Tome to the Armenians

Contents

1. 0Proclus greets the bishops, presbyters, and archimandrites of Armenia.
2. 1Proclus says the report of new errors sown in Armenia has grieved him deeply, because they endanger the faith itself.
3. 2Virtue is sought and vice abhorred by the sound-minded, who guard against what is harmful.
4. 3Greeks and Christians define virtue differently; the Greeks, groping in darkness, see only visible things.
5. 4The Greek philosophers' four cardinal virtues stay earthbound and confine virtue to visible things.
6. 5Christians, taught by Paul, define virtue as what raises us to God and orders earthly things.
7. 6Paul names faith, hope, and love as the chief virtues; faith gives men knowledge beyond even the angels and lifts the mind to God.
8. 7Hope makes future things present to the mind and joins the one who longs to the object of longing.
9. 8Love moved God the Word to become flesh; he became incarnate without change of nature and without adding a fourth to the Trinity.
10. 9Moral virtue without faith, hope, and love does not win the crown; the faith must be kept pure within the bounds of the Gospels and apostles.
11. 10The faith confessed in baptism may not be altered even by an angel, as Paul says.
12. 11Proclus summarizes what Scripture teaches: creation, the natural law, the commandment, the fall, and God's training of humanity through the patriarchs, law, and prophets.
13. 12When law and prophets could not rescue humanity, God the Word himself became flesh of a virgin, beginning from the very start of human existence.
14. 13As a man begins as flesh and grows, so the Word began from the root of human generation, becoming flesh without being changed into it.
15. 14'Became flesh' shows the indivisible union in one person; 'took the form of a servant' shows the Godhead's immutability.
16. 15The Word became perfect man unchanged; as man he paid sin's debt by dying, as God he destroyed the devil, and he fulfilled all righteousness.
17. 16There is one Son, eternally begotten, who without leaving the Father became man through a virgin birth beyond nature.
18. 17Christ and God the Word are one Son, not two; otherwise Christ would be a mere man, and the worship of heaven and the prophets would make no sense.
19. 18Those who mock Christ's human weaknesses deny his real human nature and so lose salvation; they must either deny the nature with the Manichees or accept the passions with it.
20. 19Proclus confesses one hypostasis of God the Word made flesh: the same Son works miracles and suffers.
21. 20Proclus states the opponents' syllogism that, since the Trinity is impassible, the one crucified must be someone other than God the Word, and calls it a spider's web.
22. 21The Trinity is impassible in its Godhead; the one of the Trinity became flesh so that in his flesh he might abolish the passions and death while his Godhead remained impassible.
23. 22Gabriel's words show that the one born is God, whose people he saves; being one, God and man, born of a virgin, Jesus Christ saved the world.
24. 23Since all things were made through Christ, as Paul and John say, Christ is God the Word, not a mere man.
25. 24Texts calling Christ a man show that he truly became man, not that he is only a man; he is of the same essence with the Father as God and of one race with the virgin as man.
26. 25The prophets foretold a virgin bearing Emmanuel, 'God with us'.
27. 26Proclus answers the argument that a human mother bears only a human: in a birth beyond nature the one born is God.
28. 27The one Son made the world, gave the law, and became flesh; Proclus condemns Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, and the new teaching, which he says outdoes Judaism in blasphemy.
29. 28Christ, who united Jew and Greek in one new man, cannot himself be divided into two.
30. 29Paul's list of Israel's privileges in Rom 9:4–5 shows that Christ came from the Jews only according to the flesh and is God before the ages.
31. 30The Christ born of the virgin is the same one who came down from heaven; Paul, taught by revelation, shows who he is.
32. 31Rom 9:5 calls Christ God over all, blessed forever, and Proclus explains each phrase against those who make him a mere man.
33. 32Proclus calls for the worship of Christ as God and points to the coming judgment.
34. 33Proclus explains he wrote at the Armenians' request and urges them to keep the faith of Nicaea, of Basil and Gregory, against the new teachers.
35. 34Closing greeting.