Dialogues. The “Eranistes” or “Polymorphus” of the Blessed Theodoretus, Bishop of Cyrus.
“Let them who say that the nature of the Word has been changed into nature of the body say so no more, lest by the same interpretation the nature of the Word seem to have been changed into the corruption of sin. For there is a distinction between what took, and what was taken. Power came over the Virgin, as in the words of the angel to her, ‘The power of the highest shall overshadow thee.’ But what was born was of the body of the Virgin, and on this account the descent was divine but the conception human. Therefore the nature of the flesh and of the godhead could not be the same.”
The testimony of St. Basil, Bishop of Cæsarea.
From his homily on Thanksgiving:—
“Wherefore when He wept over His friend He shewed His participation in human nature and set us free from two extremes, suffering us neither to grow over soft in suffering nor to be insensible to pain. As then the Lord suffered hunger after solid food had been digested, and thirst when the moisture in His body was exhausted; and was aweary when His nerves and sinews were strained by His journeying, it was not that His divinity was weighed down with toil, but that His body showed the wonted symptoms of its nature. Thus too when He allowed Himself to weep He permitted the flesh to take its natural course.”
From the same against Eunomius:—
“I say that being in the form of God has the same force as being in God’s substance for as to have taken the form of a servant shews our Lord to have been of the substance of the manhood, so the statement that He was in the form of God attributes to Him the peculiar qualities of the divine substance.”
The testimony of the holy Gregorius, bishop of Nazianzus.
From his discourse De nova dominica: —
“Believe that He will come again at His glorious advent judging quick and dead, no longer flesh but not without a body.”
“In order that He may be seen by them that pierced Him and remain God without grossness.”
Of the same from his Epistle to Cledonius:—
“God and man are two natures, as soul and body are two; but there are not two sons, nor yet are there here two men although Paul thus speaks of the outward man and the inward man. In a word the sources of the Saviour’s being are of two kinds, since the visible is distinct from the invisible and the timeless from that which is of time, but He is not two beings. God forbid.”
Of the same from the same Exposition to Cledonius:—
“If any one says that the flesh has now been laid aside, and that the Godhead is bare of body, and that it is not and will not come with that which was assumed, let him be deprived of the vision of the glory of the advent! For where is the body now, save with Him that assumed it? For it assuredly has not been, as the Manichees fable, swallowed up by the Son, that it may be honoured through dishonour; it has not been poured out and dissolved in the air like a voice and stream of perfume or flash of unsubstantial lightning. And where is the capacity of being handled after the resurrection, wherein one day it shall be seen by them that pierced Him? For Godhead of itself is invisible.”
Of the same from the second discourse about the Son:—
“As the Word He was neither obedient nor disobedient, for these qualities belong to them that are in subjection and to inferiors; the former of the more tractable and the latter of them that deserve condemnation. But in the form of a servant He accommodates Himself to his fellowservants and puts on a form that was not His own, bearing in Himself all of me with all that is mine, that in Himself He may waste and destroy the baser parts as wax is wasted by fire or the mist of the earth by the sun.”
Of the same from his discourse on the Theophany:—
“Since He came forth from the Virgin with the assumption of two things mutually opposed to one another, flesh and spirit, whereof the one was taken into God and the other exhibited the grace of the Godhead.”
Of the same a little further on:—
“He was sent, but as Man. For His nature was twofold, for without doubt He thenceforth was aweary and hungered and thirsted and suffered agony and shed tears after the custom of a human body.”
Of the same from his second discourse about the Son:—
“He would be called God not of the Word, but of the visible creation, for how could He be God of Him that is absolutely God? Just so He is called Father, not of the visible creation, but of the Word. For He was of two-fold nature. Wherefore the one belongs absolutely to both, but the other not absolutely. For He is absolutely our God, but not absolutely our Father. And it is this conjunction of names which gives rise to the error of heretics. A proof of this lies in the fact that when natures are distinguished in thought, there is a distinction in names. Listen to the words of Paul. ‘The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, The Father of Glory,’ —of Christ He is God, of glory Father, and if both are one this is so not by nature but by conjunction. What can be plainer than this? Fifthly let it be said that He receives life, authority, inheritance of nations, power over all flesh, glory, disciples or what you will; all these belong to the manhood.”
