Against Apollinaris to Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria

Composition by St. Gregory of Nyssa “Against Apollinaris to Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria” was written after 385. In it St. Gregory asks Bishop Theophilus to write a detailed refutation of the heresy of Apollinarius of Laodicea, and he limits himself to an objection to the reproach of the Apollinarians that the Orthodox teach about two Sons of God: one by nature, and the other by adoption: “So, if every concept befitting God is always constantly and invariably assimilated to the Only Begotten, and He is always one and the same, being always equal to himself, then who will force us Should His appearance in the flesh be called a pair of sons, as if one is the eternal Son, and God born in the flesh is the other Son?” *The title of the work in Greek is Πρὸς Θεόφιλον κατὰ ᾿Απολλιναριστῶν. *The title of the work in Latin is Ad Theophilum adversus Apollinaristas. The great citizenship of Alexandria abounds in more than just worldly wisdom, and streams of true and genuine wisdom also flow from you from the beginning. Therefore, it seems fair to me that those who have been given more strength for good should provide more help in protecting the sacrament of truth, for the lofty Gospel itself says nowhere: “to him much will be given,” and more will be required from him (Luke 12:48). So, you will act justly if you oppose all the power inherent in you and your church by the grace of God to the false knowledge of those who always invent something new against the truth, who break the union according to God, consign the great and venerable name of Christians to silence, and divide the Church according to human names; and, worst of all, people rejoice that they are called by the names of their leaders in error. If the prophetic desire were fulfilled everywhere and to the end, “sinners and wicked women would disappear from the earth, as if they did not exist” (Ps. 103:35), this, obviously, would be the best thing. Since the words of the wicked prevail, acquiring force against the truth with the assistance of the enemy, it would be desirable to reduce the evil and prevent the more and more spreading increase of wickedness. What am I talking about? The followers of the opinions of Apollinaris, with the help of censures (directed) against us, try to give (greater) strength to their errors, asserting that the Word is carnal, that the Son of man is the Creator of the ages and that the Divinity of the Son is mortal. They say that in the Catholic Church some recognize in (their) teaching two sons: one by nature, and the other by adoption, after the one who came. I don’t know from whom they heard this and at what person they were directing the blows, for I still don’t know who would say this. However, since those who attribute such a teaching to us, under the guise of refuting this absurdity, strengthen their opinions, it would be good if your perfection in Christ, as the Holy Spirit will instruct you, cut off all the reasons for those who are looking for reasons to accuse us and convinced those who bring such slander to the Church of God that Christians do not have such a teaching and are not preaching it. For on the basis that the Creator of centuries appeared on earth in the last days and spoke among people, two sons are not counted in the Church: one is the Creator of centuries, and the other at the end of the ages appeared in the flesh to the human race. If anyone, according to the economy, takes the former appearance in the flesh of the Only Begotten Son of God as proof of the existence of another son; he, having counted all the manifestations of God that were holy before the appearance of the Only Begotten Son of God in the flesh, and also after it, according to the number of Divine manifestations, recognizes the multitude of sons: he will have one son, who talked with Abraham; and the other, who appeared to Isaac; he who fought with Jacob is also different; and the other, who appeared to Moses in various forms: in the light, in the darkness, in a pillar of cloud, face to face and behind; the other will again be the son who fought alongside the successor of Moses; and another - talking in a whirlwind with Job; also appearing to Isaiah on a high throne and inscribed with the word of Ezekiel in human form; and the one who after this shone with light upon Paul; and the one who previously appeared on the mountain in the highest glory to Peter and those with him. If it is absurd and completely wicked to count individual sons based on the number of different theophany of the Only Begotten Son of God, then it is equally absurd to make the appearance in the flesh a reason for recognizing another son. We think that the vision of the Supreme Nature was always there according to the strength of each of those who received the Divine manifestation: greater and more worthy of God for those who could reach heights, lesser and less worthy for those who are unable to accommodate more. Therefore, not as in previous appearances, the Lord appears to the human race in the dispensation of His coming in the flesh. But since all people, as the Prophet says, “turned aside, they were together without the keys” (Ps. 13: 3); and there was, as it is written, no one who could understand and comprehend the height (mind) of the Divinity (Is. 40:13), therefore, the Only Begotten Son, who appeared to a more fleshly race, became flesh, diminishing himself according to the smallness of the one who received; or, better, as Scripture says, “exhausting” (Phil. 2:7), so that our nature receives as much as it can contain. That this generation was more guilty of condemnation than those that preceded it, we know clearly from the words of the Lord, in which He says that it will be more bearable for the Sodomites than for them (Matthew 10:15), that the Ninevites and the “queen of the South” will condemn this generation at the resurrection, the Lord (also) announced (Matthew 12:41-42). So, if everyone, like Moses, could enter the darkness in which he saw the Invisible One, or like the high Paul, ascend above the third heaven and in paradise learn