Eranistes (The Beggar), or Polymorphus 2.42–3.3

and is Word.” Of the same, in the same [book]: “Born, then, of the Virgin as human, the only-begotten God, who at the fulfilment of the time was himself to work in himself the advance of the human being into God, kept this order in all the Gospel sayings: that he might teach that he is to be believed Son of God, and remind us that he is proclaimed Son of Man; as human, obtaining and doing all that belongs to a human being; yet so that in this very manner of speaking, according to the other kind, he never speaks except so as to signify both God and human. From this, then, the heretics get a pretext for ensnaring the simpler and the ignorant: they falsely say that what he spoke according to the humanity was said in weakness of the divine nature, and, since it is one and the same who speaks all that he spoke, they contend that he said everything about himself. Nor do we deny that all his words are of his own nature. But if Christ is one, human and God, and neither was the human then first God, nor, when he was human, was he not then also God, nor after the human [nature], in the Lord, is the Word not human and the Word God, then it is necessary that the mystery of his words be one and the same, just as that of his birth is. And when at a given time you divide the human in him from God, then separate the words of God and of the human. And when you confess God and human, at that time distinguish the words of God and of the human. And when [he is] from God and human, and again wholly human and wholly God, consider the time. If anything of this kind was spoken to indicate what pertains to that time, fit what was said to the time. And since it is one thing [for him to be] God before the human, another again human and God, and another, after the human and God, wholly human and wholly God, do not confuse the mystery of the dispensation by what is said and what has been done. For necessarily, according to the quality of the kinds and of the natures, his manner of speaking was one when not yet [in] the mystery of the human being born, another when he was still approaching death, and another when he was already eternal. Having shown all things, then, in this way, Christ Jesus, born a human being of our body, spoke according to the custom of our nature, while being God. For even if in the birth, and in the passion, and in the death he carried out the actions of our nature, nevertheless he did all these things by the power of his own nature.

Of the same, in the same book: “Do you see, then, that God and human are so confessed that death is reckoned to the human, and the resurrection of the flesh to God? Understand the nature of God in the power of the resurrection, and recognize the human dispensation in the death. And since each came about by its own nature, remember for me that one Christ Jesus, who is both. These things I have shown briefly for this reason: that we may remember to understand each nature in our Lord Jesus Christ; for he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant.” Of the most holy bishop Augustine: “But now he appeared as mediator between God and human beings, so as to join each nature in the unity of the person, and to raise the customary by the unaccustomed, and to blend the unaccustomed with the customary.” Of the same, in the exposition of the Gospel according to John: “What, then, heretic? Since Christ is also human, he speaks as human, and do you slander God? He exalts the human nature in himself, and you dare to debase his divine [nature].” Of the same, in the discourse on the exposition of the faith: “For it is ours to believe, his to know; and so God the Word himself, receiving everything that belongs to a human being, is human, and the human being who was assumed, receiving all that is God, is nothing other than God. His substance must not be thought diminished. God knows how to mingle himself without corruption of his own, and he mingles in truth. He knows how to receive into himself so that nothing is added to him by increase; as he knows how, he poured himself out wholly, so that no diminution befell him. Let us not, then, conjecturing by the measure of our weakness and the lessons of sense experience, [suppose] God and human [to be like things mixed in] equal proportions, as though by such a confusion of Word and flesh some one body had come to be. Far be it from us to believe so, lest we think that, in the manner of things that are confused, two natures were brought into one hypostasis. For such a mixture is the destruction of each part. But Christ, containing but not contained, searching but not searched, filling but not filled, being everywhere at once whole and passing through all, by pouring forth his own power, as merciful, was mingled with the human nature; but the human nature was not mingled with the divine. O mystery truly heavenly and earthly, seen and not appearing! Such, too, was Christ who was born: heavenly and earthly, held and not held, seen and invisible; heavenly according to the nature of the Godhead, earthly according to the nature of the humanity; seen according to the flesh, invisible according to the spirit; held according to the body, not to be held according to the Word.” [Of …], from the letter to Eupsychius: “What, then, did the all-wise have to accomplish? By the mediation of the flesh that was assumed, and the union of God the Word with the human being from Mary, both things come about: that Christ, united from both, being disposed by the Godhead, remained in the dignity of his impassible nature, and, meeting with death in the flesh, at once showed, by the nature of the flesh akin to ours, contempt of death through death, and at once the rights of the new covenant were confirmed by his death. And that the natures brought together into true unity are different, but one God and Son from both, not as though the difference of the natures had been

