Theodore Abucara, Bishop of Caria

THEODORUS ABUCARA

Karrhai, or Charan, in Mesopotamia, a disciple of John of Damascus, who died about the year of Christ 756, was renowned for his knowledge of theology, philosophy, and the Arabic language, and for his writings against the Jews, Mohammedans, Nestorians, Jacobites, Severians, and Origenists around the year of Christ 770. He is undoubtedly to be distinguished from Theodore of Caria, who became Bishop of Laodicea in Thrace, first a friend of Photius and later a deserter from him at the eighth synod in the year of Christ 869, following the party of Ignatius; just as he is to be distinguished from Theodore of Raithu, who flourished around the year 660, and from Theodore Hagiopolites, or Antiochene, under whose name Canisius published certain short works of Abucara.

The published short works of Theodore Abucara. The larger numbers refer to the edition of Gretser, the smaller to that of Genebrard.

I. "That we have five enemies, from whom Christ has delivered us." A dialogue on the five enemies: death, the devil, the curse of the law, sin, and hell, from which Christ has liberated us. Edited at Ratisbon, p. 346. It was translated by Franciscus Turrianus in addition to Genebrard. It begins: *Pente thanatophorous echthrous echomen*. [In the Vienna codex, as noted by Kollarius in Lambecius, vol. VII, p. 292].

...which makes Theodore the secretary of Thomas, who did not obtain the patriarchate before the year of Christ 802. And from the inscription of the fourth short work of Abucara, you would rather suspect that it was composed by Theodore some time earlier in the Arabic language, but then, because of its solid and succinct clarity, translated into Greek by order of Thomas by Michael the Syncellus and transmitted to the Armenians. FABR. Consult concerning Theod. Abucara, Guill. Cave in *Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Historia literaria*, vol. II, at the year 867, the Photian era, p. 54 seq. edition of Basel. — Dupin, *Hist. eccles.* vol. VII, p. 109. — Bayle, *Dictionnaire*, etc., tom. I, p. 35, voc. Abucaras. — Fabricius, our *De veritate christ. relig.*, ch. 2, § 57, p. 119. — Oudin, *Supplem.* p. 259. — Hammerger, *Zuverlässige Nachricht*, tom. II, p. 532 seq. — Saxius, *Onom. lit.* II, p. 90 and 543. — Walchius, *Histor. haeres.* (written in German), tom. VIII, p. 857 seq. HARL.

...Turrianus, and it is far to be preferred to the opinion of those who confuse our Theodore with the Bishop of Caria. See Assemani, tom. II *Bibl. orient.* p. 292, note 3. Regarding this Charan or Carrhae of Mesopotamia, see the scholarly dissertation of B. Tho. Litigius on the seventeenth short work of Theodorus Abucara, § 5 and 6. See also Ez. Spanheim on the first oration of Julian, p. 170; Zaccagni on the *Acts of Archelaus with Manes*, and Millesius on Cyril of Jerusalem, p. 95.

...VIII, p. 772 seq. [vol. IX, p. 682 seqq. new ed.]. Abucara, however, in the title of the eighteenth short work, professes that he received it "by the voice of John of Damascus." Nor this alone, but others also, such as XXXV and XXXVII, as is evident when comparing these with the writings of Damascus and the discussion with the Saracen in tom. I of the edition of the illustrious Lequien, p. 467 seq.

...wise Bishop of Karrhai, etc. The thirty-fourth short work; "By the Theologian concerning time, by the same Abucara." ...first pointed out by Gretser in the short works of Abucara edited by him, whom Ducaeus followed in the *Auctarium Bibl. Patrum*, Lambecius V, p. 77 and 358 [p. 33, 168, note to no. 7; and index I to that volume, p. 737 seq. Kollar]. Nesselius, part I, p. 251; IV, p. 153; VI, p. 413. Cave, in *Historia litteraria scriptorum Eccles.* at the year 867. Hendreich, in *Pandectae Brandenburgenses*, p. 24; and others.

...edited by Harduin, p. 980 seq. and the council held at Constantinople in the year 869, action II, p. 1035, and IV, p. 1050.

...vin in *Apparatus sacer*, where, having begun to speak about Theodorus Abucara, he says: See, however, under the word Theodore in the monastery of Raithu: for he is the same. Gretser was also doubtful in a note to the twenty-sixth short work, which in another Bavarian codex is attributed to Theodore of Raithu. This opinion also pleased a learned man, regarding whom Andreas Arnoldus [says] in the preface to the *Syntagma doctrinae* of Saint Athanasius: He calls to mind that a learned man in England had attributed Abucara to the seventh century, etc.

...is not different from the Antiochene (for Antioch is often called Agiopolis or Theopolis). Thus the Antiochene is the same as the Mopsuestenian, concerning whom we spoke abundantly above. But as for the three short works which Henricus Canisius exhibited in Latin under the name of Theodore Hagiopolites in *Antiquae Lectiones* tom. IV, part I, p. 281 seqq., translated from the Greek by Turrianus and reprinted under the same name in the *Bibliotheca Patrum* of Paris, 1654, tom. IV, and Cologne 1622, in the Supplement, or tom. XV, Gretser and Ducaeus did not hesitate to edit them among the writings of Theodorus Abucara, nos. 27, 28, 29, out of loyalty to the manuscripts. The first, *Concerning the name of God*, the second, *Concerning God and Deity*, and the third, *Against the Nestorians*. The memory deceived Jo. Mollerus, who in his *Isagogia* p. 521, affirms that those three short works were published by Canisius under the name of Theodore of Raithu.

...heresies of the [people] are in the Escorial codex. See Pluer in *Itinerarium per Hispanias*, p. 19. Consult Montfaucon, *Bibl. biblioth.* p. 624 B, and p. 706 D. In two codices of the Sfortiana library [there is an] Abucara dialogue, in which he demonstrates by syllogisms that God exists; and other various responses to Arabian questions, namely of the Saracens and Nestorians. — Various [works are] in Vienna, in the Imperial codices. See Lambecius with the notes of Kollar, 5, p. 468, and VII, p. 135 seqq. and p. seqq. In Paris, in codex 1501, there are, according to the order of Fabricius, nos. 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 22, 23, 31, with a *Colloquy on the Christian religion and the Mosaic law*; also a *Response to a certain question*, and a dialogue not yet edited, [in which] it is shown that the hypostasis of Christ is not dissolved in the passion. In codex [..] there are the same short works that are noted by Fabricius: no. 2, 3 (which dialogue is also in codex 1258), no. 5, 6, 7, 10 (and in codex 1372), no. 18 (from the *Disputations against the Saracens*, as reported by John the Deacon), nos. 20, 22, 25; then nos. 14, 16, 17, also an *Interrogation proposed by a certain Saracen against the Christian religion*, and the third, a dialogue with a Nestorian, hitherto unedited. In both codices [is the] *Colloquy against monks not eating pork*; [these] are in the Bavarian codices (from which Gretser had edited the short works), 76 and 104. The individual [works] which contain them are listed distinctly and knowledgeably by the illustrious Hardt in *Aretin Beyträgen*, etc., 1804, part I, p. 19 seqq., 27 seqq. and part VII, p. 4 seqq. Many of the short works of Abucara are in the Moscow codex of the Synod, 32, which are listed by Matthaei in *Notitia codd. Gr. Mosq.* p. 29 seqq. 8vo edition. HARL.

^A of the Acephali, of the Severians, that is, of the soul-destroying heresy of the Jacobites. *Explanation of terms* (15) which philosophers use, and a refutation of the heresy of the Acephali, the Severians, that is, the Jacobites, p. 351. It begins: *Lovers of true dogmas and defenders*. Turrianus translated it. [In the Vienna codex 77. See Kollar, in the place cited, and at Moscow in the synodal codex 32. See Matthaei, *Notit.* p. 291, n. 6, in 8vo. HARL.]

III. *Dialogue held with the prefect of the public post of Emesa* (14), who had asked for a demonstration by reasoning that God exists. *Dialogus cum praefecto cursus publici Emeseno qui petierat ut ratiocinatione demonstraret, Deum esse*, p. 364. It begins: *Give, O man, a demonstration*. Genebrardus and Turrianus translated it. Regarding the Caesarean manuscript, see Lambecius, V, p. 78 [p. 168, n. 7, in the edition of Kollar, and VII, p. 289, noted by Kollar].

IV. *A letter containing the orthodox and immaculate faith* of the Chalcedonian Council, sent by Thomas, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the heretics in Armenia, but dictated in Arabic (the *Apodixis*?) by Theodore Abucara, and translated into the Greek language by Michael, priest and syncellus of the Church of Jerusalem, p. 371. It begins: *Christ is the Lord and our God*. Regarding the Caesarean manuscript, see Lambec. V, p. 13 [p. 33, n. 2; and VII, p. 290 seqq. Kollar; at Moscow in codex syn. 32. See Matthaei *Notit.* p. 291, n. 4, ed. in-8]. Turrianus translated it.

V. *A brief response to the question*, "Why do we say that," etc. Wherefore, just as we say that the humanity of Christ is the very same humanity of Peter and Paul, and of any man whatsoever, [do we] not say the same of the body of Christ, which we receive and in which we participate, that it is the same as the body of Peter and Paul and of anyone else? p. 381. Lambecius also mentions this in ms. V, p. 78 (15). Turrianus translated it.

VI. *An Example* by which it is shown how the stain of the sin of Adam, and through the incarnation of our Savior, the expiation spread to the whole human race. Turrianus translated it, p. 382. It begins: *The earth-born say*, or, as in the Caesarean ms. at Lambecius [V, p. 169, n. 9; and VII, p. 290, note of Kollar], *the husbandmen*.

VII. *Dialogue concerning the struggle of Christ with the devil*, p. 382. *Christ being God and struggling against the devil*. Turrianus and Genebrardus translated it. Greek ms. Lambec. V, p. 78 [p. 169, 10; and VII, p. 291 Kollar].

VIII. *Question of an Arab against a Christian*, p. 385. It begins: *Tell me, is your Christ God?* Turrianus translated it, as did Genebrardus. [In the Vienna codex, see Kollar ad Lambec. VII, p. 291.]

IX. *Question proposed by an Agarene to the same Christian*, p. 385. It begins: *Tell me, [do] the Jews [honor] Christ?* Turrianus and Genebrardus translated it. [See Kollar ad Lambec. in the place cited.]

X. *Dissertation against a Jew*, p. 386. It begins: *The Jew, he says, "I to you..."* Turrianus, besides Genebrardus, translated it. [See Kollar in the place cited.]

XI. *Against a Nestorian*, on the text: Matt. xxviii, 18: "All power is given unto me," p. 389. Turrianus and Genebrardus translated it.

XII. *Interrogation against a Nestorian*, p. 389. It begins: *What is the handwriting against us?* Turrianus translated it.

XIII. *Another interrogation against a Nestorian*. It begins: *There are four of Christ*. Turrianus and Genebrardus translated it.

XIV. *Dialogue against a Nestorian*. It begins: *Why do you call Mary Theotokos?* Turrianus translated it, p. 390 [five treatises of Abucara against the Nestorians are in the Vienna codex 77, noted by Kollar ad Lambec. VII, p. 291 seqq. HARL.]; and Genebrardus.

XV. *To a Nestorian*, p. 391. It begins: *Why is Christ called Christ?* Turrianus translated it.

XVI. ^B *Question proposed by an infidel to Abucara*, p. 392. It begins: *No, he says, in all things and everywhere it is said that God exists*. Turrianus and Genebrardus translated it. [See Kollar ad Lambec. VII, p. 137 and 291.]

XVII. *Questioned by a believer* (16): How, although Christ clearly pronounces (John iii, 5) "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven," can it be that those who were righteous before his coming, not having been baptized, enter into it? Turrianus translated it. It begins: *That Christ was baptized for them*, p. 393. Abucara: (15) Theodore distinguishes between terms accepted philosophically and logically. He calls "philosophical names" those that denote the thing itself, as are Peter, man, animal; "logical," those that denote a logical conception, as individual, person, species, genus, nature, etc. Thus, in opusculum XXVIII, p. 514, he distinguishes between what is predicated "essentially" and "accidentally." [See Matthaei in *Notit. codd. mss. Gr. Mosq.* p. 291, ed. in-8. He, however, in place of *dromou* (post) conjectures *thronou* (throne), and understands it of the episcopal see, or of the Bishop of Emesa. HARL.] (15) In the ed. of Kollar, p. 168, n. 8, see also the note of Kollar, vol. VII, p. 289, n. 7, of codex 77, in which there is also a question proposed by Abucara: it begins, "What justice, ten, or fifty years." HARL.] (16) Thus the Bavarian codex, according to Gretscher. [And in the Vienna codex 77, noted by Kollar ad Lambec. VII, p. 292. HARL.] Or, "from an infidel."

^A he answers, that Christ was baptized for them, and that the water flowing ^B from the side of Christ sanctified them. This response of his was brought to examination in a singular dissertation by B. D. Thomas Ittigius, *De baptismo fidelium ante Christi adventum defunctorum per aquam quæ ex ejus latere fluxit*, Leipzig 1698, 4, and also in his *Enneas dissertationum*, ibid. 1702, 8.

