Eranistes (The Beggar), or Polymorphus 2.34–2.41

Of the same: “And this man too [claims] continually [to hold] the exposition of the synod at Nicaea; but in that examination our Fathers said that not the flesh, but the Word of God, is of one substance with the Father. And they confessed that the Word came forth from the substance of the Father, but that the flesh is from the Virgin. Why, then, do they hold out to us the name of Nicaea, yet bring in novelties which our forefathers never conceived?” Of the same, against Apollinarius: “Do not you, then, wish the body to be equal by nature to the Godhead. For even if you believe that the body of Christ is real, and bring it to the altar for transformation, but do not distinguish the nature of the body and of the Godhead, we will say to you too, ‘If you have offered rightly but not divided rightly, you have sinned; be still.’ Divide, then, what is ours and what is proper to the Word. I did not have what was his, and he did not have what was mine. And he took what was mine in order to give us a share of his own; and he took this up for fulfilment, not for confusion.” Of the same, a little later: “Let those, then, cease who say that the nature of the Word was changed into the nature of flesh, lest, having been changed, the nature of the Word should seem by the same interpretation to have become subject to corruption together with the sufferings of the body. For what took is one thing and what was taken is another. Power came upon the Virgin, as the angel says to her, ‘The power of the Most High will overshadow you.’ But what was born was from the body of the Virgin; and for this reason the descent was divine, but the conception human. The spirit of the body and the nature of the Godhead, then, could not be the same.” Of holy Basil, bishop of Caesarea. From the discourse on thanksgiving: “Therefore, by weeping over his friend, he showed his fellowship with human nature, and permitted us neither to … toward the sufferings nor to be insensible to griefs. As, then, the Lord accepted hunger when the solid food in him had been used up, and admitted thirst when the moisture in the body had been spent, and grew weary when the muscles and sinews were overstrained from the journey (not the Godhead being oppressed by fatigue, but the body receiving the [effects] that follow from nature), so too he admitted tears, allowing the symptom natural to the flesh to occur.”

Of the same, against Eunomius: “For I say that ‘being in the form of God’ is equivalent to ‘being in the substance of God.’ For as ‘having taken the form of a servant’ signifies that our Lord came to be in the substance of humanity, so in saying ‘being in the form of God’ he presents the property of the divine substance.” Of holy Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus. From the discourse on New Sunday: “[He will] come again with his glorious coming, judging the living and the dead; no longer flesh, yet not bodiless, by principles known to himself, of a more godlike body, so that he may both be seen by those who pierced him and remain God beyond grossness.” Of the same, from the letter to Cledonius: “For there are two natures, God and human, since there are also soul and body; but not two sons. For not here either are there two human beings, even if Paul so calls the inner and the outer man. And, to speak briefly, the elements of which the Savior is are one thing and another, since the invisible is not the same as the visible, nor the timeless as what is under time; but not one person and another; far from it!” Of the same, from the first exposition to Cledonius: “If anyone says that the flesh has now been laid aside, and that the Godhead is bare of body, and not that he both is and will come with what he assumed, may he not see the glory of the coming. For where is the body now, if not with the one who assumed it? For it has not, as in the nonsense of the Manichees, been deposited in the sun, so as to be honored through dishonor; nor was it poured out into the air and dissolved, like the nature of a voice, the flow of a scent, and the course of lightning that does not stand still. And where then is its being touched after the resurrection, or its being seen one day by those who pierced him? For the Godhead by itself is invisible.” Of the same, from the second discourse on the Son: “For as Word he was neither obedient nor disobedient; for these belong to those under authority and to those of second rank, the one to the more well-disposed, the other to those who deserve judgment. But as the form of a servant he condescends to his fellow servants, and takes on a form not his own, bearing in himself the whole of me with what is mine, so that in himself he may consume what is worse, as fire consumes wax

or as the sun consumes the vapor of the earth.” Of the same, from the discourse on the Theophany: “Since, then, he came forth from the Virgin with what he had assumed, [one] from two things opposed to each other, flesh and spirit; of which the one was assumed into God, and the other furnished the grace of the Godhead.” Of the same, a little later: “He was sent, but as human. For his nature was twofold; hence, indeed, he grew weary, and hungered, and thirsted, and was in agony, and wept, by the law of a human body.” Of the same, in the second discourse on [the Son]: “He would be called God, not of the Word, but of the visible. For how could he be God of him who is properly God? Just as he is Father, not of the visible, but of the Word. For he was twofold. So that the one title is used properly in both cases, but the other not properly; the opposite of what holds in our case. For of us he is properly God, but not properly Father. And this is what produces the heretics' error: the yoking together of the names. A sign of this is that when the natures are distinguished in thought, the names are divided along with them. You hear Paul saying, ‘That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory’: God of Christ, but Father of glory. For even if both together are one, it is not by nature but by the coming together. What could be clearer than this?” [Of the same:] “Let it be said in the fifth place: … the nations, or authority over all flesh, or glory, or disciples, or whatever is said. And these belong to the humanity.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “‘For there is one God, and one mediator of God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus.’ For he still intercedes even now, as human, for my salvation; for he is with the body that he assumed, until he makes me God by the power of the incarnation, even if he is no longer known according to the flesh (I mean the fleshly sufferings), and, apart from sin, ours …