abolished by the union.” Of the same, from the letter to the Easterners: “For a union of two natures has taken place; therefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this sense of the unconfused union, we confess the holy Virgin to be Theotokos, because God the Word was made flesh and became human, and from the very conception united to himself the temple taken from her.” Of the same: “For the Lord Jesus Christ is one, even if the difference of the natures, from which we say the ineffable union was effected, is not ignored.” Of the same: “Praising, then, as I said, the manner of the incarnation, we see that two natures came together with one another in an indissoluble union, without confusion and without division. For the flesh is flesh, and not Godhead, even if it has become God's flesh. Likewise the Word too is God, and not flesh, even if he made the flesh his own by the dispensation.” Of the same, in the interpretation of the letter to the Hebrews: “For even if the natures of the things that ran together into unity, I mean of flesh and of God, are understood as different and unequal to each other, yet the Son from both is one.” Of the same, in the interpretation of the same letter: “Even if perhaps the only-begotten Word of God should be said to have been united to flesh according to hypostasis, we do not say that a commingling of the natures with each other was effected, but rather that each remains what it is.” Of the same, from the Scholia: “The Word of the Father, though being God by nature, is named human, [born] of the Virgin, as having shared in blood and flesh as we do. For so he was seen by those on earth; not having let go what he was, but having come to be in the assumption of our humanity, which is complete according to its own principle.” Of the same, on the incarnation: “He is one, then, both before the incarnation true God, and in the humanity having remained what he was, and is, and will be. The one Lord Jesus Christ, then, must not be divided into a human being separately and God separately; but we say that Christ Jesus is one and the same, knowing the difference of the natures and [keeping] them [unconfused].” Of the same, after other things: “For what dwells is certainly understood as one thing in another, that is, the divine nature in humanity, without having undergone mixture or commingling or change into what it was not. For what is said to dwell in another has not itself become that in which it dwells, but rather is understood as one thing in another. But in the nature of the Word and of the humanity, the difference signifies to us only the difference of the natures; for one Christ is understood from both. Keeping, then, the unconfusedness very well, he says that the [Only-begotten], having become flesh and human, dwelt among us

[Orthodoxos:] You have heard, my good man, the great luminaries of the world, and seen the rays of their teaching; and you have learned exactly that not only after the birth, but also after the saving passion, and the resurrection, and the ascension, they showed the union of the Godhead and the humanity to be unconfused. Eranistes: I did not think that they divided the natures after the union; but I have found a great excess of division. Orthodoxos: It is mad and rash to move one's tongue against those noble men, the champions of the faith. But so that you may know that Apollinarius too says that the union took place without confusion, I will bring you his words as well. Hear him, then, saying: Of Apollinarius, from the book by chapters: “The things of God and of the body are united, then: Creator, worshiped, being eternal Wisdom and Power: these are from the Godhead; son of Mary, born in the last time, worshiping God, advancing in wisdom, strengthened in power: these are from the body. The suffering for sin and the curse … came forth, nor will it pass away, nor be changed into the bodiless … [we are] of one substance with the irrational animals according to the irrational body, but of another substance inasmuch as we are rational. So too God, being of one substance with human beings according to the flesh, is of another substance … Word. For he knows one only-begotten Son, who became flesh … inasmuch as he is Word and human.” And elsewhere he speaks thus: “The qualities of things blended together are blended, not destroyed, so that some are even separated from the things blended, as wine from water. Nor is it a blending with a body, nor such as that of bodies with bodies; but it also has what is unmixed, so that the activity of the Godhead, as is needful each time, either acts by itself or is mingled in, as happened in the Lord's fast. When the Godhead was mingled in according to its freedom from need, hunger was prevented; but when it did not set its freedom from need against the want, hunger came about, for the overthrow of the devil. And if the mixture of bodies was not changed, how much more that of the Godhead?” And in another place he says this: “If the blending with iron, which makes the iron itself fire so that it does the works of fire, did not change its nature, neither is the union of God with the body a change of the body, although the body furnishes divine activities to those able to touch it.” To these he immediately joins: “If a human being has both soul and body, and these remain, being in unity, much more does Christ, having Godhead with a body, have both, remaining and not confused.” And a little later: “For the human [nature] shares in the divine activity as far as it reaches; but it is other, as the least from the greatest. And the human being is a servant of God, but God is not a servant of the human being, nor of himself. And the one is God's handiwork, but the other is neither the handiwork of a human being nor of himself.” And a little later: “If one takes ‘what he sees the Father doing, he himself does’ of Christ according to the Godhead, and not according to the flesh, by which the one made flesh is distinct from the Father who was not made flesh, he divides two divine activities; but they are not divided; therefore he does not speak of the Godhead.” Then again he has set down this too: “Just as the human being is not irrational because the rational is added to the irrational, so neither is the Savior a creature because the creature is added to the uncreated God.” To these he joins this too: “The invisible, though compounded with a visible body and beheld through it, remains invisible; and it remains uncompounded, inasmuch as it is not circumscribed together with the body. And the body, remaining in its own measure, receives the union with God in being given life; nor does what is given life give life.” And a little later he spoke thus: “If not even the blending of soul with body, though it is from the beginning by natural growth together, makes the soul visible through the body, nor changes it into the other properties of the body so that it is cut and diminished, how much more is God, who has not grown together with a body, united to a body without [change]? And if the body of a human being remains in its own nature, and that while ensouled, neither in Christ did the blending change the body so that it is not a body.” And after very much more he has set down this again: “He who confesses soul and body as presented by Scripture as one contradicts himself when he says that such a union of the Word with the body is a change, though this is not seen even in the case of the soul.” Hear him again, crying out expressly: “If those who do not say that the Lord's flesh remains are impious, much more those who do not confess that he was made flesh at all.” And in the little discourse On the Incarnation he again wrote this: “‘Sit at my right hand,’ then, he says as to a human being; for it is not said to the one who always sits on the throne of glory, as God the Word, after the ascent from the earth, but to the one now exalted into the heavenly glory as human, as the apostles say: ‘For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand.’ Human is the command, giving a beginning to the sitting; divine is the dignity of sitting with God, whom thousands of thousands serve, and before whom ten thousand times ten thousand stand.” And a little later: “For he subjects the enemies to him not as to God, but as to a human being, so that the same one is both God, being seen, and human. That ‘until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet’ is said to him as to a human being, Paul teaches, calling the achievement his own, that is, according to the divine: ‘according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.’ See the Godhead and the humanity inseparable in the one person.” And after a short while: “‘Glorify me, you, with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.’ For ‘glorify’ he says as human; but having the glory before the age he reveals as God.”