XVIII. Ἐκ τῶν πρὸς τοὺς Σαῤῥακηνοὺς ἀντιῤῥήσεων, διὰ φωνῆς Ἰωάννου Δαμασκηνού. *Ex concertationibus cum Sarracenis, ex ore Joannis Damasceni*. This work was first edited in Greek and Latin by Michael Lequien, Paris 1712, vol. I of the *Works of John Damascene*, p. 472 (17). For Gretser had only published p. 394 from the version of Turrianus, since he had not found the Greek in the Bavarian codices. It begins: Εἰπέ μοι, ὦ ἐπίσκοπε. [See above, note nn, to vol. VIII, p. 86; and vol. IX, p. 709, n. 8. HARL.]

XIX. Ὅτι ὁ Μωάμεθ (18) οὐκ ἔστι ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ. *Mahometem non esse ex Deo*, p. 394. It begins: Ἔθος τοῖς τῶν Σαρακηνῶν ὑποκριταῖς. Translated by James Gretser.

XX. Ὅτι ὁ Μωάμεθ ἐχθρὸς ἦν τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ὑπὸ δαίμονος ἠνωχλεῖτο. *Quod Mohametus fuerit hostis Dei et a dæmone obsessus*, p. 395. It begins: Εἰ πάσης τῆς ὑπ’ οὐρανὸν κτίσεως. Translated by Gretser.

XXI. Ἐρώτησις ὅτι καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἐλαττόνων κηρύγματος βεβαιοῦται τὸ Χριστιανῶν δόγμα. *Dogma ad confirmationem Christianismi ex vocibus humilibus et abjectis prædicationis Evangelii*, p. 396. Translated by Turrianus. It begins: Τῶν ἐλλογίμων Σαρακηνῶν.

XXII. Τὸν εὐλογούμενον ἄρτον εἶναι σῶμα Χριστοῦ. *Dialogus cum Sarraceno, ostendens panem mystica benedictione fieri corpus Christi*, p. 400. Translated by Turrianus. It begins: Διὰ τί, ἐπίσκοπε, ἐμπαίζετε ὑμεῖς. FABR. Our same Fabricius, in *Delectu argumentorum et syllab. scriptor. qui veritatem religionis Christianæ asseruerunt*, p. 119 seq., added the following: "Opusculum XXII constitutes the first part of the Disputation which is said to have been held long after with Ahmed the Saracen in the year 1050 by Samonas, Archbishop of Gaza, as noted by Michael Lequien in Damascene vol. I, p. 655. Nicolas Comnenus Papadopoli, p. 407, calls this Samonas a martyr of the mystical premonitions. That disputation with Ahmed concerning the truth of the body and blood of Christ was published in Greek under the name of Samonas along with the liturgies of SS. James, Basil, and Chrysostom, p. 133, Paris 1560 fol. In Latin in the liturgies of the Holy Fathers from the edition of Claudius de Sainctes, p. 79, Antwerp 1562, 8, and in the *Bibliotheca Patrum* ed. Lyon vol. XVIII, p. 577; in Greek and Latin in the *Auctarium Ducæanum*, vol. II, p. 277; and in the *Biblioth. Patrum*, Paris 1644, 1654, vol. XII, p. 522-526." Thus far Fabricius. He then briefly reviews other works from the opuscula of Theodore which pertain to the vindication of Christian doctrine. HARL.

XXIII. Ὅτι ὁ Χριστὸς γεγονὼς ἄνθρωπος, Θεὸς ἀληθινός ἐστιν. *Quod Christum homo factus sit simul verus Deus*, p. 401. Translated by Genebrardus. It begins: Ὁ Χριστὸς εἶπεν ὅτι οὐ δύναται ὁ υἱός.

XXIV. Περὶ μονογαμίας. *De una uxore ducenda*, p. 401. It begins: Πόθεν ὑμῖν, ὦ ἐπίσκοπε, φαίνεται ἡ μονογαμία. Translated by Turrianus.

XXV. Ἀπόδειξις: ὅτι ἔχει ὁ Θεὸς Υἱὸν ὁμούσιον, συνάναρχόν τε καὶ συναΐδιον. *Demonstratio, quod Deus habeat Filium consubstantialem, ut ipse carentem principio et coæternum*. This work was first edited in Greek and Latin by Jo. Baptista Cotelerius on lib. V of the *Constitutiones apostol.*, ch. 7, vol. I of *Patrum apostol.*, p. 307. For Gretser had only given it in Latin on p. 403 from the version of Turrianus. It begins: Τῶν Ἀγαμηνῶν τὸ φρόνημα. Translated also by Genebrardus.

XXVI. Διάλεξις ἀποδεικνύουσα ὅτι ὁ Πατὴρ ἀεὶ γεννᾷ, ὁ δὲ Υἱὸς ἀεὶ γεννᾶται. *Dialogus demonstrans quod Pater semper generat, Filius autem semper generatur*, p. 404. In another Bavarian codex, it is erroneously attributed to Theodore the presbyter of Rhaithou. It begins: Πότερόν σοι δοκεῖ. Translated by Turrianus. FABR. Vienna in cod. 26, as noted by Kollar on Lambec. VII, p. 136. In Cod. Taurin. 316, there is this and the following work. See *Cat. codd. Gr. Taurin.* p. 395. HARL.

XXVII. Περὶ θείων ὀνομάτων. *De nominibus Dei*, p. 406, with the version of Turrianus, which H. Canisius, vol. IV *Antiquæ lect.*, had published just as he had the two following opuscula, and attributed to Theodore the Hagiopolite. It begins: Τὰ Θεὸς ὄνομα τίνος ἐνεργείας εἴρηται; Jo. Veccus in Allatius *Græc. Orthod.* vol. II, p. 244, cites Theodore of Abucara in his discourses *On Divine Names*. FABR. It exists in Vienna in the imperial codices 26 and 77, as observed by Kollar on both codices in Lambec. VII, p. 163 and 292. In the Vatican library, in the codex formerly of Queen Christina of Sweden, n. 1095, and in the Sfortian codex, according to Montfaucon in *Bibl. biblioth. mss.* p. 37 A, and 707 B. Add. Moller, *Homonymoscopia* p. 521. HARL.

XXVIII. Διάλεξις αἱρετικοῦ πρὸς ὀρθόδοξον περὶ Θεοῦ καὶ θεότητος. *Dialogus hæretici et orthodoxi de Deo et deitate*, p. 407. It begins: Πότερόν σοι δοκεῖ; ταὐτόν ἐστι Θεός. Translated by Turrianus, but in such a way that he was ignorant of the latter part, which Gretser added and translated from the Bavarian codex. FABR. N. 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 42 are in cod. Vindobon. 26, according to Kollar on Lambec. VII, p. 135 seq. HARL.

XXIX. Διάλεξις πρὸς Νεστοριανόν. *Cum Nestoriano disputatio*, p. 412. It begins: Ἰδοὺ πάρεστιν ἀγών. Translated by Turrianus.

XXX. Διάλεξις πρὸς Ἰακωβίτην. *Disputatio cum Jacobita*, p. 414. It begins: Πότερόν σοι δοκεῖ, ὁ Χριστὸς Θεός; Translated by Turrianus. (17) It exists among the *Works of St. John Damascene*, in this *Patrologia*, vol. XCIV, col. 1595. (18) See Matthæi, loc. cit., p. 293, n. 21. HARL.

^A 14. XXXI. A question of the Origenists to a believer. Incipit: "What justice is there in one having sinned for ten or fifty years?" 6. XXXII. Against the Saracen Theopaschites. From the version of Genebrard; for Gretser did not find the Greek. Incipit: "Else in the gathering a Saracen." 13. XXXIII. Dialogue with a Nestorian. Incipit: "Tell me, is Christ a name?" Translated by Genebrard. XXXIV. Concerning time. Does time exist in time? page 417. Incipit: "Is time in time or not in time?" Translated by Jacob Gretser. XXXV. A question. Disputation with a Saracen concerning the author of good and evil, p. 418. Incipit: "Whom do you declare to be the cause of both good and evil?" Translated by Gretser. XXXVI. A question: Is the Word of God created or uncreated? p. 420. Incipit: "Are the words of the Lord created or uncreated?" Translated by Gretser. The same has been called into controversy in our own age. See Georg Nitsch, *Beantwortung der Frage: Ob die Heilige Schrifft Gott selbst sey?* [Answering the Question: Is the Holy Scripture God Himself?], Gotha, 1714, 4. XXXVII. A question, a double inquiry: one concerning Mary the Theotokos, whether she is alive or dead; the other: Does God still create? page 421. Incipit: "Him whom you call Theotokos, did he die or live?" Translated by Gretser. XXXVIII. A question: Who is greater, the sanctifier (John the Baptist) or the sanctified? p. 422. "Who is greater than you?" Translated by Gretser. XXXIX. To someone who had questioned him concerning the distinction of clean and unclean foods, to what extent that should be observed in the New Testament? Incipit: "Concerning the abstinence and partaking of unclean things." Translated by Gretser. Subjoined on p. 422 is a Scholion of Arethas on the same argument, *differently*, of Arethas. Gretser notes that in another Bavarian manuscript he had found some short dissertations of Abucara annotated in this way, and that he had also inscribed in the margins of his version some such scholia of Arethas the bishop, the Turrian one, who, as it seems, is that Arethas famous in the tenth century, of whom I spoke in volume VII, p. 191 seq., and volume VIII, p. 698 seq. of the new edition. ^B XL. From the same Theodore, bishop of Carrae, concerning Adam. Of Photius. A Photian excerpt from the same Theodore, bishop of Carrae, on whether Adam's body is susceptible to suffering? p. 423. Incipit: "It is necessary to know." Translated by Gretser. XLI. What is death? And how does death die? (For the Church also holds this to be true,) "and behold, we are dying." Quid sit mors, et quomodo mors morti dedatur [What death is, and how death is given to death] (for even this the Church teaches) "and behold, we are dying," p. 424. Incipit: "Death is not a substance." Translated by Gretser. XLII. A brief instruction concerning divine names, both those common to the Trinity, and those proper to each of the Trinity. Brevis doctrina de divinis nominibus, tam communibus sanctissimæ Trinitatis, quam propriis cujusque personæ. p. 524. Incipit: "There are common names passing through the holy Trinity." Translated by Gretser. These 42 opuscula were first published in both languages at the end of the *Hodegetes* of Anastasius at Ingolstadt by Jacob Gretser, S.J., 1605 (19), from whence they were reprinted in Latin in the *Bibliotheca Patrum*, Cologne edition, 1618, volume IX; and Lyon 1677, volume XVI. In Greek and Latin, however, in the *Auctarium Ducæanum*, Paris 1624, volume I, and in the *Bibliotheca Patrum Parisiensis* 1644 and 1654, volume XI. Of these 42 opuscula, Gilbert Genebrard had translated these fifteen into Latin, which it will be possible to compare with the Gretser edition as follows: Genebr.: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Gretser: III, XVI, VIII, VII, XXV, XXXII, IX, X, XI, XXIII, XIII, XIV, XXXIII, XXXI, I. ^C Existing from the version of Genebrard in the *Bibliotheca Patrum Parisiensi* of 1575, volume V, and 1579 (1589, in *Cat. bibl. Leidens.* p. 25) volume IV. Henry Canisius also brought to light three of these opuscula in Latin, translated by Francis Turrianus, in volume IV of *Antiquæ Lectionis*, namely XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX, Ingolstadt 1603, 4; reprinted in the Supplement to the Cologne *Bibliotheca Patrum* or volume XV, published in 1622, and in the Paris edition of 1654, volume IV. To these finally is added: XLIII. Concerning union and incarnation, and that it is the hypostasis that was incarnate, and the nature of the Godhead that was united to the human nature in the hypostasis of the Word of God. De unione et incarnatione, quodque persona fuerit incarnata. Divina autem natura humanæ unita in persona Dei Verbi. This opusculum was first edited from the Bodleian manuscript, and the Latin version was added by Andreas Arnold of Nuremberg, Paris 1685, 8, at the end of the *Syntagma Doctrinæ* to clergy and laity under the name of Saint Athanasius, and the letters of the emperors Valentinian and Marcian to Leo the Great. Incipit: "The incarnation is the becoming man." The same opusculum is mentioned by Lambecius in the Imperial Library, V, p. 78. Fabricius, s. p. 169, n. 11, ed. Koll., likewise in the Moscow Synod manuscript 32. V. Matthaei, *Notit.* cit. p. 291, n. 5. It was edited again from the Bodleian manuscript (Greek and Latin) in the new edition of Henry Canisius, *Lect. ant.* volume II, part II, p. 473 seqq. ed. Basnag. Harl. ^D Turrianus several times calls Theodore Abucara, bishop of Carrae, a disciple of Damascene, to which opinion he draws some probability from that which is in the title of the eighteenth dissertation: "By the voice of John of Damascus."

For it signifies that the things discussed in the said disputation against the Saracens were taken down from the mouth of the dictating Damascene. Gretser does not agree with Turrianus, and is of the opinion that Theodore Abucara was no other than the one who had followed the Photian party against Ignatius, and thus, together with Zacharias of Chalcedon, had carried out an embassy for Photius to the Emperor Louis II, King of the Franks, as Nicetas testifies in the life of Ignatius; but later, after the frauds of Photius were brought into the open, he turned his sails around, and at the eighth ecumenical synod obtained pardon for the admitted sin, as the second and fourth sessions of that same council teach us; for whom also Ignatius interceded before the Sovereign Pontiff Hadrian, so that he might be restored to his former honor and office: which thing also three emperors, Basil, Constantine, and Leo, did in letters to the same prelate of the Roman Church, who honored Theodore with a distinguished encomium, when they wished to call him a man very useful to the Church, and that on account of the exceptional learning with which, thus instructed, he contended with spirit against heretics, Jews, and Mahometans, of whom there was so great a multitude in Caria, as also in Laodicea, to which Nicetas writes that Theodore was transferred.