… Of the same, from the same discourse: “Or is it not clear to all that he knows as God, but says that he does not know as human, if one separates what is seen from what is understood? For the fact that the title of the Son is absolute and unrelated, with no ‘of whom’ added to ‘the Son,’ gives this suggestion: that we should take the ignorance in the more pious sense, reckoning it to the human, not to the divine.” Of holy Gregory, bishop of Nyssa. From the Catechetical Oration: “And who says this, that the infinity of the Godhead is contained by the circumscription of the flesh, as in some vessel?” Of the same, from the same discourse: “But if the soul of a human being, though blended with the body by the necessity of nature, goes everywhere at will, what necessity is there to say that the Godhead is enclosed within the nature of the flesh?” Of the same, from the same discourse: “What prevents us, recognizing a certain union and drawing near of the divine nature to the human, from preserving the God-befitting understanding even in the drawing near, believing that the divine is outside all circumscription even when it is in human beings?” Of the same, from the discourse against Eunomius: “But if the one from Mary converses with brothers, while the Only-begotten has no brothers (for how would ‘only-begotten’ be preserved among brothers?); and he who said ‘God is spirit’ says to the disciples, ‘Touch me,’ to show that only the human nature can be touched, while the divine is intangible; and he who says ‘I go’ indicates a change of place, while he who contains all things, in whom, as the Apostle says, all things were created and in whom all things hold together, has nothing among the things that exist outside himself, to which he might come by some movement or departure …” Of the same, from the same discourse: “‘Exalted, then, by the right hand of God.’ Who, then, was exalted? The lowly one, or the Most High? And what is the lowly, if not the human? And what else is the Most High but the divine? But God does not need to be exalted, being Most High; [so] the human [was exalted], through becoming Lord and Christ. Therefore the Apostle does not present by the word ‘he made’ the Lord's existence before the ages, but the transformation of the lowly into the lofty, which took place at the right hand of God. For through this word the mystery of godliness is made clear. For he who said, ‘Exalted by the right hand of God,’ plainly reveals the ineffable dispensation of the mystery: that the right hand of God, which made all things that exist, which is the Lord, through whom all things came to be and without whom nothing that has come to be subsisted, itself raised the human being united to it to its own height through the union.” From the discourse on “My Father is greater than I”: “Distinguish, then, the natures, that of God and that of the human being. For neither did he become human from God by a fall, nor God from

