Refutations of Certain Propositions

Contents

Reading pages: 0–6 · 7–11 · 12–16 · 17

1. 0In a preface addressed to Eustathius, the author laments the violence used by the party in power against those of the true faith and introduces his point-by-point reply.
2. 1The author argues that truth is not decided by numbers, citing the twelve apostles, Stephen, Phinehas, Noah, and Lot.
3. 2The author defends the study of Scripture against those who would forbid it, and then, in a new chapter, argues that 'the Word became flesh' means union with flesh, not change into flesh, so that two natures must be confessed.
4. 4The author argues that one nature in Christ would empty the promises to Abraham and David, since Christ must be both David's Lord and his son according to the flesh.
5. 5The author denies that confessing the flesh as a nature adds a fourth to the Trinity, since the flesh is not of the divine substance, comparing it to the garment whose hem healed the woman.
6. 6The author answers the charge that confessing Christ's manhood is hoping in a man, citing the Scriptures on Christ as man and arguing that our hope is in God the Word acting through his flesh.
7. 7The author ridicules the formula 'God the Word suffered impassibly', arguing that it makes Christ's passion, endurance, and death a mere appearance and voids the new testament.
8. 8The author rejects the formula 'God suffered as he willed', arguing that will cannot overturn nature and that Scripture nowhere says the impassible God suffered by his will.
9. 9The author rejects the demand to accept scriptural words without examining their meaning, citing Paul's call to trained discernment and comparing such hearers to animals that do not chew the cud.
10. 10The author rejects the formula 'God the Word suffered in the flesh' as unscriptural, insisting that Scripture and Nicaea say 'Christ suffered', a name that signifies both natures.
11. 11The author answers the argument that the Jews' guilt requires that God was killed, insisting that the Godhead is impassible and that the insult to the united manhood reaches God, so that the Jews are still culpable.
12. 12The author turns back the charge that those who deny that God was crucified are Jews, arguing that calling the Godhead passible is worse than Judaism, close to Manichaeism, and bolder than the devil.
13. 13The author rejects the argument that the angels' eating at Abraham's table shows that Christ's Godhead could eat without flesh, arguing that the angels only appeared to eat, while Christ truly ate in his flesh.
14. 14The author argues that each of Christ's miracles is great only if his flesh is real, and, in a new chapter, that denying that Christ took our nature empties the promises, the fulfilment of the law, and our hope of resurrection.
15. 16The author argues against blind acceptance of words, showing that apparently contrary texts about Christ (only-begotten and firstborn, eternal and recent, without genealogy and with one) agree only when referred to his two natures.
16. 17The author rejects the claim that the two natures are no longer distinct after the ascension, citing Christ's return in the same form, his intercession, Paul's 'by a man', and the marks of the nails.