Since therefore Nicetas and the eighth synod name that Theodore bishop and metropolitan of Caria, as do Ignatius and the emperors in their letters to Pope Hadrian, and this Abucara was a prelate of Caria, and the reason of time poses no obstacle, he comes to that opinion, so as to persuade himself, that there was no author of the dissertations other than that Theodore, prelate of Caria, who became famous for his learning and the celebrity of his name under Basil the Macedonian, at the time of the eighth synod. And since eighty-two years elapsed from the second Nicene synod, celebrated in the year of our Lord 787, up to the eighth synod, which was held in the year 869, and John of Damascus, as is accepted by many not unskilled in chronology, died before the seventh synod, it would necessarily have to be asserted that either Abucara applied himself to the work of Damascene while he was almost still a boy, or that he had long passed his eightieth year when the eighth ecumenical synod was convened at Constantinople; unless one should wish to prolong the life of Damascene beyond the seventh synod. And these points indeed Gretser makes to Antonius Velser, which do not seem so significant to me that they would draw us away from the opinion of Turrianus. For not all manuscript codices make this Theodore Abucara bishop of [Kαρῶν], of Carrae, or of Caria, but some express it in that way, and some express it by a not insignificant changing of the letters as [Χαρρῶν], as may be seen beyond others in the Vatican codex 492, p. 193, which is far different from Caria. And although, in the age of Basil the Macedonian and Photius, the bishop of Caria, instructed in various disciplines, was not useless to the Church, it does not follow from that, however, that he was the only one of such status, and that others were of no value. And by what reason could that man, as a boy, have been wise enough that he might take down in writing the things which Damascene dictated regarding the most difficult matters? Those studies, so serious, demand a different state and a more solid firmness of mind. For it is certain among sensible men, and it is plainly apparent from the seventh council, that Damascene died before that council was celebrated.

But since these minor details may not seem so to some, who even of sound mind would deny that this Theodore Abucara flourished at the same time as Thomas of Jerusalem, who presided over that Church shortly after the seventh council? And I learn this most evidently from the very treatises published by Gretser. For the title of the fourth is contained thus in my codex: Epistle containing the true and blameless faith, sent by the most blessed Pope Thomas, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to those in Armenia who were acting as heretics, dictated in Arabic by Theodore, surnamed Abucara, bishop of the Carraeans, and translated into the Greek language by me, the least of the presbyters and syncellus of the apostolic throne of Jerusalem, with whom it was also sent. If, under Thomas, he is already of mature age, as is likely, and a doctor of conspicuous name discloses to heretics the catholic dogmas, which are valued so much that they are transmitted to others, and others still, translated into other languages as well, by what reason could he be said to flourish in a still vigorous age under Constantine? Add that in my manuscript many scholia are noted in the margin, which ascribe the author to Arethas, whom some make a contemporary of Photius. Hence it is allowable to argue that Abucara is more ancient. Wherefore I agree with Turrianus that this Abucara lived in the same times as Damascene and drew much for himself from him.

His treatises against various infidels (Arabs, Agarenes, Tritheists, Theopaschites, Nestorians, Jacobites, Monophysites, Jews, and also Origenists) were edited in Greek and Latin at Ingolstadt by the translators Franciscus Turrianus and Jacobus Gretser, from the printing house of Adam Sartorius in the year 1606, and they had been published before in the [Bibliotheca veterum Patrum] of the second edition, volume IV, rendered into Latin by Genebrard, and they are found in many places as manuscripts in the Italian libraries, from which more correct and fuller editions could be made, and especially from my codex. In the Bavarian library, no. 16, are noted: [i]The Dialogues of Theodore, bishop of Caria, surnamed Abucara, in which he demonstrates that God exists. His Questions and Answers on various chapters. The Epistle of Thomas, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the heretical Armenians. Collectanea of Theodore, bishop of Caria, on various chapters against the Severians, and Acephali, and against the Manichaeans.[/i] And codex 175: [i]The treatises of Theodore, bishop of Caria, surnamed Abucara, on the names of God. That the Father always generates, the Son is always generated. A dialogue with the Nestorians. A dialogue with the Jacobite. What is the most proper difference. On time. A brief doctrine on the divine names, as well those common to the whole Trinity as those proper to each of the persons. Questions of the Origenists proposed, and their solutions.[/i] And in the Royal library of the Escorial, as the manuscript index notes, of Theodore Abucara, bishop of Caria, on the names

of God; on that which always generates. Of the same, against the Nestorian and the Jacobite. On difference. On time. On the Trinity and the properties of the persons. Explanation of doubtful numbers. Interview of an Origenist with a believer. Response to an unbeliever. A work on music. On condensation. On analogies or proportions. A synoptic compendium of philosophy—which the epitomizers of Gesner, because it is of one author, divide into three. Religious disputations of Theodore, bishop of Caria, against the Arabs and against the Acephali, in four manuscripts. In the Imperial Library of Vienna, [a discussion] of Theodore, bishop of Charran, surnamed Abucara, with an infidel (perhaps a dialogue) on the orthodox faith. The interrogation of the Arabs by a Christian, and of others by the same, exist in Greek in Italy. A dialogue of Theodore the philosopher with a Nestorian, and another dialogue of the same, exist in Italy.

III. From GALLAND, *Vet. Patrum Biblioth.*, vol. XIII, p. 10.

Our Theodore is so called by an Arabic or Syriac word, as if *Abu Cara*, that is, Father or Bishop of Cara, which seems to be the very city situated beyond the Jordan in Palestine, which the Scriptures are thought to call Charan or Haran, of which Theodore would therefore be bishop. This argument of Lequien (20), however, is not held in such high regard by Fabricius (21). Others make him bishop of Carrhae in Mesopotamia, such as Cotelier, Turrianus, Itigius, and others. He was a disciple and pupil of John of Damascus. Wherefore he also uses that [title], having received it from the mouth of the lord John (22), and the words of both often agree. He flourished around the year 770. Some confuse our Theodore with Theodore of Caria, a friend of Photius (22), who at the synod of the year 869 followed the party of Ignatius; others with Theodore of Raithu, who flourished around the year 660, or with the Antiochene, also called Hagiopolite. But Fabricius, in the location cited, proves that he must be distinguished entirely from these. Forty-three of his minor works are in circulation, almost all edited by Gretser. From these we have selected the treatise *On Union and Incarnation*, which was first edited in Greek and Latin from an Oxford manuscript by Andreas Arnold of Nuremberg (24), who is mentioned as being in the Imperial Library by Lambecius. One should also consult Cotelier regarding our Theodore (25).

TO THE VERY REVEREND AND NOBLE LORD ANTONIO VELSERO, DOCTOR OF SACRED THEOLOGY, CANON OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF FREISING, PROVOST OF SPALTEN, AN EXCELLENT AND MOST LEARNED MAN, JACOB GRETSER OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS, S. D.

I send to you, most Reverend and illustrious Doctor, Theodore, surnamed Abucara, a work neither new nor old; but, if it is permitted to use an invented word, *neon-palaion*, new-old. It is old because long ago the most learned Genebrard brought to the public sphere fifteen Dissertations of this author, rendered into Latin by himself, which were also included in the fourth volume of the *Bibliotheca Sanctorum Patrum*. It is new because, as far as I am aware, it now appears in Greek for the first time. It is new because, clothed partly in the translation of our Turrianus and partly in my own, it sees the light. It is new because it brings itself forth to the light of day and the ears of the public almost twice as extensively as before; for which we are indebted to the Bavarian Library, from whose two manuscript codices I took care to edit what had hitherto been unedited, to transcribe the Greek, and to translate it into the Latin language. I gladly took on this labor, whatever it may be, especially for the sake of Abucara himself, because he is learned, sharp, elegant, and an unconquered tamer of monsters, worthy to be read in this age most especially, which is so fruitful in similar monstrosities. Next, he had to be joined as a companion to Anastasius of Sinai (26), lest he travel through the Latin world, unknown to him, all alone. Yet who is a more suitable companion than Abucara, who fights manfully against the same enemies as Anastasius—the haters of Christ—and who scatters arrows that are brief indeed, but born to draw blood from the throngs of the impious? Thirdly, I have given something to the memory of Turrianus, who most deservedly served the Church of God and was most well-versed in Greek monuments, whose name alone—not only while he lived, but also now that he has been summoned to a better life—has always been venerable to my mind. It seemed unworthy to me that the things he had gathered with such great study, and had translated into the Latin tongue, should die with the dead man and be hidden in darkness once more. Therefore,

^A I have judged that these works of Abucaras, as others before them, should be published. But who this Abucaras was, and in what century he flourished, I cannot say; rather, I wish to learn this from you, most illustrious Sir, who hold all the memory of antiquity locked within your breast. Turrianus several times calls him a disciple of the Damascene, and grants this some probability by the eighteenth dissertation: *By the voice of John of Damascus*. For it signifies that Abucaras gathered those things which are discussed in that disputation against the Saracens from the lips of the dictating Damascene, just as Leontius the Byzantine also professes that he committed to writing his *Commentary on the sects* from the lips of Theodore the most religious abbot. I would not reluctantly assent to this, were I not carried off elsewhere by conjecture. For I judge our Theodore Abucaras to have been no other than he who, having followed the Photian party against Ignatius, the legitimate prelate of the see of Constantinople, and having thus gone on an embassy together with Zacharias, Metropolitan of Chalcedon, on behalf of Photius to the Emperor Louis II, King of the Franks, as Nicetas testifies in the *Life of Ignatius*, afterwards, when the frauds of Photius were brought into the open, turned his sails backwards and, in the eighth ecumenical council, obtained pardon for the sin he had admitted, as the second and fourth Acts of that same council teach us; for whom also the blessed Ignatius interceded with the Supreme Pontiff Hadrian, so that he might be restored to his former honor and office; which also three emperors, Basil, Constantine, and Leo, did in letters ^B addressed to that same high priest of the Roman Church, who decorated Theodore with an outstanding encomium, when they wished to call him a man very useful to the Church. For what reason, indeed, if not for his extraordinary erudition, with which he was equipped to contend spiritedly against heretics, Jews, and Mohammedans? A huge multitude of whom were in Caria at that time, as also in Laodicea, where Nicetas writes that Theodore was transferred. Since, therefore, Nicetas and the eighth council name that Theodore as Bishop and Metropolitan of Caria, as also do Ignatius and the emperors in their letters to Pope Hadrian, and our Theodore was a prelate of Caria, and the reckoning of time provides no obstacle, I descend to the opinion that I am persuaded that there was no other author of these dissertations than that Theodore, prelate of Caria, who shone in doctrine and the fame of his name under Basil the Macedonian, in the times of the eighth council. But since eighty-two years have flowed between the second Council of Nicaea, celebrated in the year of our Lord 787, and the eighth council, which was held in the year of our Redeemer 869, and John of Damascus, as is well-pleasing to those not unskilled in chronology, died before the seventh council, it must necessarily be asserted that one of two things is true: either that Abucaras, while still almost a boy, gave attendance to the Damascene, or that he had long exceeded the eightieth year of his age when the ecumenical council, the eighth in order, was convened at Constantinople; unless one wishes to extend the life of the Damascene beyond the seventh council.

But I commit all these things to your judgment and discretion, most learned Sir, who will easily find a vindicator for this knot; to you I wish to dedicate and consecrate Abucaras, whoever he may be and in whatever century he may have spent his life, as a witness and index of my love and singular regard for you. Indeed, that verse in Plutarch occurred to me:

I do not wish to be a poor man giving to the rich, Lest you judge me a fool, or thinking I am asking while I give. Pauper ego cum sim, nolo diviti dare, Ne videar amens, vel aliquid dans poscere.

But the desire of publicly testifying to my affection for you prevailed. For as soon as my literary rapport was contracted with your brother Marcus some years ago, it was also contracted with you; and indeed by a firm bond, not to be dissolved as I vow. And although I admire and revere in you all those ornaments and graces with which it is fitting for an ecclesiastical man to be distinguished and ennobled; yet I know not by what occult charm that incredible variety of your learning pulls me wondrously toward your veneration—your theology, I say, your philosophy, and your knowledge of elegant literature, and your skill in languages—not only Italian, French, and Spanish, but also Greek and Latin, and not that Latin which now occupies the crossways and pulpits, but that which those ancient Quirites used. Whence it happens that you think money is never spent or laid out more effectively or usefully than when it is expended on books. Hence that library of yours, most instructed and abundant in every kind of volume. Who, even among the farthest Iberians, comes into public view as an author of any good and approved note, who through such great reaches of seas and lands does not also come to your Museum at Freising?

