himself being in man, as He says to the disciples: “And ye are in Me, and I am in you” (John 14:20), what He Himself was, that He made also the one with whom you connected. He Himself was eternally exalted, therefore He exalted even the humble, for He who was exalted above all did not yet need any exaltation. The Word was Christ and Lord, and by the same token is made the one who was annexed and received into the Divinity (man); for it is not the One who is already the Lord who is elevated a second time to dominance, but the image of the servant is made the Lord. Therefore, “there is one Lord Jesus Christ, in whom are all things” (1 Cor. 8:6), and is called equally Christ by both the One who was clothed with the glory of the Spirit (which symbolically means anointing) and the One who, after suffering, having adorned a person united with Him with the same anointing, makes him Christ, for (when) he says: “glorify Me,” as if he were saying: “anoint” “with glory, since before You there was no peace” (John 17:5 .). This glory, contemplated before the world, and before every creature, and before all ages, by which the Only Begotten God is glorified, in our opinion, cannot be any other than the glory of the Father, because the teaching of piety tells us that only the Holy Trinity is eternal. “This is the first age” (Ps. 54:20), the prophecy speaks of the Father. Of the Only Begotten the Apostle testifies that “In Him also did He create the worlds” (Heb. 1:2), and the glory, which was first imagined in the Only Begotten, is the Holy Spirit. So, what was in Christ, who existed with the Father before the existence of the world, also belongs to the one who was united with Christ at the end of the ages (man). For Scripture says: “Jesus, who was of Nazareth, because God anointed him with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 10:38). So, let him not slander our teaching, as if we say that the Only Begotten God is not always Christ. He is always Christ - both before the economy and after, but He is a man neither before nor after this, but only during the economy. For neither before His birth from the Virgin was He a man, nor after His ascension into heaven does He remain flesh with its properties; because, “even though we understood,” says the Apostle, once “we were according to the flesh of Christ, but now we do not understand” (2 Cor. 5:16). For the flesh did not remain unchanged because God appeared in the flesh, but since humanity is changeable, and the Divinity is not subject to any change, the Divinity does not change in any respect; It cannot change either for the worse, because it does not allow the worst, or for the better, because it does not have a better one; and human nature in Christ accepts change for the better, from the corruptible to the incorruptible, from the transitory to the permanent, from the temporary to the eternal, from the corporeal and having an outline to the incorporeal and formless. 54. Since they claim that we say that man suffered, and not God, then let them hear this from us: we confess that the Divinity was in the Suffering One (Christ), but that the impassive nature was not subjected to suffering. To present what has been said more clearly, we understand it to mean that human nature consists of a combination of rational soul and body; the combination of both comes from some material principle that precedes the formation of man. This substance is made by man when it is animated by Divine power; so if we assume, by assumption, that the creative power of God does not lead to the formation of the (human) composition, then the substance remains completely without action and movement, not excited to life by creative power. And just as we see in matter a certain life-giving force by which a person consisting of soul and body is formed; so at the birth from the Virgin, the power of the Highest, through the life-giving Spirit, immaterially infused into the most pure body and made the purity of the Virgin the substance of the flesh, taken from the virgin’s body for the one being created; and thus a truly new man was created, who was the first and only to show in himself such a way of appearing in existence that was created divinely, and not humanly; because the Divine power equally penetrated the entire composition of his nature, so that neither one nor the other was devoid of the Divinity, but in both, that is, in the body and soul, It, as it should, abided in a decent and appropriate manner to the nature of each. And just as at the time of the birth of (this) man, the Divinity, existing before all ages and abiding forever, had no need for birth, but at the formation of man, suddenly becoming one with him, appears with him at birth; Thus, It, as eternally living, has no need for resurrection, but in the one who is raised to life by Divine power, it rises, not being resurrected Itself (for It did not fall), but resurrecting the fallen in Itself. So, if the Divinity has no need for either birth or resurrection, then it is obvious that the suffering of Christ did not take place as if the Divinity Himself suffered, but in such a way that It was in the Suffering One and, through union with Him, assimilated His suffering. For the divine nature, as it is said, is accordingly united with both body and soul and made one with each of them, since “for the gifts of God are unrepentant,” as Scripture says, “(Rom. 11:29), is not separated from any of them, but is always in inextricable connection with them; because nothing can separate (a person) from union with God except sin, and whose life is sinless, his union with God is completely inseparable. 