a human being.” Of the same, from the discourse on “The Son can do nothing of himself”: “For after the resurrection the Lord shows both: that the body is not such [as before], and that it is this body that rose. Remember the history. The disciples were gathered together after the passion and the resurrection, and while the doors were shut the Lord stood in their midst. He never did this before the passion. Could not Christ have done this long before? For all things are possible to God. But he did not do it before the passion, so that you might not think the dispensation a fantasy or a seeming, nor suppose Christ's flesh to be spiritual, or to have come down from heaven, or to be of another substance than our flesh. For some, imagining all these things and thinking to honor the Lord by them, have unawares blasphemed through their very thanksgiving, and charged the truth with falsehood, so that the falsehood is altogether absurd. For if he assumed another body, what has it to do with mine, which needs salvation? If he brought flesh down from heaven, what has it to do with my flesh, taken from the earth?” Of the same, from the same discourse: “For these reasons, then, not before the passion but after the passion, the Lord stood in the midst of the disciples while the doors were shut, so that you might know that your natural body too, once sown, is raised a spiritual body. And so that you might not think, again, that what rises is something else, when Thomas disbelieved the resurrection, he shows him the prints of the nails, he shows him the traces of the wounds. Could he not heal himself, and that after the resurrection, he who healed all even before the resurrection? But by showing the prints of the nails he teaches that it is this body; and by entering when the doors were shut he shows that it is not such [as before]. The one, so that he might fulfil the manner of the dispensation by raising what had died; ‘not such,’ so that it might not again fall under corruption nor again undergo death.” From the [writings] against Origen: “Neither is our likeness, which he has shared, changed into the nature of the Godhead, nor is his Godhead turned into our likeness. For he remains God, what he was from the beginning; and he remains, preparing our existence in himself.” Of the same, from the same treatise: “But you do not keep quiet; you blaspheme again, slandering the Son of God and saying in these very words: ‘Just as the Son and the Father are one, so the soul that the Son took and he himself are one’; not knowing that the Son and the Father are one because of the one substance and the same Godhead, while the soul and the Son are of different substance and nature from each other. For if, just as the Father and the Son are one, so too the soul of the Son and the Son are one, then the Father and the soul will also be one, and the soul of the Son will at some time say, ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father.’ But this is not so; far from it! For the Son and the Father are one, since they are not different in quality; but the soul and [the Son] are other both in nature and in substance, since the soul too came to be through him, being consubstantial with us. For if in the way that the Father and the Son are one, in this way the soul and the Son too are one, as Origen holds, then the soul too, like the Son, will be the radiance of the glory of God and the stamp of his hypostasis. But this is impossible; it is impossible, then, for the Son and his soul to be one, as he and the Father are one. And what will he do, falling foul of himself again? For he writes thus: ‘Surely the soul that was troubled and very sorrowful was not the Only-begotten and firstborn of all creation. For God the Word, being superior to the soul, the Son himself, says: I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it.’ If, then, the Son is superior to his own soul, as he is indeed confessed to be, how is his soul equal to God and in his form? For [he writes]: ‘We say that it is the soul that emptied itself and took the form of a servant …’ of the other heretics happened, as we indicated. For if the Word exists in the form of God and is equal to God, and he thinks that the Savior's soul exists in the form of God and equal to God, having dared to write so, how is the equal superior? For things inferior in nature testify that what is above them is superior.”

Of holy John Chrysostom, bishop [of Constantinople]. From a discourse in the Great Church: “… And your Master took the human being up into heaven, while you do not even let him share the marketplace. And why do I say into heaven? He seated him on a royal throne, while you drive him even out of the city.” Of the same, on the beginning of the forty-first psalm: “Paul does not cease, to this day, saying, ‘We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were appealing through us; we beseech you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.’ And he did not stop even there, but, taking firstfruits from your nature, he seated it above every rule and authority and power and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. What could equal this honor? The firstfruits of our race, which had offended so much and is now honored, sits at such a height, and enjoys such honor.” Of the same, on the division of tongues: “Consider what it is to see our nature riding on the cherubim, and all the angelic power poured around it. And see Paul's wisdom too, how many words he seeks out to present Christ's love for humankind. For he did not say simply ‘grace,’ nor simply ‘riches,’ but ‘the surpassing riches of grace in kindness.’” Of the same, from the dogmatic discourse “That the things said and done by Christ in a lowly manner were done and said not through weakness of power, but for various purposes of the dispensation”: “And after the resurrection, seeing the disciple disbelieving, he did not refuse to show him the wounds and the print of the nails, and the scars to the touch of his hand, and he said, ‘Search and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones.’ For this reason he did not assume the human being at full age from the beginning, but endured being conceived, and born, and nursed with milk, and spending so long a time on earth, so that by the length of the time and by all the rest he might confirm this very thing.” Of the same, to those who say that demons govern human affairs: “Nothing was cheaper than the human being, and nothing has become more honored than the human being. He was the last part of the rational creation. But the feet have become the head, and have been brought up to the royal throne through the firstfruits. For just as a generous and munificent man, seeing someone who has escaped from shipwreck and could save from the waves only his naked body, receives him with open arms, clothes him in a splendid robe, and leads him to the highest honor, so God too has done in the case of our nature. The human being had thrown away all that he had: his freedom of speech, his converse with God, his life in paradise, his life free of hardship; and like a man naked from shipwreck, so he went out from there. But God received him and clothed him at once, and, leading him by the hand little by little, brought him up into