Agathias the historian praises a certain woman of Tralles, and declares her fortunate, because she had brought forth five sons, and all of them afterwards most learned and most celebrated: Arthmesius the mathematician, Metrodorus the grammarian, Olympius the jurisconsult, and Dioscorus and Alexander the physicians. This praise surely fits your house and lineage even more fittingly than that Trallian one, in which it is permitted to see an outstanding *pentad* of most select brothers, so flourishing in letters that it seems they deal only with these, and again, in affairs that concern Dike and Themis, so excellent that, with all other things pushed aside, one might think this alone to be the care and heart of their concern. I will not detain you with more. I only ask that, because Anastasius has been inscribed to Marcus, your brother, a most illustrious man, you likewise look with equable spirit upon your own name, marked and prefixed as it were to the doorposts of Abucaras; and that you deem this new citizen worthy of some place and station in your library and literary city. Although perhaps it would have been better not to ask; because, as Ennodius of Pavia aptly says in some place: It is an argument of one deserving nothing, to ask for a long time. Farewell.

Ingolstadt, the 10th of the Kalends of March, 1606.

OPUSCULA. THEODORE ABUCARA, BISHOP OF CARA. AGAINST HERETICS, JEWS, AND SARACENS. VARIOUS OPUSCULA. NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME PUBLISHED IN GREEK AND LATIN FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE MOST SERENE DUKE MAXIMILIAN OF BAVARIA. (Translated by Fr. Turrianus and J. Gretser, S.J.)

1. ^A Theodore, by surname Abucara, Bishop of Carum, on the five enemies from whom Christ, made man, delivered us. Through interrogation and response.

A. Christian. B. Infidel.

A. We have five mortal enemies, from whom Christ, having become man, has delivered us. B. Who are these, and what is the manner of our deliverance from each, I would gladly learn; and I ask you this reverently, and request that you explain. A. I, for my part, will explain in my discourse what you are eager to ask, as much as I am able. But first, answer me this. B. What? A. Do you say that God, who governs and directs all things, does or says anything in vain or without cause? B. How is it pious to say this of God, when it does not become even a man endowed with a sound and prudent mind to hold such a view? A. Since, then, when God pronounced against the man who had transgressed His commandment, "Earth you are, and to earth you shall go" (Gen. III, 19), He acted in accordance with the prior testimony He had given him, saying, "On whatever day you shall eat from the forbidden tree, you shall die the death" (Gen. II, 17); how, then, could He have abrogated His own judgment, if no other word had been brought forth by which that sentence was justly undone? For if you were to see a judge pronounce a certain judgment today, and then the next day render it void, would you not think that he was insane? How, then, did God overturn His first judgment and sentence? ^B B. Tell me how. For I cannot grasp it with my understanding. A. What was the cause of the judgment of death that was pronounced? B. Disobedience, clearly. A. Just as through the disobedience of one man ^C

Adam, death entered into the world, and in this way passed unto all men, so also through the obedience of the one man, the second Adam, Christ, death shall justly be destroyed, and life shall be introduced in its place. ^B

B. Before Christ, therefore, did not Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and Enoch, and Noah obey God, and please Him?

A. Even if they are said to have pleased God, yet this is only if they are compared with the rest of men; but in a perfect sense, and as being entirely devoid of sin, there was no one, except Christ. Moreover, every sin, whatever it may be, brings death upon itself. Insofar, therefore, as it concerns the principle of justice, from the time that Christ rendered the highest obedience, and repelled all the assaults of the devil during that struggle in the wilderness, He dissolved death and brought in life through His own obedience.

B. What need, therefore, was there still for death upon the cross, once the condemnation of death had been abolished?

A. But the accusation of the devil against us still remained. Or are you ignorant that we were made his servants when we did not obey God, but obeyed the devil? What, then, I ask, would he have cared that death was overturned, if his own tyranny and power remained? Nay, he would perhaps have exulted even more in his joy, as if he were king of the immortals.

B. I ask that you teach me how we were made servants of the devil.

A. God, from the beginning, when He fashioned man, made him strong and invincible. Wherefore the devil, since he could not overcome him by his own strength, and was wise in doing evil, devised a deception for him, until he had stripped him of the grace that made him strong through voluntary disobedience, having lured him by pleasure. And so, man’s strength having been weakened, the devil prevailed, and easily led him and his descendants into every pleasure, and sin, and disobedience. And further, God, since man had treated His command with contempt, and had run to the enemy and obeyed him, justly permitted him to be oppressed by his tyranny. "For to whom any one obeys, of him he makes himself a servant," says the Apostle; "for you are servants of him whom you obey." ^C Man, therefore, who was free, sold himself to pleasure and to the enemy. ^D

B. And how, after the sin, was man unable by repentance to call himself back, and to shake off the yoke of the devil?

A. Because to sell ourselves is within our power; but after the sale and the servitude, to liberate ourselves is not in our power. And we do not say that the devil has become our master in such a way that he holds us entirely by force, but that because we were weakened by sin, we subsequently—like the infirm—became easily captured by the devil, being led easily and without effort into his sins and pleasures. As

if someone, ^A having prepared a poisonous draught, were to offer it to his enemy, so that, having become weak, he might thereafter easily overcome him, so did the devil deceive man by means of the forbidden food, and he seized him once he had become weak. He held us therefore in his power; were it not that Christ deceived our adversary, until he killed Him unjustly, and through that unjust killing, He captured both the devil himself and all his servants who were held by him. And thus the justice of Christ Himself delivered us from the servitude of the devil; and, if I may so speak, He shook off death from us. For Satan held us as those who had obeyed him.

^B B. I desire to understand this more clearly by an example.

A. Let there be a king in a certain region having servants. And let a river surround this region. ^C And beyond the river let there be a planted garden, bearing beautiful and pleasant fruits. And let the king forbid all his servants from crossing the river to that garden. But let one of those servants, having been enticed and tempted by the sight and by the desire for those fruits, and having been softened and overcome by his own craving—having no regard for the master’s command—cross the river to satisfy his desire. And let him not only do this, but also deceive the rest of his fellow servants, misleading them with the pleasure of the fruits he displays, so that they reject the obedience of their common master, cross the river, and become his servants. Then let that prince of evils exercise tyranny and oppression over them. But let those who are tyrannized cry out to their own master and implore his help and deliverance from such great evils. Then, moved to compassion for them, let the most gentle king send his own Son, having put on the appearance of the servants ^D and having been made like them in all things (except sin). Let Him come forth into the midst and walk along the banks of the river. When that primordial tyrant sees Him, and thinks Him to be one of the servants, let him encourage Him as is his custom with the pleasures of the fruits, to cross the river and to be under his authority. But seeing Him not obey, but rather vehemently repel his exhortations, let the tyrant, burning with zeal and envy, cross the river and kill the King’s Son. Having seized him in this act, let the King examine him, saying: "Tell me, most wicked and wretched one, when you persuaded the other servants to disobey me, their natural master, and to cross over to you, did I snatch them from your hands, or free those who were subject to you and under your servitude? Though I was able and had the power to do so, I did not wish to infringe upon justice. But this one, being my Son, and not having yielded in the least to your entreaties, why did you kill and unjustly slay Him? Therefore, since you have dared this, with the best of rights I shall seize both you and all your servants, and I shall subject them to His power; and if so many..."

thousand servants were possessed by Him, not even then could I recover the full amount of the debt. For what could ever be worth even a single drop of royal blood? It was in this manner that ^A He rescued us from the tyranny of the demon, by a just argument, and not merely by using force and power.

B. Enough has been said on this matter. Tell me the five enemies from whom Christ redeemed us.

A. Death, the devil, the curse of the law, condemnation, sin, and Hades.

B. You have already said that death was destroyed through the obedience of Christ. Similarly, you have also explained how He released us from the dominion of the devil. Explain now how He redeemed us from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse for us.

A. Remember what was said by me before, that since we have transgressed the law of God ten thousand times, ten thousand times we deserve to die. Tell me, therefore—the same thing I asked you first regarding the case of Adam—does God do anything in vain or by chance?

B. Far be it.

A. If someone owed another a thousand coins which he was in no way able to pay, and the master to whom the debt was owed did not wish to demand the sum of gold, but instead wrote another bond against that debtor, and threw him into prison, and treated him ill in every way, and afflicted and oppressed him, not wishing, as I said before, to recover the sum, but rather demanding that he be released free and quit—would we not consider such a man foolish?

B. How could we not?

A. If, therefore, God did not wish to demand from us the requirements of the law, why did ^C He write this against us? But it is not so; far be it. For God is not meddlesome, nor does He act as if playing, but rather, by His own righteous judgment, He demanded all those things written in the law from us. And because we were not able to pay, for this reason our Lord Christ paid on our behalf, and took upon Himself the curse and the condemnation owed by us, and willingly accepted them. And what we were required to suffer, He Himself suffered. And He was scourged, and spat upon, and buffeted, and struck with fists, and crucified, and died for us. Although, as we said just before, He could have destroyed death through His own obedience, yet in the abundance of His grace, so that He might rescue us from the devil, and from the curse of the law, and from the righteous judgment of God, He died for us—so that it might be permitted for God to show mercy to us, and ^D that He might neither invalidate nor abolish His own justice, but rather that He might define and finish it.

^B B. And of this, enough has been said. Explain, then, how He liberated us from sin. A. What is sin? Is it not a missing and wandering from the goal? For just as if someone, being healthy, puts his foot down as he walks where he wills, but when he becomes tremulous through some weakness arising from illness, he cannot set his foot where he might wish, but, shoved by the indwelling infirmity, he sets his step elsewhere; so too, sin having dwelt in our soul, has rendered it weak and infirm, and straying and missing its own goals and purposes. But Christ baptizes us in water and the Holy Spirit, and the grace of the Holy Spirit strengthens us, and draws off all sin and infirmity, and renews and restores us to the pristine strength and beauty that existed before the transgression of Adam. ^C B. The fifth enemy remains, that is, hell. A. Since it was impossible to dwell with the flesh among those in hell, the soul of the Lord being separated from the flesh by death, being naked [of the body], it dwelt among the souls in darkness, and having flashed the light of the Divinity upon them, it transferred those who believed in Him into paradise, and demolished the kingdom of hell. For just as the all-holy Virgin became the gate and entrance of the visitation of the Word of God into the world, so too death became the gate and entrance of Christ’s descent into hell.

II. Explanation of the terms which philosophers use, by the same Theodore Abucara, and refutation of the soul-destroying heresy of the Acephalous Severians, that is, the Jacobites. (Translated by Francisco Turriano of the Society of Jesus.)

To the lovers and defenders of true dogmas, the distinction and clarification of the terms in which philosophers especially busy themselves has become necessary. For, because many of those who seemed to be wise were ignorant of the accurate knowledge of these, they missed the truth and drifted into absurdities and blasphemies, and fell away from the right faith in God—not, indeed, out of ignorance, but because they willingly turned the eyes of their mind away from the light of salvation and, choosing to decline toward pestilential darkness, they slipped into the abyss of destruction. Therefore, for the present, passing over terms that signify nothing, and those which, whether articulated or not, cannot contribute anything to the demonstrative method of reasoning, we shall briefly discuss those of which I spoke at the beginning, according to our strength, arming the fosterlings of the Church against the insane Acephalous heretical adversaries of the Church, and refuting and branding their folly and weakness. ^D

^A Of the terms which philosophers employ, some are "philosophical," such as: substance, animal, man, Peter; others are "logical," such as: most general genus, species, nature, substance, individual, hypostasis, person. But the difference between these must be noted. Anything common in philosophical terms communicates both name and definition to those things which are beneath that common term; just as "animal" communicates both its name and its definition to man, horse, ox, and lion, which are under it. For man, and each of the others, could be called an "animal," and a "living, sensible substance," and the same applies to individual men.

In logical terms, however, that which is common does not communicate anything at all, neither name nor definition. For what is called a genus, or a subaltern species, is never called the "most general genus," nor will it receive the definition of the most general genus at all; nor would the most specific species be called a genus, nor an individual, a species; nor can anything at all in logical terms receive either the name or the definition of those things which are superior to it. ^B Furthermore, everything that is defined in philosophical terms immediately shows in itself that the definition by which it is defined is true. For man, whom they define as a "rational, mortal animal, capable of intellect and knowledge," immediately demonstrates in himself that this is the true definition of man. In logical terms, however, it is not so; but on the contrary, everything defined in them is false in itself, yet true in the philosophical term.

For example, this name "species"—that is, this word of three syllables—when defined as "that which is predicated of many things differing in number, in response to 'what it is'," demonstrates itself to be false, yet as a philosophical term—that is, the thing about which it is predicated—it is clearly true, as we have said. For "species"—that is, the word of three syllables—is not predicated of many things differing in number in the sense that the definition states, but in the name it is shown to be true. For "man" is predicated of Socrates, Plato, Aristarchus, Phaedo, and individual men who are infinite ^C and differ in number, and it preserves the entire definition within itself as true.