55. So, since sin had no place in either one or the other, that is, neither in the soul nor in the body, then in each of them, as it should be, the Divine nature was inherent. When death separated the soul from the body, then the complex was divided, but the uncomplicated was not separated, but remained inseparably with both. That the Divinity was present in the body is evidenced by the fact that the flesh remained incorruptible after death, and incorruption, of course, belongs to God; and that the Divinity was not separated from the soul is evident from the fact that through it the entrance to paradise was opened to the thief. So, after the mystery was completed, when the Divine power united with both parts of human nature and through one and the other imparted life-giving power to each related part: through the flesh - to the body, and through the soul - to the soul, that is, the rational, and not the dumb (for the unreasonable is cattle, not man); then from the beginning the Divinity, dissolved with soul and body, and hitherto always abiding, is resurrected in the uprising of the one lying (in the tomb); and thus it is said that Christ rose from the dead; This Christ appeared to them, (Who) was Christ according to (His) eternal kingdom, and became (man) when the angels announced to the shepherds “the great joy that will be for all people” about the birth of the Savior. “Who is,” says Scripture, “Christ,” appropriately called Lord (Luke 2:11), according to the word of Gabriel, who announced that the Holy Spirit would come upon the Virgin and the power of the Most High would overshadow her (Luke 1:35). So, one who is born in this way is rightly called both Christ and Lord: Lord by the power of the Most High, and Christ by the anointing of the Spirit. For it is not the Eternal One who will then be anointed, but the one about whom it is said: “Thou art My Son, I gave birth to Thee this day” (Ps. 2:7). The word today means the middle between two parts of time - between the past and the future. How can the Creator of centuries be born and anointed at a certain moment in time? Therefore, although the Divinity did not die, it was resurrected: it did not die, because what does not have complexity is not destroyed, but was resurrected, because, being in a resolved state, which, according to the law of human nature, had undergone a fall, it was given the opportunity to rise with itself; so that by staying in one and the other part, which has its own special properties, it healed the physical nature through the body, and the spiritual through the soul; and having again united what was divided, in the rebel He Himself resurrects. And as in a reed (nothing prevents the mystery of God’s economy, accomplished through the resurrection, from being explained with the help of a material similarity), cut in half, if someone begins to connect the tops of both halves at one end, then, of necessity, the entire divided reed will be completely united together; because when it folds and fastens at one end, along with this, a connection will occur at the other; so in Christ - the union of the soul with the body, accomplished through the resurrection, the entire human nature, divided by death into two parts - soul and body, again brings into unity, with the hope of resurrection establishing a connection between the separated (entities). This is what Paul’s words mean: “Christ has risen from the dead, becoming the firstfruits of those who died,” and “just as in Adam we all die, so in Christ we will all live” (1 Cor. 15:20, 22). For, following the example taken from the reed, at one end, which is from Adam, our nature was split through sin, since in death the soul was separated from the body, but at the other, which is from Christ, our nature again returns to its previous state, since the rupture that took place in us through the resurrection of man in Christ has grown together completely. Therefore, we die together with the One who died for us; I am not talking about death, which is necessary and inherent in our nature in general; it will befall us even without our desire. But since with the One who died for us voluntarily we must die according to our own will, therefore we must imagine death for ourselves according to our own desire, for what is necessarily done is not an imitation of what is arbitrary. So, since death, which is presented to each of us according to the law of nature, befalls us always and without fail, whether we wish it or not; and what happens without fail, no one will call arbitrary; then, with Him who voluntarily died for us, we die in a different way, namely by being buried in the mystical water through baptism, for “we were buried with Him,” says Scripture, “by baptism into death” (Rom. 6:4), so that after the likeness of death there should also be likeness to the resurrection. 