And again, a little later: “But let us not be humbled by thinking the worship of the Son of God lowly, even with the human likeness; but let us glorify him with royal glory, as a king who has appeared even in a cheap robe, especially as we see the very garment glorified, as befitted the body of God and the Savior of the world, the seed of eternal life, the instrument of divine activities, the destroyer of all evil, the overthrower of death, and the author of resurrection. For even if it had its nature from human beings, it had its life from God, its power from heaven, and its virtue divine.” And a little later: “… Hence we worship the body as the Word, and partake of the body as of the spirit.” [Orthodoxos:] See, the very first to introduce the blending of the natures has been shown plainly using division. This man called the body a robe, and a creature, and an instrument. And indeed he named it a servant, which none of us has ever dared to say. He said that this was deemed worthy of the seat at the right hand …

… Orthodoxos: Death, then, is the punishment of those who have sinned. … Orthodoxos: Why, then, when soul and body together have sinned, does the body alone undergo the punishment of death? Eranistes: Because it was the body that looked wrongly at the tree, and stretched out its hands, and plucked the forbidden fruit. Again, this same mouth ground it fine with its teeth and milled it with its molars. Then the gullet in turn received it and passed it on to the stomach; and the stomach, having altered it, passed it on to the liver. The liver changed what it received into the nature of blood and handed it to the hollow vein; that vein handed it to the veins joined to it, and these through the others to the body; and so the theft of the forbidden food passed through the whole body. Rightly, then, the body alone underwent the punishment for the sin. Orthodoxos: You have gone through the matter of nourishment for us like a natural philosopher: through how many parts it travels and how many alterations it undergoes before it is finally changed into the nature of the body. But you were unwilling to see this: that without the soul the body does none of the things you have mentioned. For when it is left by the soul yoked to it, it lies breathless, voiceless, and motionless; the eye sees neither wrongly nor rightly, the ears do not receive the sound of voices, the hands do not move, the feet do not walk; it is like an instrument deprived of its musician. How, then, did you say that the body alone had sinned, when without the soul it cannot even breathe at all? … of the soul, but it procures for the soul the harmful acquisition of sin. Orthodoxos: How, and in what way? Eranistes: Through the eyes it prepares the soul to see wrongly; through the hearing, to hear what is not profitable; through the tongue, to utter what is ruinous; and through the other parts, to do what is unlawful. Orthodoxos: Then, it seems, we must call the deaf blessed, and those deprived of sight, and those who lack the other parts; for their souls do not share in the wickedness of the body. But why, most wise friend, did you mention only the blameworthy things of the body …? For it can also look in a friendly and kindly way, and wipe away a tear of compunction, and hear the divine oracles, and incline the ear to one in need, and praise the Maker with the tongue, and teach one’s neighbor what he should, and move the hands to mercy, and, in a word, use the parts of the body for the acquisition of every virtue. … Orthodoxos: Then both keeping and transgressing the laws are common to soul and body. … Orthodoxos: It seems to me that the soul even leads in each of them, using reasoning before the body. Eranistes: How do you mean this? Orthodoxos: Because the mind first sketches the virtue or the vice, and then gives it its full form, using the parts of the body as instruments, and, as colors and materials, those that suit either. … Orthodoxos: If, then, the soul sins together with the body, or rather leads in the sin (for it was entrusted with driving and steering the living creature), why does it share in the sin and not share in the punishment?

