Dialogues. The “Eranistes” or “Polymorphus” of the Blessed Theodoretus, Bishop of Cyrus.
The testimony of the holy Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and Confessor. From the defence of Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria: —
“‘I am the vine, ye are the branches. My Father is the husbandman.’ For we according to the body are of kin to the Lord, and for this reason He himself said ‘I will declare thy name unto my brethren.’ And just as the branches are of one substance with the vine, and of it, so too we, since we have bodies akin to the body of the Lord, receive them of His fulness, and have it as a root for our resurrection and salvation. And the Father is called a husbandman, for He Himself through the Word tilled the vine which is the Lord’s body.”
Of the same from the same treatise: —
“The Lord was called a vine on account of His bodily relationship to the branches which are ourselves.”
Of the same from his greater oration concerning the faith: —
“The scripture ‘in the beginning was the Word’ clearly indicates the Godhead. The passage ‘the Word was made flesh’ shews the human nature of the Lord.”
From the same discourse: —
“‘He shall wash His garments in wine’ that is His body, which is the vestment of the Godhead in His own blood.”
Of the same from the same discourse: —
“The Word ‘was’ is referred to His divinity, the words ‘was made flesh’ to His body, the Word was made flesh not by being reduced to flesh, but by bearing flesh, just as any one might say such an one became or was made an old man, though not so born from the beginning, or the soldier became a veteran, not being previously such as he became. John says, ‘I became,’ or ‘was in the island of Patmos on the Lord’s day.’ Not that he was made or born there, but he says ‘I became or was in Patmos’ instead of saying ‘I arrived;’ so the Word ‘arrived’ at flesh, as it is said ‘the Word was made flesh.’ Hear the words ‘I became like a broken vessel,’ and ‘I became like a man that hath no strength, free among the dead.’”
Of the same from his letter to Epictetus: —
“Whoever heard such things? Who taught them? Who learnt them? ‘Out of Zion shall go forth the law and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’ But whence did these things come forth? What hell vomited them out? To say that the body taken of Mary was of the same substance as the Godhead of the Word, or that the Word was changed into flesh and bones and hairs and a whole body; whoever heard in a church or at all among Christians that God bore a body by adoption and not by birth?”
Of the same from the same Epistle: —
“But who, hearing that the Word made for Himself a passible body, not of Mary, but of His own substance, would call the sayer of these things a Christian? Who has invented so unfounded an impiety, as even to think and to say that they who affirm the Lord’s body to be of Mary, conceive no longer of a Trinity, but of a quaternity in the godhead? As though they that are of this opinion described the flesh which the Saviour clothed himself with of Mary as of the substance of the Trinity.
“Whence further have some men vomited forth an impiety as bad as the foregoing, and alleged that the body is not of later time than the godhead of the Word, but has always been co-eternal with it, since it is formed of the substance of wisdom.”
Of the same from the same letter: —
“So the body taken of Mary was human according to the scriptures, and real in that it was the same as our own. For Mary was our sister, since we are all of Adam, a fact which no one could doubt who remembers the words of Luke.”
Testimony of the holy Basil, bishop of Cæsarea: —
From the interpretation of Psalm LX.
“All strangers have stooped and been put under the yoke of Christ, wherefore also ‘over Edom’ does he ‘cast out’ his ‘shoe.’ Now the shoe of the Godhead is the flesh which bore God whereby he came among men.”
Of the same from his writings about the Holy Ghost to Amphilochius: —
“He uses the phrase ‘of whom’ instead of ‘through whom;’ as when Paul says ‘made of a woman.’
He clearly made this distinction for us in another place where he says that the being made of the man is proper to a woman, but to a man the being made by the woman, in the words ‘For as the woman is of the man so is the man by the woman.’
But with the object at once of pointing out the different use of these expressions, and of correcting obiter an error of certain men who supposed the body of the Lord to be spiritual, that he may shew how the God-bearing flesh was composed of human matter, he gives prominence to the more emphatic expression, for the expression ‘by a woman’ was in danger of suggesting that the sense of the word generation was merely in passing through, while the phrase ‘of the woman’ makes the common nature of the child and of the mother plain enough.”