56. But let us move on to what follows in the work of Apollinaris. “How,” he says, “does God become a man without ceasing to be God, if (God) does not take the place of the mind in man”? Does he understand what he is saying? He calls God unchangeable, and this is true, for what is always equal to itself naturally cannot be anything other than what it is; it may be otherwise, but it cannot be otherwise. So, what was this mind that was in man, as Apollinaris says? Did he retain the greatness of his unchangeable nature or did he pass into a lower state, enclosing himself within the boundaries of human smallness, so that whatever it is, he became the same? But in this case, the human mind is equal to the Divine if, that is, as Apollinaris says, the Divine nature has become the mind. For if human nature equally accepts our mind or instead of the mind of God, then in greatness and significance they will be equal to each other, since in whatever the mind is contained, the Divinity can also be contained. If someone begins to measure wheat or any other grains with some empty vessel, then no one will say that what is measured with the same measure will be different in quantity from another, because the measure of wheat will be equal to the measure of oats when, after pouring out these grains, the vessel is filled with others. So if the Divine replaces the mind, then no one can say that It is superior to the mind, because the Divinity, just like the mind, is contained in human nature. So, the mind is either equal to the Divinity, as Apollinaris wants it, and, having replaced the mind, It has not changed, or it is lower than the Divinity, and the Divinity, having become the mind, has changed to a worse state. But who does not know that everything that is revered by created things is equally low in comparison with the inaccessible and incomprehensible Nature, so that the same will allow a change in the Divinity, will anyone say that It has changed into the mind or into the creature? Thus, if Apollinaris does not admit that the Divinity has changed, taking the place of the mind, then he does not recognize the changeability in the united, when He merged with a person devoid of reason. But if the Divinity did not change, having become flesh, then even more so it remained unchanged, having merged with the mind. If the being (of the Divine) instead of the mind proves His change, then dwelling in the flesh will not, of course, escape the accusation of change. 57. He also says (what is in the middle of his speech, I omit): “If He became God after the resurrection and is no longer a man, then how will the Son of man send His angels? And how will we see the Son of Man coming among the clouds? As before he united with God and himself became God, he says: “I am one and the Father” (John 10:30)?” He cites all this as proof that the bodily nature has not changed at all into anything more divine, but that the hair, nails, appearance, image, volume of the body and all other internal and external parts of the body in Christ (remain unchanged). I consider it unnecessary to argue that one should not have such low and crude concepts about God, because the speech of opponents in itself clearly preaches the absurdity of this opinion. However, lest anyone think that the Divine sayings themselves give him a reason to invent such absurd fables, I will briefly trace each of the above-mentioned sayings. since, he says, at the end of the world the one who sends angels is called the Son of man, then, he thinks, one must believe that he will always have human properties. But he does not remember the words of the Gospel, where the Lord Himself often calls God, above all that exists, man. “The man was” the ruler of the house, who gave the vineyard to the “laborer” and, after killing the slaves, sent his only begotten son, whom the laborers brought out of the vineyard and killed (Matthew 21:33–40). Who was “that man” who sent his only begotten? Who is the son who was killed outside the vineyard? Isn’t he also represented in Scripture in human form, arranging a marriage for his son (Matthew 22:2)? It must also be said that the Lord, wanting to help the weakness of those who, having little value for the human nature visible in Him, could not therefore believe in His Divinity, says that at the (last) judgment the Son of Man will send angels for the purpose of striking with fear, strengthening their weak minds in faith and, by expecting terrible (phenomena), healing their unbelief regarding what they saw; and you will see, he says, “the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and much glory” (Matthew 24:30). And this is completely consistent with both what we said above about the man who planted grapes and arranged a wedding feast for his son, and with the explanation we gave before. And that these words of Scripture do not in the least favor the derogatory opinion of Apollinaris, and the said saying does not give any reason to imagine anything corporeal in Christ, this is clearly proven by the fact that to the words that indicate His appearance at the end of the ages, it is added that the Lord will appear to the creation “in the glory of His Father” (Matt. 16, 27); so from these words it must be concluded that either the Father also has a human form, if the Son, who has to appear in human form, will appear in the glory of the Father, or if the greatness of the glory of the Father is alien to any image visually represented by the mind, then He who promises to appear in the glory of the Father must also not be represented in human features; for another is the glory of man, and another is the glory of God over all things. “But,” he says, “talking with people in the flesh, he said: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).” It is madness to consider as proof of the appearance of the Lord at the end of the world in human form that He, being in the flesh, said: “I and the Father are one.” So, with this conclusion, he, of course, asserts that the Father lives in the flesh in the same way. For if he who said that He and the Father are one, makes it clear that there is unity in the spirit, but in the flesh, as Apollinaris thinks, then the Father is therefore the same as the Son was then in humanity. But we understand the Divinity to be alien to all corporeality, therefore the unity of the Son with the Father was not according to human appearance, but according to the communion of Divine nature and power. And that this is truly so is especially evident from the words that Christ spoke to Philip: “He who has seen Me in the form of the Father” (John 14:9), for by an accurate understanding of the greatness of the Son the Son is revealed to us as in an image - the Prototype. 