On the Unity of Christ

[Translated by P. E. Pusey]

A. There shall no satiety of holy teachings ever come to them who are truly sound in mind and who have gathered the life-giving knowledge into their understanding. For it is written, Not by bread alone shall a man live but by every word that goeth forth through the mouth of God. For the mind's nourishment and spiritual bread which stayeth man's heart, as is sung in the book of Psalms, is the word which is from God.

B. You say well.

A. The wise therefore and eloquent among the Greeks admire elegancy of speech, and good language is among their chiefest aims and they make their boast in mere refinements of words and revel in bombast of language: and their poets have for their material falsehood, wrought by proportions and measures unto what is graceful and tuneful; but of the truth they reck full little, sick with a scarcity of right and profitable doctrine, I mean regarding God Who is by Nature and truly, yea rather as the most holy Paul says, They became vain in their imaginations and their heart void of understanding was darkened. Saying that they were wise they became foolish and changed the glory of the Incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.

B. True, verily of them said God by the voice of Isaiah, Know ye that their heart is ashes and they are deceived.

A. Thus much for them: but they who have become inventors of unholy heresies, profane and apostate and enlarging their unbridled mouth against the Divine glory and uttering things perverted, will be caught as having of their folly slipped into charges not slighter than those of the infatuation of the Greeks or haply into charges even surpassing theirs. For it were better for them not to have known the way of truth than having known it to turn back from the holy commandment given to them: for the true proverb hath come to them, The dog returned to his own vomit, and, The washed sow to the wallowing in the mire. For they parted amongst themselves the charges of blasphemy against Christ and like fierce and bitter wolves they waste the flocks for which Christ died, and despoil what is His, multiplying to themselves that which is not theirs, as it is written, and weighting their yoke heavily, of whom may be said with much reason, They went out from us but they were not of us.

B. Surely.

A. Seasonably does our discourse contend about such things. For some in their lack of understanding do bring down the Only-Begotten Word of God from His Supreme Excellence and lower Him from Equality with God the Father, affirming that He is not Consubstantial, nor liking to crown Him with an Identity Exact and of Nature: others going as it were along the same road with these and falling into the snare of death and pitfall of Hades turn aside the mystery of the Economy with flesh of the Only-Begotten and pursue a folly fraternal (so to speak) with the former. For the one will be caught dragging down as it were (so far as in them lies) from the heights of His Godhead the Word sprung of God the Father ere yet Incarnate; the others have elected to make war with Him Incarnate, well-nigh finding fault (daring ones!) with His Pitying grace, maintaining forsooth that it counselled not well for that He underwent flesh and the measures of our emptiness, i. e. was made man and was seen on earth and conversed with men though God by Nature and co-seated with the Father.

B. You say rightly.

A. God-inspired Scripture therefore will cry out against the unlearning of them both, setting forth to us the truth and shewing that feeble and of none account is their speech, and establishing on the path of the Godhead them who are used to view with subtil and accurate eye of understanding the Mystery thereof. But who they will be who in unhallowed wise debase the so august and ineffable Economy of the Saviour (for you seem to be in no small degree troubled about this very thing) I would fain ask you.

B. You testify rightly, for with jealousy am I jealous for the Lord, and, yet more, goaded am I distraught and that exceedingly. And I fear when I look whither their words will end. For they adulterate the faith that was delivered to us, using the inventions of the new-seen dragon and pouring like venom into the souls of the simpler certain frigid and perverse things and full of infatuation.

A. But who is this new-seen dragon and what his triflings against the doctrines of the Truth tell to me who ask.

B. The new-seen dragon, this crooked one and who has his tongue drunk with venom, who all-but bids farewell to the tradition of the initiators of the world, yea rather to all the God-inspired Scripture, and who innovates what seems good to him and says that the holy Virgin is not Mother of God, but mother of Christ and mother of man, bringing in moreover other things discordant and senseless, upon the right and sincere doctrines of the Catholic Church.

A. You say (I ween) Nestorius, for I understand, but I do not know, my friend, the actual state of his words: how does he say that the holy Virgin is not Mother of God?

B. She bare not (he says) God: for the Word was before her too, yea rather before every age and time, Co-eternal with God the Father.

A. They will therefore manifestly deny this too, that Emmanuel is God, and to no purpose as it seems, does the Evangelist interpret the name saying, Which is interpreted, With us is God, for thus did God the Father clearly affirm through the voice of the Prophet that He was to be called Who has been born of the holy Virgin after the flesh, as God Incarnate.

B. Yet it appears to them to be not so, but they would say that with us is God or the Word out of God, in the way of succouring us: for He hath saved all under heaven through him who was born of woman.

A. And was He not (tell me) with Moses too freeing Israel from the land of the Egyptians and the tyranny there, in a strong hand and a high arm, as it is written? shall we not find Him after this also saying clearly to Joshua, And as I was with Moses so will I be with thee too?