Furthermore, every thing of which the most specific species is predicated, after it is called a "species," is also named "nature" and "substance." From which it follows that whatsoever equally participate in that species are said to be of the same nature and the same substance, such as man; for it is the lowest species that is predicated of him. Therefore, as soon as it is called a "species," it is also called "nature" and "substance" with respect to all things of which it is predicated; now it is predicated of Peter, Paul, John, and individual men who equally participate in the species. Whence those who are subject to the species are of the same nature and substance. ^D All things whatsoever according to a thing [the species] under which the most specific genus is placed, after being called a species, are also named nature and substance. [alt-version omitted]

^A Things that are equal according to the thing of which a genus is predicated are not necessarily of the same nature and substance. But those things which are of the same nature and substance, and of which a genus is predicated, are not therefore of the same nature and substance because they are equal according to the genus, but because they are equal according to the species which is beneath the genus. Wherefore, of those things of which a genus is said, the genus is not their nature and substance; for example, according to the [term] animal, which is a genus, man, horse, ox, and lion are equal, which are indeed of the same genus but not of the same nature or substance. Hence animal is indeed a genus, but not a nature or substance. The substance which pertains to philosophical terms, which they define as a thing existing by itself, not needing another in order to exist, ^B is indeed the genus of all things that are beneath it, since whatever things are equal according to it are said to be, and are, altogether of the same genus; yet it is not their nature and substance, because not all things which are equal according to it are of the same nature and substance, as is manifest to all. For man, and a pomegranate tree, and a stone are equal according to this substance, because each receives the name and definition of substance; yet they are not of the same nature and substance. Wherefore the stated substance is indeed a genus of these, or rather a most general genus, yet it is not their nature, nor is it their substance.

It is conceded, therefore, that the name "substance" is used in two ways, logically and philosophically. And to speak simply, every philosophical name, as soon as it is uttered, ^C causes the hearer to understand something certain and definite, with the homonymy—which is usually called equivocation—removed from it, so that nothing else can be understood from it except the defined thing. As if someone says the name "man," the hearer immediately understands a certain thing, namely a rational, mortal animal, and cannot comprehend anything else from the name of man besides the defined thing. But every logical name has this property: that when it is spoken, it does not present to the mind of the hearer a certain and definite thing, because it is applied to many and diverse things. As the logical name "species," which circulates in many ways and falls upon man, horse, ox, gold, a circle, grammar, and ^D very many other different things, does not allow the auditor to understand anything definite. Similarly, if someone were to say the name "Paul," stripped of homonymy, we immediately understand, for example, the great Apostle, once the persecutor of the Church, with the other properties by which he is identified, of whom it is proposed to speak, which properties would never exist in another. But if someone says the name "individual," it is applied indefinitely to many, as in Paul, Peter, this horse, this...

white thing, this circle, and the rest ^A similarly, those which are not divided at all, that is, those of which others are predicated. Hence, therefore, the term nature, and substance, logically taken, and the term hypostasis, are clearly seen to be from those terms which are applied indefinitely to many, that is, from logical terms, just as the term species 354 and individual, as we have demonstrated. For the name of nature is applied to man, and to horse, and to gold, and to the rest, and is borne in many ways, just like the name species. In the same way, the name hypostasis is applied to Peter, and to Paul, and to this horse, and to this ox, just as also individual.

Hence clearly the ignorance of the insane heretic Severus is refuted; ^B for he says, since Paul is a hypostasis and man is a nature, just as Paul is said to be man, so let hypostasis also be said to be nature. But we, in order to overturn the depraved understanding of that fool, shall meet him thus: If this, which you have perversely introduced, holds good, O fool, since Paul indeed is an individual, while man is a species, just as you say Paul is man, say that an individual is a species, and then as you attribute to Paul the definition and the name of man, you will attribute to an individual the definition and name of a species as well, and thus you will say that an individual is that which is predicated of many differing in number in that which it is, which is the height of folly, befitting you and other heretics. ^C And just as you say that Paul is a definition of substance, that is, to be a thing existing by itself, not needing another for its existence, say also that an individual is the most general genus; and attribute to an individual the definition and name of the most general genus, that is, that above which there could be no other superior genus, and which is always a genus; but to whom would this be pleasing, and who would approve it, unless to one who in every way is alienated from divine grace? From all these things it is necessarily inferred by one who is endowed with mind, that hypostasis is not nature, nor substance, which is in every way borne and bears, as nature is when taken logically: for all things which are of the same nature are altogether of the same substance, and conversely, all things which differ in substance also differ in nature. Wherefore nature and substance are the same.

It must be known, however, that things are not ^D numbered with their own philosophical names according to composition, but with consistent logical ones; as if we should wish to number Peter, and Paul, and John, we do not say "three men" (properly speaking, that is), because each one of them is indeed man; but no one of these is man; for the superior terms are predicated of the inferior, not the inferior of the superior. For you will not say that man is Peter; but rather you would say that Peter is man. If, therefore, you were to say Pe-

Peter, and Paul, and John are three men, you would be numbering those whom it was not your intention to subject to numbering. For we have ^A already stated that man is none of these. But if you were to say that these very persons themselves are three, you would be counting each of them as three, so that the three would be multiplied into nine, which is impossible. Hence, there is necessarily introduced the logical name that applies to each of them—which is hypostasis, individual, and person—according to which those who were proposed to be numbered will be subjected to numbering, being called three hypostases, or individuals, or persons. In this way it is demonstrated that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three gods, even if each of them is a perfect God, just as each of those is a perfect man, yet they are not called three men. The Father, therefore, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three hypostases, just as they are. From this we shall know clearly that it must be confessed ^B that Christ is one hypostasis in two natures. For Christ is the eternal Son of God who became incarnate, that is to say, the one hypostasis of the Holy Trinity incarnate; and this hypostasis, that is to say, the eternal Son, is the same God and man at the same time. Therefore, whoever wishes to number God and man, which are the eternal Son, that is to say, the one hypostasis, one cannot say that these are two hypostases. For neither the name "God" nor the name "man" signifies a hypostasis. For a hypostasis is not predicated of anything at all. Wherefore, neither of these is a hypostasis. Nor does it seem permissible to call God and man two genera, since every genus is predicated of its species, which is not the case here. Nor is it appropriate to call them two species. For every ^C species is placed under a genus. But God does not have a genus under which he might be placed, as man does. Wherefore it is more proper to number these as two natures and two substances. For each of them is both [a] nature and [a] substance to those of which they are predicated. For neither of them has, under it, constitutive differences, that is, essential and natural ones, such that [a] nature and [a] substance would be either of those of which they are predicated.

Through many arguments, therefore, it has been demonstrated that a hypostasis is not a nature, nor a logical substance that encompasses in every way, as a nature does. Since, however, the orthodox doctrine says that a nature is not a hypostasis, [being] one of those of which it is predicated, nor [is it] all the hypostases that might be under it—for instance, the Godhead, that is to say, God is not the Father; for if he is the Father, then in no way would the Son be God. For it does not ^D turn the predicate, as is evident to all. That the Father is God; but God is not...

^A entirely the Father. And the Son is God, and likewise the Holy Spirit. Wherefore, God is none of these three. Indeed, God is not even the totality of the three. For if God were Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then absolutely everything that is God would be Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit; but since each of these is a perfect God, he is not the sum of the three, and this is clear and evident to those who have a mind.

Severian heretics, ^B those most imprudent heretics, set against us Orthodox believers certain subverting questions, which we shall bring forward, and with God’s help we shall dissolve them, and demonstrate them to be futile. Therefore they say to us: If you say that God is not these three, tell us then, is God a thing or not? If we reply that God is a thing, they ask again: Are the three hypostases not three things? When we concede that they are indeed three things, they conclude against us: Therefore, according to you, God, and the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are numbered as four things, and thus you are convicted ^C of denying the Trinity and introducing a quaternity instead of the Trinity. But we reply to them: Ignorant of the straight path of demonstration, you spew out these fallacious conclusions. For you are ignorant that every thing which perfects another is not enumerated with that which it perfects; for example, the gold of a coin is not the coin itself. For gold, inasmuch as it is gold, does not have the sign of the coin, and gold is a thing; and a coin is again another thing. Therefore, gold, which otherwise is a thing distinct from the coin, is not numbered with the coin, from which it results that these are not called two things. Nor is it appropriate to utter these with a conjunction. For it is harsh and exceedingly ignorant to say "a coin and gold." The same is to be understood regarding Paul and his body. For neither is Paul his body, nor is the body of Paul, Paul. Yet Paul is a thing, and the body of Paul is also a thing; but Paul is not numbered with his body, so that they should be two things. Why this? Because his body perfects Paul. Therefore, because the Deity perfects each ^D hypostasis of which it is predicated, it is not enumerated with the three hypostases, so that it might be...

^A four things, as the heretics dream.

The heretics bring forward another question against ^B the orthodox truth. For they say thus: "Do you say that the eternal Son is a thing, or not?" Then, when we answer that he is a thing, they ask again: "And do you not say that the ensouled and intelligent body of the eternal Son is a thing?" When we agree that it is also a thing, they immediately conclude against us: "Therefore you number the eternal Son with his own body." They say this so that they may, as much as possible, catch us on both sides in the spider-webs of their snares, dragging us into the absurdity of blasphemy or into their own opinion. For if we say that the eternal Son and his ensouled and intelligent body are two things, they immediately condemn us as those who establish four things on the high throne of the Divinity, which is a denial of the Trinity. But if we say that the Son and his own body are not two things, they retort against us, saying: "If these are not two things, how do you say that Christ has two natures?" To whom we shall answer that we do not number the eternal Son with his own body, so as to say that these are two things, because the hypostatic body of the eternal Son perfects him in a certain way, insofar as he is man. Every thing that perfects another thing, either as a genus, or as a difference, or as a nature—that is, essence—or as a hypostatic [element] perfecting and subsisting that of which it is, is ^C of that thing. Therefore, the body of the eternal Son, being hypostatic, even if it is not said to perfect him absolutely—that is, properly—is by no means numbered with him at all. But it does not follow from this that we should deny that there are two natures in Christ. For we orthodox, not numbering the eternal Son with his own hypostatic body, do not say there are two natures, but we number the divinity and the humanity as two natures. Perhaps someone, having seized an opportunity for attack from this, might say: "Is the humanity of the Lord not his own natural body, ensouled and endowed with intelligence?" We shall answer him that it is not; for the humanity of Christ is that of all of us who are men, but his ensouled and intelligent body is uniquely his own. ^D If anyone should contend against these things, he will be compelled to fall into one of two absurdities: either he will be forced to say that the humanity of Christ is not our humanity—and hence introduce many humanities—or that the body of the eternal Son is the body of each of us who are men. And then, he who thinks so may eat the body of Christ just as he would the body of some robber or impious man. And again, if anyone should say

^A that Christ's humanity is not our humanity, he will be compelled to say that Christ's divinity is not the divinity of the Father and of the Holy Spirit; and from this to introduce three divinities, which is a complete falling away from Christianity. But if he should say that these are something else, it suffices for the one making the pronouncement to see the very shameful consequence, which we have already stated. It must be known that the holy Fathers say that the eternal Son is begotten sometimes from the Father, and sometimes from the substance of the Father. Since we orthodox do not say that the substance of the Father is the Father himself, but something other than the Father, they immediately leap upon us, boasting that they have caught us in the act of saying that the Son is begotten from two things, and then that the Father is counted along with his own substance, just as has already been demonstrated in what was said before. When we answer them, those insane men say: "Even if we grant that the matter is as you previously asserted, meanwhile you are compelled to affirm that the Son is not born from the same thing." To whom we answer, putting the fools to shame: "You are truly in error, you wretches, not understanding the meaning of what is being said. For we are not compelled to say what you surmise. Even if the Father is one thing, and the substance of the Father is another thing, nevertheless, when we say that the Son is begotten from the substance of the Father, or from the Father, we signify that he is begotten from one and the same thing, and not from one thing and then another—God forbid! For just as you, when you say, 'I weighed the gold of the coin,' signify that you weighed the gold itself; and again, when you say, 'I weighed the coin,' you say that you weighed the gold—for the stamp or sign of the coin is not weighed, as is evident to all—so we, too, even if we say that ^B the Son is begotten from the substance of the Father, are not compelled to say that he is begotten from two things, but from one and the same thing; so that the orthodox doctrine may always appear triumphant, and the rewards of victory be carried away against the heretics."

Again, another inquiry from them arises for us, as they say: "Did the eternal Son, having taken flesh, assume a common thing or a particular thing?" If we say that he assumed a particular thing, we would be accused of saying there are two hypostases in Christ, in the same way that we speak of two natures, and thus we would fall into the execrable opinion of the Nestorians (for among them, a hypostasis is a particular thing); or [we would be forced] in no way to confess two natures in Christ, just as [we do not confess] two hypostases; and from this ^{C D}

^{A B} stases, and so we are compelled to be called Severians, saying Christ is one nature, just as we say he is one hypostasis, which is full of soul-destruction. But if we say that the Son assumed a common thing, they immediately insult us, saying: How is the Son incarnated by assuming a common thing? For it is impossible for anything incorporeal to become corporeal by being joined to an incorporeal thing. To whom we must reply: You have not understood, O good sirs, the purpose of the philosophers when they said that the common is incorporeal. For when they say that every genus and species is incorporeal, they even say that the body itself, when divided from the most general substance, which is called the most general genus, is incorporeal. Wherefore one ought to know that the name "incorporeal," according to the philosophers, is used homonymously and infinitely; or rather, to sum the matter up in a few words, they call matter and species from which bodies [are formed], and every color and figure—that is, every quality—incorporeal, as well as the soul, and the angels, and God himself, none of whom has one and the same nature for all, but many and various [natures], so that from this it is clearly proven that the name "incorporeal" is used homonymously and infinitely regarding many things signified and differing in nature. Wherefore body, and whatever is common under body, such as animate, animal, man, are called incorporeal, because each of these is not subject to sense, but is comprehended by the mind; for they do not have ^C defining properties (that is, individuating ones) by which they are subjected to the senses. The individuals, however, of which these are predicated, are bodies, as falling under the sense; for they have defining properties, that is, limiting ones. But although the common body, and whatever is under that common [term], is called incorporeal, because it cannot be perceived by sense but only by the mind, yet by nature it consists as a body; ^D this is similar to a circle spoken of simply, not having [defining] lines. For such a circle is by nature measurable, but insofar as it does not have defining lines, it is by no means subject to measurement; for it does not have a defining cross, that is, a line dividing it in the manner of a cross, by which it might be known how great it is. But after it has become a particular, special, and definite circle, it is immediately circumscribed by measure, as to how great a magnitude it has. Therefore, the circle which is called simply is by nature measured indefinitely; however, it is not subjected to definite measurement. Thus, the human body assumed by the eternal Son is indeed a body by nature; but insofar as it is common, in no way falling under the senses, it is called incorporeal; but after it is marked by definite properties, it immediately and definitely falls under the senses, and is called sensible and tactile.