58. In order not to waste time over trifles, I will omit his following incoherent and not entirely understandable speeches, in which even those who closely follow his writings are not clear what he wants to say. How (for example) the words “that no one can snatch out of His hands the sheep given to Him by the Father” serve as proof of his opinion, I cannot understand. Also the following: “He draws sheep to Himself by His Fatherly Deity”; and again: “if Christ was united with the Father before the resurrection, how was He not united with God Who is in Him”? He places this latter, as if with the intention of exposing his fictitious teaching, between his reasonings, with which he proves both the separation of man from God and union with Him. For he says that “if Christ was united with the Father, how was he not united with God who is in Him?” Thus, the man Christ, being different, was united with God Who is in Him. This, as it naturally shows through one reading the lies and inconsistency of his teaching, I omit. I will only mention the following: “The Savior,” he says, “suffered hunger, thirst, labor, languor and sorrow.” Who is this Savior? God, he said before this, is not two persons, as if one were God, and the other was man. So, God endured everything that, according to him, He (the Savior) endured. “And that which is inaccessible to suffering suffers, not out of necessity (αναγκη) of involuntary nature, like man, but according to the consequence (ακολεθια) of nature.” Will anyone be willing to refute this absurdity? Where does he find the difference between the necessity of nature and the consequence of nature? In fact, both of these concepts have the same meaning. If, for example, I say: so-and-so has weak eyesight, therefore, he is sick with his eyes, or I express the same thing differently: so-and-so has weak eyesight, therefore, it is necessary, he suffers from the eyes - wouldn’t the meaning be the same in both of these expressions? The one who points out the necessity indicates what follows from the consequence, and the one who mentions the consequence shows the necessity. So, what does the wisdom of our writer mean, according to which he wants to attribute suffering (on nature) to the Savior “not because of the necessity of nature, but because of the consequence of nature”? “It was necessary,” he says, “to be moved to suffer in the likeness of people.” Whoever said: “it was necessary” did not clearly indicate the necessity? Isn’t that how Scripture uses this word? Even among the evangelists themselves you can find proof of this: “need for is to come by temptation" (Matthew 18:7), "it is fitting for all this to be" (Matthew 24:6). Isn't that the meaning of both sayings? He who said that "need is to come by temptation" expressed by this that temptations must come; 59. I will omit again and further his following chatter without connection, haphazardly, made up of stupid reasoning. Towards the end of the essay he says the following: “and then, like a body in heaven, he is with us until the end of the age.” Who it is with us, the writer, dividing what is clearly indivisible, does not know. For if he places the body in heaven, and the Lord, as he says, is present with us, then by such a distinction he makes some kind of dissolution and division. For he did not say that His body both abides in heaven and is with us, but said: “just as the body is in heaven.” We are not in heaven, therefore, with us, he thinks, living on earth, there is some other body, different from the one in heaven. Such is the lofty teaching of Apollinaris! We say that the Lord “this river is taken away by those who see” (Acts 1:9), and after His Ascension remains with us, and there is no division in Him; but just as it is in us, present in each individual and abiding among us, so it penetrates all the ends of creation, equally appearing in all parts of the world. If it is present in us bodily in an incorporeal manner, then in the supermundane (creatures) it is also present in a non-corporeal manner. And he says that the Lord, divided in this way, is present in subordinate creatures not equally, but contrary to their nature: in the corporeal, incorporeal, and in the incorporeal, corporeally. For, having placed the flesh in heaven, He is united spiritually with people. As for the untenable opinions, where he, feeling his powerlessness, calls on the Greeks in defense of his fables - opinions that he, as if giving up the ghost, exhales at the very end of the work, like some last breaths; then, I think, they should be left without investigation. (I’ll also omit) and everything else like that. Whoever wants to know the complete impotence of this heresy, let him read his very works. We don’t have enough free time to do much research into this kind of judgment, which clearly reveals its absurdity by itself and without research. 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