“‘For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men the man Christ Jesus.’ As man He still pleads for my salvation, because He keeps with Him the body which He took, till he made me God by the power of the incarnation—though He be no longer known according to the flesh that is by affections of the flesh and though He be without sin.”
“Is it not plain to all that as God He knows, and is ignorant, He says, as man? If, that is, any one distinguish the apparent from that which is an object of intellectual perception. For what gives rise to this opinion is the fact that the appellation of the Son is absolute without relation, it not being added of whom He is the Son; so to give the most pious sense to this ignorance we hold it to belong to the human, and not to the divine.”
Testimony of the Holy Gregorius, bishop of Nyssa.
From his catechetical discourse:—
“And who says this that the infinity of the Godhead is comprehended by the limitation of the flesh, as by some vessel?”
“But if man’s soul by necessity of its nature commingled with the body, is everywhere in authority, what need is there of asserting that the Godhead is limited by the nature of the flesh?”
“What hinders us then, while recognising a certain unity and approximation of a divine nature in relation to the human, from retaining the divine intelligence even in this approximation, believing that the divine even when it exists in men is beyond all limitation?”
Of the same from his work against Eunomius:—
“The Son of Mary converses with brothers, but the only begotten has no brothers, for how could the name of only begotten be preserved among brothers? And the same Christ that said ‘God is a spirit’ says to His disciples ‘Handle me,’ to shew that the human nature only can be handled and that the divine is intangible; and He that said ‘I go’ indicates removal from place to place, while He that comprehends all things and ‘by Whom,’ as says the Apostle, ‘all things were created and by Whom all things consist,’ had among all existing things nothing without and beyond Himself which can stand to Him in the relation of motion or removal.”
“‘Being by the right hand of God exalted.’ Who then was exalted? The lowly or the most high? And what is the lowly if it be not the human? And what is the most high save the divine? But God being most high needs no exaltation, and so the Apostle says that the human is exalted, exalted that is in being ‘made both Lord and Christ.’ Therefore the Apostle does not mean by this term ‘He made’ the everlasting existence of the Lord, but the change of the lowly to the exalted which took place on the right hand of God. By this word he declares the mystery of piety, for when he says ‘by the right hand of God exalted’ he plainly reveals the ineffable œconomy of the mystery that the right hand of God which created all things, which is the Lord by whom all things were made and without whom nothing consists of things that were made, through the union lifted up to Its own exaltation the manhood united to It.”
Testimony of St. Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium.
From his discourse on “My Father is greater than I”: —
“Henceforth distinguish the natures; that of God and that of man. For He was not made man by falling away from God, nor God by increase and advance from man.”
Of the same from his discourse on “the Son can do nothing of Himself”: —
“For after the resurrection the Lord shews both—both that the body is not of this nature, and that the body rises, for remember the history. After the passion and the resurrection the disciples were gathered together, and when the doors were shut the Lord stood in the midst of them. Never at any time before the passion did He do this. Could not then the Christ have done this even long before? For all things are possible to God. But before the passion He did not do so lest you should suppose the incarnation an unreality or appearance, and think of the flesh of the Christ as spiritual, or that it came down from heaven and is of another substance than our flesh. Some have invented all these theories with the idea that thereby they reverence the Lord, forgetful that through their thanksgiving they blaspheme themselves, and accuse the truth of a lie: for I say nothing of the lie being altogether absurd. For if He took another body how does that affect mine, which stands in need of salvation? If He brought down flesh from heaven, how does this affect my flesh which was derived from earth?”
“Wherefore not before the passion, but after the passion, the Lord stood in the midst of the disciples when the doors were shut, that thou mayest know that thy natural body after being sown is ‘raised a spiritual body,’ and that thou mayest not suppose the body that is raised to be a different body. When Thomas after the resurrection doubted, He shews him the prints of the nails, He shews him the marks of the spears. But had He not power to heal Himself after the resurrection too, when even before the resurrection He had healed all men? But by shewing the prints of the nails He shews that it is this very body; by coming in when the doors were shut He shews that it has not the same qualities; the same body to fulfil the work of the incarnation by raising that which had become a corpse, but a changed body that it fall not again under corruption nor be subject again to death.”
Testimony of the blessed Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria.
From his work against Origen:—
“Our likeness which He assumed is not changed into the nature of Godhead nor is His Godhead turned into our likeness. For He remains what He was from the beginning God, and He so remains preserving our subsistence in Himself.”
Of the same from the same treatise:—