Eranistes: And how was it possible for the immortal [soul] … death … Orthodoxos: Yet it was just that, having shared in the transgression, it should share in the chastisement. … Orthodoxos: But in the life to come it will be handed over to Gehenna together with the body? Eranistes: So he has said: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; but fear rather him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” Orthodoxos: Then in this life it escaped death, as immortal; but in that life it will pay the penalty, not by undergoing death but by being punished while alive. Eranistes: The divine Scripture teaches this too. Orthodoxos: It is impossible, then, for the immortal [soul] to undergo death. … Orthodoxos: How, then, do you say that God the Word tasted death? For if, where the immortal is something created, it has been seen to be impossible for it to become mortal, how is it possible for him who is uncreatedly and eternally immortal, the Maker of mortal and immortal natures, to partake of death? Eranistes: We too know that his nature is immortal, but we say that he partook of death in the flesh. Orthodoxos: But we have shown expressly that what is immortal by nature can in no way partake of death. For not even the soul, though it had a share in working the sin, shared death with the body, solely because of the immortality of its nature. Let us examine this same point another way too. Eranistes: Nothing prevents us from trying every path to find the truth. Orthodoxos: Let us inquire, then, in this way. Do we say that, of virtue and of vice, some are teachers and others are pupils of these? … Orthodoxos: And do we say that the teacher of virtue is worthy of greater rewards? … Orthodoxos: And likewise that the teacher of vice is worthy of double and triple punishment? … Orthodoxos: In which portion must the devil be placed? Do we say he is a teacher or a pupil? Eranistes: A teacher of teachers, rather. For he is both father and teacher of all wickedness. Orthodoxos: And who among human beings first became his [pupils]? Eranistes: Adam and Eve. Orthodoxos: And who received the sentence of death? Eranistes: Adam and all his race. Orthodoxos: So the pupils paid the penalty for what they were wrongly taught; and did the teacher, whom we just said is worthy of double and triple chastisement, escape the punishment? … Orthodoxos: But nevertheless, even though these things happened so, we both know and call the judge just. … Orthodoxos: Why, then, being just, did he not exact from that one the penalty for his evil teaching? Eranistes: He has prepared for him the unquenchable flame of Gehenna. For he says, “Go, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” But here he did not share death with his pupils for this reason, that he has an immortal nature.

Orthodoxos: So not even those who have committed the greatest offences think they partake of death, if they have an immortal nature. … Orthodoxos: If, then, not even the very inventor and teacher of wickedness partook of death, because of the immortality of his nature, how do you not shudder when you say that the fountain of immortality and righteousness partook of death? Eranistes: If we said that he endured the passion unwillingly, the accusation you bring against us would have had a just pretext. But if we [confess] the passion as freely chosen and the death as voluntary, you ought not to accuse us but to praise the surpassing greatness of his love for humankind. For he suffered willingly, and he partook of death because he willed it … Orthodoxos: It seems you are altogether ignorant of the divine nature. For the Lord God wills nothing that is not in his nature, but all that he wills he can do. And he wills what is suited and fitting to his own nature. Eranistes: We have learned that all things are possible for God. … in the word also whatever belongs to the devil’s portion. For he who said “all things” without qualification has included in the same breath both the good things and their opposites. Eranistes: Did not the noble Job, then, say without qualification, “I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible for you”? Orthodoxos: If you read what the righteous man said before this, you will find from it the aim of these words too. For he spoke thus: “Remember that you formed me as clay, and you turn me back into earth. Did you not milk me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews; you set life and mercy with me, and your oversight guarded my spirit.” To these words he adds: “Having these things in myself, I know that you can do all things, and nothing is impossible for you.” Did he not, then, say that whatever accords with these things is also fitting to the undefiled nature, the God of the universe? Eranistes: Nothing is impossible for the almighty God. Orthodoxos: Then sinning too is possible for the almighty God, according to your definition at least. Eranistes: [No,] since he does not will it. Orthodoxos: And why does he not will it? Eranistes: Because sinning is foreign to that nature. Orthodoxos: Then there are many things he cannot do; for there are many kinds of offences. Eranistes: None of such things is either willed by God or possible for him. Orthodoxos: Nor indeed those things that are contrary to the divine nature. … Orthodoxos: For example, we have been taught that God is light, spiritual and true. … Orthodoxos: But we would not say that he either willed or was able to become darkness. … Orthodoxos: Again, the divine Scripture calls his nature invisible. … Orthodoxos: But we would not say that it could ever become visible. … Orthodoxos: For it is incomprehensible and altogether beyond reach. … Orthodoxos: Then neither would he who is become one who is not. … Orthodoxos: Nor would the Father [become] the Son. … Orthodoxos: Nor, then, would the unbegotten … Eranistes: How could it?