B. True.

A. Why then was none of these called Emmanuel, but the name befitted Him alone Who was wondrously born after the flesh of a woman in the last times of the world?

B. How then shall we deem that God has been born of a woman? that the Word partook of Being, in her and from forth her?

A. Away with so frigid ill-advice! For these are the words of one who wanders, and of a mind diseased with a turning aside to what it ought not, to think that the Ineffable Being of the Only-Begotten has become fruit of flesh: He was as God Co-Eternal with the Father Who begat Him and Ineffably begotten of Him by Nature. But to those who would know clearly how and in what manner He appeared in likeness to us and became man, the Divine Evangelist John will make it known, saying, And the Word was made flesh and tabernacled in us (and we saw His glory, (the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.

B. Yet if the Word has become (they say) flesh, no longer hath It remained Word but hath left being what It was.

A. Verily this is jugglery and humbug and the inventions of a mind beside itself and nought else. For they (it appears) are supposing that the word Was made indicates as of unavoidable necessity, turning and change.

B. Yes (they say), and they moreover confirm their affirmation, taking proofs out of the God-inspired Scripture itself. For it has been somewhere said (he says) of Lot's wife that she WAS MADE a pillar of salt, and besides of Moses' Rod that he cast it on the ground and it WAS MADE a serpent. For in these cases a change of nature took place.

A. Therefore when certain sing, And the Lord WAS MADE to me a refuge, and again, O Lord, Thou WERT MADE a refuge, to us in generation and generation, what now will they say [1]? hath He Who is hymned, letting go His being God, passed by a change into being a refuge, and removed He by Nature into something other than what He was at first?

B. How is such a thing not incongruous and unbefitting Him Who is by Nature God: for being by Nature without change, He abideth full surely what He was and ever is, even though He be said to be made a refuge to any?

A. You spoke most excellently, and very right. Hence the mention of God being brought forward, if Was made be said by any body, how is it not unlearned and unholy exceedingly to suppose that it means change, and not rather to strive to conceive of it in some other way, and to turn in wisdom to what most especially befits and is congruous to the Unchangeable God?

B. How then do we say that the Word WAS MADE flesh, preserving to It ever Unchangeableness and without-turning, as Its own and Essentially innate to It?

A. The all-wise Paul, the steward of His mysteries, the Priest of the Gospel preachings, will make it clear saying, He ye thus minded each one in yourselves according to what was in Christ Jesus also, Who being in the Form of God held not the being Equal to God a thing to seize, yet emptied Himself taking bondman's form, MADE in likeness of men, and, found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, MADE obedient unto death, the death of the Gross. For His Only-Begotten Word albeit God and out of God by Nature, the Brightness of the glory and the Impress of the Person of Him Who begat Him, WAS MADE man and that not turned into flesh, or undergoing commingling [2] or mixture or ought else of such like, but rather abasing Himself unto emptiness, and for the joy set before Him despising shame and not dishonouring the poverty of the human nature. For He willed as God to render the flesh which is holden of death and sin, superior to both death and sin, and to restore it to what it was in the beginning, having made it His own, not (as some say) soulless but ensouled with intellectual soul: yet, not disdaining to go along the path hereto befitting, He is said to undergo a birth like ours, abiding what He was. For He has been born in wondrous wise according to flesh of a woman: for no otherwise was it possible that He being God by Nature should be seen by them on earth than in likeness of us, the Impalpable and without body, yet Who thought good to be made man and in Himself Alone to shew our nature illustrious in the dignities of Godhead: for He the Same was God alike and man, and in likeness of man, in that herewith He was also God, but in fashion as a man. For He was God in appearance as we, and in bondman's form the Lord, for thus do we say that He was MADE FLESH.

Therefore do we affirm that the holy Virgin is also mother of God.

[1] ^a The two texts quoted here were used against the Arians by S. Athanasius, to vindicate the use of the same word, ἐγένετο, γενόμενος (in κρείττων γενόμενος, Heb. i. 4), against their misinterpretations of it (against Arians, i fin. pp. 268 sqq. O.T.), as S. Cyril used them here against Nestorian quibbles.

[2] ^b ἥ φυρμὸν ἥ κρᾶσιν. φυρμὸς implies the commingling of a dry substance with a moist, as in kneading: κρᾶσις the blending of two liquids together so as to form a compound. S. Cyril observes (ag. Nest. i. §3 above pp. 16, 17) that some of the older Fathers had used the word κρᾶσις (see Tertullian's use of it Apol. i. 21 and the passages of the other Fathers put together in p. 48 note h O.T.). S. Cyril himself in his writings on the Incarnation denies it in the sense which Apollinaris' error was importing into the word: he uses the expression of mixing to express the intensity of the union of God the Son with us, below p. 250 note i.