the ineffable about things that exceed the word, or with the zealot Elijah on fire ascend into the ethereal space, without feeling the weight of the body, or with Ezekiel and Isaiah see on the throne of glory or lifted up by the cherubim, or glorified by the seraphim; then, of course, there would be no need for the manifestation of our God in the flesh if everyone were like that. since, as the Lord says, this generation was “an evil and adulterous generation” (Matthew 12:39), - evil because, as the Gospel says, the whole world then lay in evil (1 John. 5:19), an adulterer because he left the good Bridegroom and united with one who, through vice, desecrated souls with adultery; therefore, a true doctor who heals the sick, the kind of disease that required healing, took such care of the sick person; He himself in some way took upon himself the illness of our nature and became flesh, which by the very essence of its nature is weak, as the word of God teaches: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). If the Divinity, which was in human nature - immortal in the mortal, strong in the weak, unchangeable and incorruptible in the changeable and corporeal, allowed mortality to remain in the mortal, corruption in the corruptible and other properties in the same way, then, in justice, everyone would have seen duality in the Son of God, counting each of those considered by its opposite (properties) separately, in itself. But if the mortal, having united with the immortal, became immortal, and in a similar way the corruptible changed into incorruptibility and everything else also changed into the impassive and Divine, then what reason remains for dividing one into two differences? For the Word, both before the incarnation and after the dispensation in the flesh, was and is the Word, and God also before the perception of the image of a servant, and after this there is God and is the true light - both before it shone in darkness, and after this. So, if every concept befitting God is always constantly and invariably assimilated to the Only Begotten, and He is always one and the same, being always equal to himself, then who will force us to call His appearance in the flesh a pair of sons, as if one is the eternal Son, and God born in the flesh is the other Son? For we have learned from the sacrament and believe that human nature is saved through union with the Word, but that the Son of God in the flesh must be conceived separately, we have not learned this, and no consistent conclusion leads us to such a thought. For he who became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21) and an oath (Gal. 3:13), as the Apostle says, and who bore our infirmities (sins), according to the word of Isaiah (Isaiah 53:4), did not leave sin, and oath, and infirmity with him without healing; but “he will be devoured with the life of death” (2 Cor. 5:4), crucified “from weakness, but we will live with him by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4); the oath changed into a blessing and everything in general, whatever is weak and corruptible in our nature, having merged with the Divine, became what the Divinity is. So, where can anyone get the idea of ​​two sons, as if the economy of our salvation through the flesh necessarily leads to such an assumption? He who is always in the Father, and who always has the Father in himself, and who is one with Him, as he was before, is and will be; and the Son was not, is not, and will not be anything else from Him (different). The firstfruits of human nature, perceived by the omnipotent Divinity, if one can use a comparison, is like a certain drop of water that has dissolved with the boundless sea, although it is in the Divinity, but not with its own distinctive properties. For then it would be possible to conclude about a duality of sons, if in the ineffable Divinity of the Son some other kind of nature was revealed with its own special characteristics, so that in Him one would be weak, small, corruptible and fleeting, and the other strong, great, incorruptible and eternal. Since, after the change of everything seen in mortal things into Divine properties, differences in nothing are noticed, for whatever we see in the Son is Divinity - wisdom, power, sanctification, dispassion, then on what basis is it possible to divide the unit in a double meaning, when no difference divides this number? For the Divine exalted the humiliated and gave to the one called by a human name “a name that is more valuable than any name” (Phil. 2:9), and made the one who was in subjection and slavery Lord and King, as Peter says: “God made Him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). For with (the name of) Christ we understand the kingdom, and due to the perfect unity of the received flesh and the receiving Divinity, the names are mutually replaced, so that the human is called the Divine, and the Divine is called the human (name). Therefore, the one crucified by Paul is called “Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8), and the one worshiped by all creation in heaven, on earth and under the earth is called Jesus (Phil. 2:10). By this we can understand the true and indivisible unity, precisely by the fact that the ineffable glory of the Divinity is signified by the name of the Son, when all flesh and “tongue confess, as Lord Jesus Christ to the glory of God” (Phil. 2:11), so that he who suffered on the cross, nailed with nails and pierced with a spear is called by Paul the Lord of glory. So, if human (nature) is not in appears in his natural properties, but there is a Lord of glory, and no one dares to say that there are two Lords of glory, knowing that “there is one Lord Jesus Christ, who is all things” (1 Cor. 8:6), then where do they attribute to us two sons who bring this slander against us, in order to have a plausible pretext for confirming their opinions. This is what we can present in our defense; From your perfection in Christ, we desire greater and more perfect assistance to the truth, so that those who affirm their opinions by slandering us will have no reason to reproach the truth. 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