Testimony of the holy Gregory bishop of Nazianus. From the former exposition to Cledonius: —
“If any one says that the flesh came down from heaven, and not from this earth, and from us, let him be Anathema. For the words ‘The second man is from heaven,’ and ‘as is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly’ and ‘no man hath ascended up to heaven but the son of man that came down from heaven,’ and any other similar passage, must be understood to be spoken on account of the union with man, as also the statement that ‘all things were made by Christ,’ and that ‘Christ dwells in our hearts,’ must be understood not according to the sensible, but according to the intellectual conception of the Godhead, the terms being commingled together just as are the natures.”
Of the same from the same work: —
“Let us see from their own words what reason they give for the being made man, that is for the incarnation. If indeed it was that God otherwise not contained in space, might be contained in space and, as it were under a veil, might converse with men in the flesh, then their mask and their stage play are exquisite: not to say that it was possible for Him otherwise to converse with us, as of yore, in a burning bush and in human form, but if that He might undo the damnation of sin by taking like to like then just as He required flesh on account of the condemned flesh, and a soul on account of the soul, so too he required a mind on account of the mind, which in Adam not only fell but,—to employ a term which physicians are accustomed to use about diseases—was affected with original malady. For that which did not keep the commandment was what had received the commandment; and that which dared transgression was what had not kept the commandment; and that which specially needed salvation was what had transgressed, and that which was assumed was what needed salvation; so the mind was assumed. Now this point has been demonstrated, whether they will or no, by proofs which are so to say mathematical and necessary. But you are doing just as though, if a man were to have a diseased eye and a limping foot you were to cure the foot but leave the eye uncured; or, if a painter had painted a picture badly, were to alter the picture, but leave the painter alone, as though he were doing his work well. But if they are so constrained by these arguments as to take refuge in the statement that it is possible for God to save man, even without a mind, why then clearly He might have done so even without flesh, by the mere expression of His will, just as He works and has worked in the universe without a body. Away then with the flesh as well as with the mind! Let there be no inconsistency in your absurdity.”
Testimony of the Holy Gregory, bishop of Nyssa. From his sermon on Abraham: —
“So the Word came down not naked, but after having been made flesh, not in the form of God, but in the form of a servant. This then is He who said that He could do nothing of Himself.
For the not being able is the part of powerlessness. For as darkness is opposed to light, and death to life, so is weakness to power. But yet Christ is Power of God. Power is wholly inconsistent with not being able. For if power were powerless what is powerful? When then the Word declares that He can do nothing it is plain that He does not attribute his powerlessness to the Godhead of the Only-begotten, but connects his not being able with the powerlessness of our nature. The flesh is weak, as it is written, ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’”
Of the same from his Book “on the Perfection of Life”: —
“Again the true lawgiver, of whom Moses was a type, hewed for Himself out of our earth the slabs of nature. No wedlock fashioned for Him the flesh that was to receive the godhead, but He Himself is made the hewer of His own flesh, graven as it is by the finger of God. For the Holy Ghost came upon the Virgin, and the power of the Highest overshadowed her.
And when this had come to pass, nature once again took its indestructible character, being made immortal by the marks of the divine finger.”
Of the same from his Book against Eunomius: —
“We assert therefore that when He said above that wisdom built for herself a house, he intimates by the phrase the formation of the flesh of the Lord, for the very wisdom made its home in no strange dwelling, but built itself its dwelling of the Virgin’s body.”
Of the same from the same treatise: —
“The Word was before the ages, but the flesh was made in the last times, and no one would say on the contrary either that the flesh was before the ages, or the Word made in the last times.”
Of the same from the same treatise: —
“The expression ‘created me’ is not to be understood of the divine and the undefiled, but, as has been said, of our created nature, according to the dispensation of the incarnation.”
Of the same from the first discourse on the Beatitudes: —
“‘Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, and took the form of a servant.’
What poorer, in respect of God, than the form of a servant? What more lowly, in respect of the King of all, than approach to fellowship in our poor nature? The King of Kings and Lord of Lords voluntarily dons the form of servitude.”
Testimony of the Holy Flavianus, bishop of Antioch. From his sermon on John the Baptist: —
“Do not think of connexion in any physical sense, nor entertain the idea of conjugal intercourse. For thy Creator is creating His own bodily temple now being born of thee.”
Of the same from his book on “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”: —