^A Neither is the character of the properties a particular thing, that is to say, a hypostasis. For the character of that which is in Christ is not of another—that is, not of another hypostasis—except of the eternal Son; just as the character of the properties of anyone whomsoever is not the character of another than him whose character it is. Whence the eternal Son is the same, being both God and man; the same who was begotten of the Father before all ages, and Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary at the end of the ages without male seed, being one hypostasis of the Trinity. Therefore, the most holy and most immaculate Davidic maiden is properly and truly proclaimed to be the Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God. For she gave birth to the eternal Son himself, having become man like us in all things, except for sin, and called Jesus, just as each of us is called, for example, Peter, or Paul, or any other proper name.

It has been most clearly demonstrated, therefore, that although the eternal Son assumed a common thing, which is indeed incorporeal, namely the human substance, yet it is not denied that He was embodied—that is, incarnate—and was made man, as the demented heretics assert. And one must again know this: that the heretics for this very reason hasten to establish that nature is both common and particular, saying that the common is all the hypostases, and the particular is one hypostasis, so that—this being conceded and confirmed to them—it may become a weapon for them to subvert the true and inviolable dogma. For if this which they profess were true, there would be something to say against the holiest synod of Chalcedon. Tell me, these two natures which you preach in Christ, are they common or particular? If, therefore, one should answer that they are common, he immediately reasons, in accordance with them: "Christ, then, according to you, is all the hypostases of the Godhead," which is ^B truly absurd. But if he says they are particular, he will fall into the blasphemy of Nestorius, as one who confesses two hypostases in Christ. Therefore, for the champions and defenders of the synod of Chalcedon, it is necessary to demonstrate that nature is called neither common nor particular, as they say, but a common thing, which escapes the absurdity of both; which "common thing" is neither all the hypostases nor one hypostasis, but that which is contemplated and found holistically, that is, in its entirety, in each of the hypostases.

^D It is demonstrated, moreover (with the help of God who illuminates), by such arguments as these: Every common thing is predicated of many; if, therefore, nature, spoken of commonly, is [the sum of] all the hypostases, then all the hypostases will be predicated of all of themselves. But that which is predicated of many is found entirely in each of the many of which it is predicated. From this it would have to be inferred that each of the hypostases is the hypostasis of itself, which is impossible; so that nature is not all the hypostases. For the nature, according to the...

^A interpretation of these people, is understood commonly, it ought to be predicated of many hypostases, and not called a particular nature, as they say, as will be demonstrated from these things. For if a particular nature, as they understand it, is a hypostasis, it is absolutely necessary according to them for the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit to be numbered as three particular natures, and for three gods and three deities to be confessed, which is the highest of all blasphemies, or rather, a complete denial of Christianity. So it is manifest that it is the mark of senseless heretics to say that the nature is particular; and from every side the orthodox faith is adorned with a royal crown against them, which confesses that Christ, that is to say the eternal Son who has become man, is one hypostasis, and that there are two natures, the same being at once God and man, the same being subject to two natures for the sake of predication. For each of the two natures is predicated of him, and communicates to him both its name and its definition. Hence the eternal Son is God, as is the Father and the Holy Spirit, and he receives the definition of God, in the same way as each of them, and the same eternal Son is man, as each of us is; and he receives the definition of man, in the same way as each of us, and the same eternal Son is man, as each of us is; and he receives the definition of man, that is to say, a rational, mortal animal, capable of mind and discipline, in the same way as each of us. ^B He, however, who says that Christ is one composite nature, just as there is one composite hypostasis, will be forced by philosophical terms to name this nature, and similarly the hypostasis. And indeed, he will certainly have called the incarnate eternal Son a hypostasis. But what name will he be able to apply to the nature? For if he calls it God, he will deny his humanity. If he calls it man, he will do away with the Trinity. But if he calls it neither God nor man, he will therefore represent Christ as being neither God nor man; and in addition to his shame, he will fall into the greatest crime, and the abyss of perdition. For what name could the wretched man find suitable for this empty and sluggish nature, other than a scindapsus, or a tragelaphus, or something else of that sort? ^D This, however, you must especially know, O most studious, that we orthodox, in saying that Christ is one composite hypostasis, do not think of any other hypostasis than the hypostasis of the eternal Son, which is one of the Trinity; for we do not tolerate the introduction of any common one, God forbid! But let the mode of the hypostatic composition be clarified. We say that the hypostasis of the eternal Son is composite in two ways. For it is said to be composite of divinity and humanity; and again it is said to be composite, just as each of us humans is composite of soul and body. But the Lord is not said to be composite of deity and humanity properly, but metaphorically, or figuratively; for everything that is properly composite did not exist at all before the things of which it is composed were joined together. But we do not say that Christ simply did not exist at all before the union of his divinity

^A and humanity, from which he was composed; rather, we say that Christ was not Christ with a qualification before the divinity and humanity came together in him. When they came together in a union exempt from confusion and change, the term "composition" was transferred to him from the true sense of composition, and he is called, in a metaphorical sense, a composition of divinity and humanity. For that which is properly composed of a thing is called by a name other than the name of the things of which it is composed, inasmuch as it has become a third entity, distinct from the things of which it is composed. For when a man is composed of soul and body, he is not called by the name of "soul" or "body." Christ, however, is in a certain way composed of the eternal Son and humanity, yet he himself is the eternal Son, who is Christ, even if he was not called Christ before his incarnation. Hence the holy Scriptures, and the holy and God-called synod of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers at Nicaea, proclaim that the Lord Jesus Christ was begotten of the Father before all ages, and made the ages; and that he brought all things out of nothing into being; and that he is the Wisdom of the Father, and the Word, and the Power. If, however, the entity composed of divinity and humanity, that is, Christ, were a new hypostasis separate from the eternal one, then Christ would not have been begotten of the Father before all ages, nor would he be the author of the ages, nor the Wisdom of the Father, the Word, and the Power. Thus, therefore, is the Lord Jesus Christ—that is, the one composite hypostasis—said to be composed of divinity and humanity, not in the way we say that every composite is composed of the things from which it consists.

^C In a second way, Jesus Christ, that is, the incarnate, eternal, only-begotten Son of God, is said to be composed of soul and body, as we have already said; for since the eternal Son, being God by nature, became man like one of us, while remaining God as he was before, everything that is said of each one of us is said of him. As then each of us is composed of soul and body, so he likewise is called composed of soul and body. It has therefore been clearly shown that Christ is said to be composite in a twofold way, as we said before: both from divinity and humanity, and from soul and body, being the eternal Son, that is, the one hypostasis of the Trinity. ^D To whom be glory and dominion with the Father without beginning, and with his all-holy Spirit, unto the infinite ages of ages. Amen.

III. Dialogue of the blessed Theodore, Bishop of Charran, surnamed Abucara, held with the master of the offices of Emesa, who had requested that a demonstration be provided for him by reasoning that God exists.

(Translated by Francisco Turriano.)

The letter A designates the Orthodox. The letter B, the Unbeliever.

B. Provide for me, sir, a demonstration that God exists.

also receives a limit. The number of men, therefore, receiving an addition, is finite, even if we are ignorant of the quantity; but let us suppose, for the sake of brevity and clarity, that all men are one hundred. It is impossible that all of these should be begotten; for although they are genealogized from one another, yet the mind, tracing the genealogy upwards, arrives necessarily at one who is unbegotten. For it is not possible, when we have come to the first, to say that he was begotten by another; since that other one would also have been begotten by yet another, until we fix the mind upon the first unbegotten one. It is necessary, therefore, that this one either grew from the earth, like plants, or that he is eternal, or that he was made by some creator. But if he had sprouted from the earth, and to this day he were still sprouting others ^B, just as happens in the genus of trees and herbs—since, however, we do not see this happening, it is clear that neither did the first one sprout. Neither, moreover, was he eternal. For if he had existed without beginning and eternal, he would not have died, nor would he have perished. For what has no beginning, has no end. It remains, therefore, that he was made, and what is made has a maker. Therefore, there is a Creator and maker of men.

Receive also another demonstration which leads to the knowledge of God. Tell me, if I were to take a clod from the earth and ascend to a high roof, and from there let it go, would it not, by nature tending downwards, be carried continuously ^C downwards until it rested upon something firmer and immovable? B. Certainly. A. ^A So also with the earth; for the whole is understood from the part. For if it did not have something firmer below supporting it, it would not cease to be carried downwards. But now we see it unmoved. There is, therefore, a certain power stronger than it, supporting and bearing it, which is the Word of God. For if one were to say that another body lies beneath, which supports it, what will it be that bears and supports that very body? And thus, the reasoning faculty, pressing on with its inquiry, will not cease until it stands at some limit of the things being supported. For that which is terminated above cannot be infinite below. For that which is terminated on one side will also have a limit on the other side. For if a rope, let us suppose, were to reach from this part of the earth to the other side, and I were to take hold of the visible upper part of the rope and pull it out by two or three cubits, would it not be necessary, on the other ^D side, which does not appear, for the upper part of the rope to be pulled away and drawn upwards by as much of a measure as I pulled on the other side? Hence, it is possible to know clearly that the earth has a limit below. Wherefore, from these things it is demonstrated that there is a Creator of all things.

^A

B. You have demonstrated this most beautifully, and I am grateful to you for the utility brought to me. But from where will you demonstrate that this Creator has a Son?

A. Do you not know that one thing is the striker, and another the thing struck; and one thing is the seer, and another that which is seen; and one thing is the knower, and another that which is known?

B. Certainly. For it is entirely thus. For the same thing cannot be the agent and the patient.

A. But is God not something simple and perfectly pure, unmixed, and alien from composition? ^B

B. It must be so.

A. That which is, therefore, altogether simple and one in all respects, how does it know itself? For it has been granted that the knower is one thing, and the known is another. And this is observed and perceived most especially in things that are simple and of one kind. For that which is composed of parts might perhaps be able, with one part, to see, and with another part, to be seen; and with one thing to know, and with another to be known—but such a thing introduces composition of necessity. But God, being incapable of any composition, being beyond all simplicity [and all removal of matter]; therefore it is necessary to say one of two things: either that God knows himself, and thus is composite, and again, the first thing—which you posited and granted—will be overturned. For you laid down that the knower is one thing, and the known is another. Or, that God is ignorant of himself, which is itself very absurd. ^C

B. The argument cannot be contradicted.

A. Since, therefore, both are absurd, how does God know himself while remaining in simplicity?

B. I do not understand how.

A. Every knowledge occurs in one of five ways. For either it is known from its own existence; as when I see someone, I know whether he is white or black, whether he has straight or curly hair, whether he is beautiful or ugly, tall or short. Or it is known from the similar—that is, from the same substance and nature; for example, from where do you know that you have a heart, and a liver, and a spleen, and the rest of the inner formation and arrangement, which you have never seen, except from another of the same nature, from whom you have recognized yourself to be such? For similar things are apprehended by similar things. The third way: a thing is often known from a certain trace, as if I should walk through some field that has been plowed and cultivated, I know from the trace that it was cultivated by someone, even if I have not seen the plowers. And again, if I see a dart or a stone from some castle surrounded on all sides by walls being cast on high, I understand that it was cast by someone. The fourth way: when someone is known from an image. For if I hold a mirror, and I see in it the form of someone standing behind me and staring at the reflection, I know whether he is bald, or flat-nosed, or hook-nosed, or big-eyed, from the impression on the mirror. ^D

The fifth mode: contraries are often known from contraries, as when God said to Adam: “In the day that you eat from the tree, you shall die by death.” From where did Adam know what death is, since he had never seen it? For he had not previously seen anyone dying, except from the contrary, that is, from life. For the deprivation of life is clearly death. Thus, the rich man knows poverty, and the healthy man knows sickness.

By which then of these five modes does God know Himself? He cannot know Himself from Himself. For this is given: that there is one who knows, and another which is known, nor indeed from any footprint. For the works are by far inferior and lower; but neither through a mirror, nor through any of the four modes; therefore, it is necessary that there be someone equal in all things, ^B that is, consubstantial, and coeternal with God, from whom He might know Himself, so that He might not be left ignorant of Himself; for God, seeing His own Son, equal to Himself in all things, sees Himself in Him, for He Himself is the image of the invisible God, and the character of His substance.

B. So be it; let God have someone coeternal, equal, so that from Him He might know Himself. From where will you prove that He is Son?