heaven.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “But God made the gain greater than the loss, and brought our nature up to the royal throne. And Paul cries out, saying, ‘He raised us up with him and seated us at his right hand in the heavenly places.’” Of the same, to those who fast at the first Passover: “He opened the heavens, made friends of those who were hated, brought [them] back up to heaven, seated our nature at the right hand of the throne, and provided us with countless other good things.” Of the same, from the discourse on the Ascension: “To this distance and height, then, he brought up our nature. See where it lay below, and where it went up above. It was not possible to go down lower than where the human being went down, nor … higher than where he brought him up again.” Of the same, from the interpretation of the letter to the Ephesians: “‘According to his good pleasure,’ he says, ‘which he purposed in him’; that is, what he desired; he was in travail, as one might say, to tell us the mystery. And what is this? That he wishes to seat a human being on high; which indeed has happened.” Of the same, from the same interpretation: “Concerning this one he says ‘the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,’ not concerning God the Word.” Of the same, from the same interpretation: “‘And when we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.’ Again Christ is in the middle, and the matter is credible. For if the beginning lives, so do we; he made him alive, and us. Do you see that everything is said of what is according to the flesh?” Of the same, from [the interpretation of] the Gospel according to John: “Why does he add, ‘And he dwelt among us’? As if to say: Suspect nothing absurd from ‘became.’ For I did not speak of a change of that immutable nature, but of a tenting and a dwelling. And what tents cannot be the same as the tent, but one thing tents in another; otherwise there would be no tenting, for nothing dwells in itself. And I said ‘another’ according to substance. For by the union and the conjunction God the Word and the flesh are one, no confusion having taken place, nor any disappearance of the substances, but a union ineffable and inexpressible.” Of the same, from [the interpretation of] the Gospel according to Matthew: “And just as someone standing between two parties set apart from each other, stretching out both hands and taking hold of each side, would join them, so he too did, joining the old to the new, the divine nature to the human, his own things to ours.”

Of the same, on the Ascension of Christ: “For just as, when two have parted in a skirmish, … the battle and the discord, so too Christ did. He was angry with us as God, and we despised his anger, turning away from the loving Master; and Christ, putting himself in the middle, brought each nature into friendship, and himself bore the punishment laid upon us by the Father.” Of the same, from the same discourse: “He offered, then, the firstfruits of our nature to the Father, and the Father himself admired the gift, because of the great worth of the one who offered it and the blamelessness of what was offered. For he received it with his own hands, and made it share his own throne; and, what is more, he set it at his own right hand. Let us recognize, then, who it is that heard, ‘Sit at my right hand’: what that nature was to which he said, ‘You are earth, and to earth you shall return.’” Of the same, a little later: “What word I shall use, what expressions I shall utter, I do not know. The frail nature, the cheap nature, which had been shown to be the least of all, has conquered all, has surpassed all. Today it has been deemed worthy to become higher than all; today it has received what angels long desired; today archangels have been able to become spectators of what they long yearned for, and [to see] our nature on the royal throne, [shining] with the glory of immortality.” Of the same, from [the interpretation of] the Gospel according to Luke: “In all things the Lord sketches for us, in our nature, the ways of salvation; and he provides us with many clear proofs both of his bodily visitation and of the Godhead working through the body. For he wished to confirm both his natures.” Of the same, on the Theophany: “‘Who will truly speak of the mighty acts of the Lord, make all his praises heard?’ Who could present in words the greatness of his benefaction to us? Human nature is joined to the Godhead, each nature remaining by itself.” Of [Cyril], bishop of Jerusalem. From the fourth catechetical discourse, on the ten doctrines. On the birth from the Virgin: “Believe that this only-begotten Son of God, because of our sins, came down from heaven to the earth, having taken this humanity of like passions with us, and was born of the holy Virgin and the Holy Spirit, the incarnation having taken place not in seeming and appearance but in truth; not passing through the Virgin as through a pipe, but truly made flesh from her, truly eating as we do, and truly nursed with milk from her. For if the incarnation was an appearance, salvation too is a phantom. Christ was twofold: human, what was seen; God, what was not seen; eating as human, truly, as we do, for he had the same passions of the flesh as we do; but feeding the five thousand from five loaves as God; dying as human, truly; but raising one four days dead as God; sleeping in the boat as human, and walking on the waters as God. Do not confuse the natures, and you will not be stupefied about the dispensation.” … in the ninth discourse On the Faith: “He does not truly know his own life who does not know Jesus Christ as true God and so also as true human. For the matter is of the same danger, if we deny Christ Jesus either as Spirit-God or as flesh of our body. ‘Therefore whoever confesses me before human beings, I too will confess him before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before human beings, I too will deny him before my Father in heaven.’ These things the Word made flesh said, and the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, taught, being himself the mediator for the salvation of the Church in the very mystery through which he mediated between God and human beings; being one, both together, from the natures united into this very [one], and being the same through each nature; yet so that in each he lacks neither, lest he cease to be God by being born human, or again not be human by remaining God. This, then, is the blessedness of the true faith among human beings: to proclaim God and human, to confess flesh and Word, and to know God, that he is also human, and not to be ignorant of the flesh, that