A. It behooves lovers of justice to measure back and weigh with the same measure and balance by which they measure and weigh. For if I had received one hundred gold coins from you, and I wished to return these to you, you ought to receive them from me with the same balance with which I took them when weighed, and not another. ^C For "a small and a great weight my soul hates," as God says. From where do we know that God is, and what are the properties of God? Is it not from those things which are among us? For if we have never seen Him, nor do we know Him from His works, it is absolutely necessary that we remain in total ignorance of God. Therefore, from those things among us which are more noble, we describe God, entirely removing those aberrations which happen to us from the number of those things which are said about God. For example, among us there is life and death: with which does it behoove us to characterize God, with life or with death?

B. With life, obviously.

A. We say, therefore, that God is life, and is living. But because among us life has both a beginning and an end, and is needy—for it needs inputs from the outside, such as food, and drink, and the respiration of air, and such things, from which the constitution of our life consists. These symptoms and deficiencies ^D all being put aside and removed, we say that God lives a life, and such a life, which has neither beginning nor end, nor is it in any way whatsoever in need of anything from without. Does it not seem so to you?

B. Most admirably, and very aptly, from the...

same balance, O most just one, return to me the consequence of ^A the argument.

A. What is more illustrious and of greater dignity among us, fecundity or infecundity, generation or sterility? For if you were to contend in this matter, and act unjustly, I might also contend that death is better than life, and that blindness and deafness are more honorable than sight and hearing: and could anything be more absurd or ridiculous than such a contention?

B. You have truly demonstrated that God is fecund and reproductive, and that this is, without any controversy, more noble; for to beget is more excellent than to be sterile and unfruitful. But passions follow upon generation.

A. O good and wise man, we have already established before that God possesses the most noble of the things that are among us, without the ^B accompaniment of the passions and accidents that follow them.

B. You have treated this sufficiently, plainly, and truly: that God exists and has a Son. But why did God not beget many, so that he might be a prince and ruler over more?

A. Because it would have been necessary for one of three things to happen: either to have begotten an infinite number, and this into the age of the age, and perpetually; or a certain number, for example a hundred; or one, to say the least. If he had begotten an infinite number, and perpetually, his desire would never have rested, nor would his pleasure ever have been fulfilled. But if he had begotten certain and ^C finite beings, such as a hundred, for what reason would he do this? Surely because one would not be enough to fulfill all his desire and all his will. For that is why there would be a need for many. But if we were to grant this, it would follow that the Son is imperfect and needy, and not sufficient unto himself. But if the Son is needy, and yet has been proven to be equal and similar to the Father, then God the Father would also be imperfect and needy (may you be propitious to me, O Lord), and not self-sufficient, which is indeed absurd. But if the Son is perfect, as is the Father, there is no need for others. Tell me, does it not seem so to you? [D ]

B. Most certainly.

A. Come then: are the rest of the animals devoid of reason and free will

angels, or from humans? For surely not from animals devoid of reason.

B. It is as you say.

A. Since, then, these possess free will, it was in the power of the one being sent to obey or not obey the sender, and to say what was commanded or to turn it aside. Are you unaware that even Moses, and Jeremiah, and others sent by God, at first made excuses and refused, and—seized by fear of the ministry or by some other passion—made excuses, until God himself persuaded them with many words and exhortations? But if they had chosen to persevere until the end, this was open to them as beings endowed with free will.

B. It is as you say.

A. Moreover, Jonah actually fled from the face of the Lord to Tarshish, when he had been sent by Him to Nineveh.

B. So we read.

A. If, therefore, those who were sent either refused the mission or ^C announced things other than what was requested, it was absolutely necessary that one of two things happen: either God’s plan would be idle, by not finding a messenger, or He himself would have to rise from the royal throne to become his own messenger, his own announcer, the steward of his own plan, his own executor and servant—which, as reason has demonstrated, is entirely alien and foreign to the royal dignity, for the king to handle our volitions and affairs by personally acting as a minister. But to send to us one of the animals devoid of reason—to even suggest this is folly. Therefore, it was absolutely necessary that God should have someone who is consubstantial with Himself, possessing free will, and a will not at all divergent nor discordant from His own will, for the fulfillment of His divine desires; this is the Son, coeternal and identical in essence, who shares the same counsel, who is even called in the Scriptures the Angel of the Great Counsel, and who formerly appeared to the Fathers—to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses, and the others, as you shall learn more accurately by reading the holy Scriptures.

B. What have you to say concerning the Spirit? What need was there of Him, if the Son, as you have said, is sufficient for the perfection of the principate and the kingdom of the Father?

A. It is a property of a kingdom well-ordered by laws that the king should never do anything by himself; rather, he should fulfill what seems good to him by command. For if he does anything by himself, it is a diminution, and a lowering, and a falling away from the dignity of the kingdom, and is not kingly. ^D Therefore, the Son acts as mediator. Further, it is most necessary and complementary to the kingdom to possess infinite wealth, such as cannot be spent, and treasures, and such

^A hidden things. For he who is not splendid, and copious, and munificent, is needy and poor—nay, he is not a king at all. The royal riches of the Father, therefore, are the Holy Spirit himself, who abounds in charisms. The Father, then, through the Son, gives the Holy Spirit, that is, the operations and graces of the Holy Spirit.

B. And why should the Son not bestow himself, so that he himself might become the riches?

A. Because in that case the Son would be both giver and given; a thing which was established from the beginning as impossible, since we have said that to know and what is known are distinct, ^B and the acting and that which is acted upon are distinct. Therefore, the Father commands royally; the Son executes what pleases the Father, and gives the Holy Spirit, who is the riches and the storehouse of all good gifts. And thus the kingdom will be found perfect, well-ordered, and lacking in nothing.

B. But before there were creatures, there were none to be enriched, nor were there any to desire honors; therefore, there was no need for the Holy Spirit to exist. For what need was there of Him?

A. Truly, my good sir, the kingdom of God must exist from eternity, lest it be perfected in time and afterwards, even if there be ^C none to participate in it. Just as the philosopher and the physician desire to possess the art and the knowledge in perfection, even if there be no one to learn or no one to be healed. For you, too, possess sight even when you sleep at night and lie in bed, although there be no one to see, because you are a perfect human being, so that whenever you desire to see, sight is present to you, and does not arrive from without at that moment. For I will tell you concerning the Holy Spirit what I was saying concerning the Son: the opulence of God is either greater, or equal, or less. Greater than He it is not, for nothing can be greater than God. Less, however, it is not—otherwise, you would place it among the creatures. For whatever is less ^D than God is a creature. And thus it would come to pass that God would sometimes be poor and needy, and lacking in something. This is not to be conceded, and is absurd. It is necessary, therefore, that the opulence be equal, and from the same eternity, so that God may be perfect and an eternal King, to whom be glory, and honor, and power unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Epistle containing the orthodox and immaculate faith, sent by the blessed Thomas, patriarch of Jerusalem, to those in Armenia who are in heresy; dictated in Arabic by Theodore, surnamed Abucara, who became bishop of Carum, and translated into the Greek tongue by Michael, presbyter and syncellus of the Church of Jerusalem, through whom it was also sent; containing, I say, the sole and true faith handed down in the Council of Chalcedon concerning Christ our Lord and God.

Christ the Lord and our God said to Peter, the chief of the apostles: "You are Peter, and upon

^A this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." The Lord said these words to Peter when Peter, to the Lord who had called himself the Son of man, said: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And both statements were united in Christ our Lord, and it is confirmed that He is God and man.

It is necessary, therefore, beloved, that everyone who embraces the Christian religion examine his own faith and reflect upon it. And if he finds that it affirms Christ to be God and man, he ought to embrace and hold fast to it, and fight for it even unto death. But if it should turn toward something else, he ought to loathe it, flee it, and treat it with hatred, and cast from his heart the hardness of faith and those elders from whom he received it as an inheritance, and that affection, as David says when he says: "Hear, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people, and your father’s house; and the king shall desire your beauty." For then the human being draws and elicits the truly desirable beauty from Christ, the true bridegroom and King of kings, when he has cast off his affection for his parents and has shaken off the satiety of persisting in those things which were handed down by them.

Since, therefore, O friends, matters are thus, come, let us all together hasten to the aforementioned faith of this unshakable rock, of Peter namely, the leader of the apostles, and let us believe that Christ is God and man. ^B

It must be known, moreover, that since the same person is God and man, there is absolutely one hypostasis; and as He is God and man, He has two natures, divine and human. And because He is God, it is impossible for Him not to have the divine nature; and because He is man, it is impossible for Him not to have the human nature. This one hypostasis is the eternal Son Himself, who is God equal to the Father according to eternity, who from eternity has the paternal substance, but in the last days assumed flesh from the Virgin Mary, and became man. Thus, the eternal Son, without change and variation, having been made like one of us in all things, sin excepted, assumed our nature, which He did not have, while the divine nature, which He had from eternity, remained. This eternal Son, after His incarnation, is the same God and man, one hypostasis from the Trinity, having the nature of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, and our human nature, no addition having been made to the Trinity. ^C For indeed, O honorable ones, it is clear from the very truth of these things we have said, that the Trinity has not received an increase; since we do not say that one hypostasis, which is God, is this, and we shall say this one is man—not another hypostasis. ^D There is no truth, however, in saying that Christ is one hypostasis, and therefore ought not to have more than one nature.

For it will absolutely follow that one must call this one nature either purely divine, or purely human, or divine and human together, or neither divine nor human. ^B For if this one nature is pure divinity, then Christ is God and not man. But if this one nature is both divine and human together, it is the nature neither of the Holy Spirit nor indeed of men, and the accusation of blasphemy will be heaped from both sides upon one who thinks thus, and he will fall away from the desired nature. But if this one nature is neither divine nor human, then Christ is neither God nor man. Therefore, in whatever way we turn the arguments, we are led to the conclusion that Christ is one hypostasis of the holy Trinity, having two natures, namely, the divine nature and the human nature; and for this reason both statements converged in Him: both that of Christ Himself, when He said He was the Son of Man, and that of Peter regarding Him, that He is the Son of the living God. But he who says that Christ is two hypostases makes Saint Peter, in answering Christ, answer ^C pointlessly—that is, outside the question about which Christ had inquired. For He inquired about the Son of Man, but Peter answered that He—the one about whom the inquiry was made—is the Son of God. If, therefore, the hypostasis that is the Son of Man were different from the hypostasis that is the Son of God, Peter’s mind would have strayed from understanding, and he would have answered regarding that which was not asked, as we said before. But if this were so (may God be merciful), the Lord would never have praised his word, nor would He have blessed him for his response, attributing it to the revelation that came from the Father. ^D Therefore, the true dogma of the confession of faith in Christ is what the definition of the divine synod of the holy Fathers at Chalcedon rightly sets forth, determining Christ to be one hypostasis of the holy Trinity, having two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, as we have already said. Let there be a clear example of this: let us posit three gold coins, one of which has been thrown into the fire and, affected by the fire, has become fire, while remaining gold, as it was. If, therefore, you set aside the other two gold coins, and set aside many burning coals, and then observe the gold coin that has been made fire among the other two gold coins and the coals, it holds the nature of the other two perfect gold coins—that is, it is gold, just as each of those two gold coins is—and it holds the nature of the burning coals, because it is fire, just as each of the other coals is. The middle gold coin is one hypostasis of the trinity of gold coins, because it has not assumed one coal from those coals as the nature of the coals (which was fire); rather, it has become itself, just as one of the coals. In the same way, the eternal Son, descending from heaven (let the hearers understand the descent as befits God), not hypostasis

^A from us, but our nature he took, and he became as one of us, without sin, as the divine Apostle himself says: He has been tempted in all things according to the likeness, without sin.

Therefore, the eternal Son has the nature of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, which he always possessed before, and our human nature after his incarnation, being one hypostasis from the Trinity, having received no addition, as was said before. And one must not make nature a hypostasis, nor say that the hypostasis is nature. Otherwise, it will happen for all of us Christians to say that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three natures, just as they are three hypostases, or that they have one hypostasis, just as they have one nature. Both are alien to the confession of Christians, since the one is the opinion of Arius, and the other of Sabellius. ^B The discourse of truth, however, as Gregory the Theologian said, is a unity in Trinity, and Trinity in unity worshipped. There is therefore a unity of nature, not a unity of hypostasis; but the Trinity of the hypostases is a Trinity, not a Trinity of natures. He who calls nature the very congregation of the hypostases will say that Gregory meant the Trinity when he spoke of unity, and he will be judged to say the same as if he were to say unity in Trinity and Trinity in unity, from which he will be forced to say that unity is in unity. What could be thought more base than this by any mind? Wherefore he ^C will rebuke him who teaches this dogma, saying, "The words are as much against me and with such force as against you; and just as you, hearing 'unity' from Gregory, understand the Trinity itself, so I, hearing 'Trinity' from him, understand the unity." And I conclude this dogma, that unity is in unity. And just as you have approved that for yourself, if you approve this for me, your mind will surely be caught in confusion, and the law of contradicting and refuting will be useless, which cannot be. But if you do not approve, it will be said of you by just judgment that you do not weigh words, since you are not ashamed to distort everything by your own will. ^D Since, therefore, these things which we have said about nature and hypostasis are true and have been purified, our opinion is fully confirmed: that the natural unity is something other than the hypostatic Trinity, and the faith always remains in the confession of the natural unity, as the divine Gregory said, and the whole choir of the holy and divinely inspired Fathers.

If anyone should again say that nature is common and particular, and that if the common nature is all the hypostases, and the particular is one hypostasis, 40 that which is all the hypostases is that of heretics; but the faith posits one common nature in the Trinity of hypostases.

Let them answer us who ask: Are the Father and the Son equal by nature, that is, of one nature and substance, or not? For if he does not concede that they are equal by nature, he is utterly alienated from Christianity. But if he does concede it, then he will concede entirely that the Father and the Son are equal according to nature. Again, let him answer us: Is this nature, by which the Father and the Son are equal, common or particular? For if he says it is common, he is forced to say that the Father and the Son are equal in three persons. But if he says the nature according to which the Father and the Son are equal is particular, he is forced to say that the Father and the Son are equal by hypostasis. And for anyone who says this, the Father and the Son will be one hypostasis. Both of these ^B conclusions are very restricted and blasphemous.

The discourse of truth, therefore, is contained in the confession of the holy Fathers gathered at the synod of Chalcedon: that the nature is not all the hypostases together, nor is the nature one hypostasis, but the nature always stands in the same unity, while the hypostases are in the same Trinity, as the divine Gregory the Theologian has said. For he teaches us to know only this: a Unity in Trinity, and a Trinity in Unity worshipped, having a wonderful division and union. Nor is it permitted to any man to say that if there is a natural unity other than the hypostatic Trinity—that is, the Trinity of hypostases—there are therefore four things; because each hypostasis is completed by nature, and it is not numbered together with the thing by which it is completed. Therefore, the mind ^C that is agitated by every doubt is compelled by necessity to confess the most correct and spotless faith of the holy synod of Chalcedon, namely, that Christ is one hypostasis from the holy Trinity, having two natures, divine and human. And it is not permitted for one to say that if Christ is one hypostasis, he does not cease to have one nature; and if he has two natures, he is entirely two hypostases. For the confession of the holy Fathers of Chalcedon is ratified and established, according to the faith of the blessed prince of the apostles, from which it in no way varies, which we set out at the beginning. And this confession is that confession of Peter, against which the gates of hell have not prevailed. And it ^D shall finally be the lot and inheritance of the whole assembly of Christians, even though Belial, the adversary of our life and salvation, has introduced many divisions into it by the permission of Christ, so that it may be shown that what He said about it can by no means be made vain, and will never be defeated, and that His divine word concerning it will not be overcome to the end.

Furthermore, this must be said: that since the divine nature and the human nature are joined together with the eternal Son, after the assumption of the flesh He has two natural properties, and likewise natural operations, and two natural wills; because the apprehension of a nature is not firm and certain, unless the nature entirely possesses whatsoever pertains to its perfection. Let the listener understand most excellently what I say, that the two natural wills and operations belong to the same eternal Son, who is one hypostasis from the

holy Trinity, whom we have openly proven to have two natures, not as one hypostasis or person and then another. For it is possible for one hypostasis to have diverse operations and to remain in its own unity. To speak by way of example, we see Paul able to see, and hear, and speak, and reason; vision, hearing, speech, and reasoning are diverse operations, and each of these is distinct from the other; but Paul is one hypostasis, holding all four of these operations. Yet he sees with his eye, and not with any other of the members of his body; he hears with his ear, and not with any other; he speaks with his tongue, and not with any other part; and he reasons with his mind, and not with anything else. Each of the hypostatic operations has ^B a natural power in the hypostasis, as matter underlying the effect which the hypostasis works, and what is accomplished is proper to the hypostasis. In the same way Paul, being an hypostasis, has the power to speak by his own will, just as all men possess. Yet the words that Paul speaks, at the time he speaks them, are proper to Paul. Thus, therefore, it must not be denied that the eternal Son, the whole hypostasis from the Trinity, possesses after his incarnation the divine nature, just as the one Father and the Holy Spirit, and the human nature, just as each particular man, according to the mode we previously mentioned.

These things being so, the divine nature exists purely in his own hypostasis, as matter for his own divine ^C works which he wrought according to his incarnation and his conversation upon earth. For truly, the human nature also exists in the hypostasis of the eternal Son, as matter for his own human works, which he performed while associating with men, and they are proper to him above all other men. The same rationale applies to his two natural properties and wills.

It is also necessary not to leave this obscure for the reader of this our letter, that when we say the eternal Son has become man, we mean that which Athanasius and Cyril, the archbishops of Alexandria, and all the God-bearing Fathers have said: that when he fashioned for himself from the most pure Virgin Mary a soul-endowed, rational, and intelligent human flesh, he also made ^D the human intellectual soul proper to his own hypostasis, just as the flesh and soul of any particular person are proper to the hypostasis of that person. For just as some individual, who possesses a human body and a human soul, is a man; in the same way the eternal Son, having fashioned for himself a human body and a human soul, and making both proper to himself, has truly become man. And just as the body and soul of any given person are both proper to his own hypostasis>

and not to another of the human hypostases; for this reason ^A we say that the eternal Son, being one hypostasis from the Trinity, has two natures, not that they differ specifically or particularly from his own hypostasis, but the divine nature was of him and of the Father and of the Holy Spirit; while the human nature was of him and of men individually. Yet his hypostasis ^B is distinct and separate, especially to him alone, apart from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and both his body and his soul are, in a special way, his hypostasis—that is, his person—apart from all [other] men.

Whatever the flesh of the eternal Son and his human soul endured and suffered, the eternal Son of God himself is said to have endured and suffered, and to him these things truly happened, and to him they are attributed, just as whatever the flesh and soul of any person suffers, it happens to that person, and is truly attributed to him. Therefore, making a true confession, we say that the eternal Son was hungry, and thirsty, and weary in his agony, and his face was struck and spat upon, and his back was scourged, and the hands and feet of the eternal Son were pierced, and he himself was hung upon the cross, and died, ^C and was buried, and rose on the third day. All these things, O man, have happened to the eternal Son; but he suffered these things according to what was possible for him to suffer—that is, in his own human flesh and soul, together with his own divine nature. But if we wished to explain in detail how each of these things that we have mentioned came about, the letter would be long and tedious. But if I omit the explanation of all these things, one must see to it that my words do not exclude those who are not sharp in understanding, nor possess sharpness of wit. Therefore, we shall choose to explain death, which is the most hateful and hideous of the sufferings attributed to the eternal Son of God. Regarding this, we shall reveal to you how it happened to him and is reckoned to him, so that by this statement and declaration, you may have a guide for the rest.

378 John the Baptist, as you know, ^D was filled with the Holy Spirit while he was still in his mother’s womb. John had a body and a soul. After the coming of the Holy Spirit, therefore, the soul and body of John belonged to the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the death of any man is the separation of the soul from his own body. When the soul of John was separated from his own body, John died, but the Holy Spirit who came upon him did not die. Therefore, it was the death of John, from which the Holy Spirit was free, so that John’s death is not reckoned as the death of the Holy Spirit, as you have heard; but the eternal Son is not joined to the hypostasis of any man who has a body and a soul, but rather

^A he assumed flesh and a human soul for himself, and having made both proper to his own hypostasis, he did not treat them at all as something else, even as the body of John and the soul of John belonged to no one else, and in this respect he became, and is, the eternal Son, as one of mankind. Just as when the soul of John has been separated from his own body, John himself is the one who is dead, whose soul and body, which have been separated, were his own; so too, when the human soul of the eternal Son has been separated from his body, the eternal Son himself has died, since there was no other hypostasis there besides the eternal Son that possessed a body and soul, from which a separation had occurred, so that the death might be reckoned as being of that hypostasis. But while John, when his soul has been separated from his own body, has died and perished—for he did not exist at all, except from the conjunction of soul and body—the Son who is before the ages, and who is co-eternal and co-enduring with the Father, having had his own human soul separated from his own body, died in truth, because the body and the soul, which were sundered, were not of another hypostasis, as we have already said; yet he did not perish, because he existed always, before taking this soul and flesh. In this way, then, the eternal Son died for us in truth, remaining alive as he was; and our redemption took place not in the death of the hypostasis of some man, as, for instance, of John the Baptist, but in the death of the eternal Son, with no harm resulting to him from this. Thus, therefore, O sirs, the death of the eternal One occurred.

Whosoever, then, is attentive ^C is able to apply his own contemplation to all these things that are called human in him, and to know how they came to pass. For whatever relates to death happens to be milder than those things that are called human. For if death is fittingly said of the eternal Son, as we have explained, without the passion reaching into the divinity; then those things which are human, and stay on this side of death, it is much more fitting to be said of him, with no passion touching his divinity at all. These human things, therefore, as was said before, happened to the eternal Son, who is Christ, after the assumption of his flesh: death, that is, and all the other things that are written in the holy Gospels. ^D But it must by no means be supposed that he endured any of these by necessity, but rather by voluntary will; except that when he willed to suffer these things, it happened to him in a natural way, just as it happens to us—so that his economy might not be thought to be a phantom, and so that the sentence pronounced against the devil might be justified, from which, by this economy, he redeemed the human race. I will, however, make one kind of these human things that happened to him manifest, so that I may confirm what has been said: let it be hunger. For when the eternal Son willed to be hungry, he allowed his flesh to receive the [influence] of the air.

^A For it is by his own free will, not by natural necessity, that he was hungry, and a clear proof of this is that when he had remained fasting for forty days and nights, only then did he become hungry. For if the air had held power over his flesh just as it does over the flesh of each one of us, he would not have passed one, or two, or three days before he became hungry, as we see happening in our own case. But whenever he willed, he allowed nature to perform and manifest its own operations. In the same way, he also willingly endured death. Hear what the Truth itself says concerning this: "I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again. And no one takes it from me." (John x, 18). But in order that you may understand more clearly what is being said, I shall add these things.

God formed the body of Adam pure from every stain, ^C making it not subject by necessity to any of the natural, blameless passions—that is, [not] to death, and those passions which are before death, and that which is after death. But when Adam by his own will transgressed the divine commandment and fell into sin and was defiled, he was enslaved to the natural, blameless passions, and conquered by them—by death, and by those things before death, and after death. Whence Adam was forced by necessity to hunger, and to thirst, and to die; and the corruption of his body had power over him, and all things similar to these. However, the eternal Son took upon himself that Adamite body; that is, he himself formed it for himself from the most pure blood of the most holy Virgin Mary, pure and free from every stain of sin. For this reason, death had no power over him, neither hunger before death, nor the multitude of other blameless passions, as we have demonstrated; nor, indeed, was there the corruption of the body after death, which David the father of God prophesied in song, saying: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, nor wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption." (Ps. xv, 10).

Why then should I present what has been set forth by others, rather than speak in summary? Namely, that the body of the eternal Son, from the beginning of its formation and of the ^D hypostatic union of the eternal Son without confusion, was most perfectly deified, and became unchangeably that which anointed it, and I dare to say, consubstantial with God. But the eternal Son...

^A permitted it to live according to the way of human bodies, in order that He might elude the devil, and that His salutary economy might be believed; and that He might experience grievous things, and receive sufferings, and undergo death for us in truth, not in fantasy. And having completed His whole economy, after His resurrection from the dead, He displayed in His own flesh the glory of His own divinity. But lest we should think that this glory, which was shown in the flesh of the eternal Son after the rising from the tomb, came to Him from without, but rather that it was a manifestation of that which had been hidden in it from the beginning by the union without confusion according to hypostasis, a clear testimony of this is when, before the saving passion, He showed in the presence of three of His disciples on Mount Tabor the divine glory which was in His flesh, which He also displayed after His return from the dead. For the flesh of the eternal Son, as we have said before, had been deified with the most perfect deification from the beginning of its formation. But the eternal Son left it, for the reason which ^B we have mentioned, to act according to the life of our bodies.

This, then, O brethren, is the description of our confession; and we could have treated it more extensively, but the length of the discourse prevented us. Therefore, having understood what has been signified to us, and having accepted it through love towards Christ, join yourselves to us, and be united, and let us all become one through the eternal Spirit in this divinely revealed confession of the great and chief of the apostles, Peter, to which we have assented, so that Christ our God may be propitious to us, and may drive away every contrary assault and grievous affliction, and may translate us to the true blessedness, and unite and join us in His own kingdom. May we all attain this, through the prayers of our most holy Lady, the Theotokos Mary, and of John the Forerunner and Baptist, and of Peter the chief of the apostles, and of James the brother of God, ^C and of the whole assembly of the saints. Amen.

V. By the same Theodore, known as Abucara, bishop of Carum.

(Translated by Turrianus.)

^D Question: Why do we say that the humanity of Christ is the same humanity as that of Peter, and of Paul, and of each individual man, but we do not say that the body of Christ, which we also partake of, is the same body as that of Peter, and of Paul, and of any man individually?

Response: Because that which is common and universal, receiving a characteristic property, becomes a hypostasis. But the body, when it is common and spoken of simply, when receiving a characteristic property, is no longer called "a certain person," but "of a certain person"—that is, it does not become a hypostasis or person, but it becomes a [part] of the hypostasis; for the body is a part of the

nature, and not the whole. Wherefore the part does not subsist by itself, but is said to be ^A of the whole.

VI

An illustration, by which it is shown how the stain of Adam’s sin permeated the entire human race. Farmers say that if you take a vine-shoot and plant it soaked in oil, the quality of the oil is also transferred into the fruit, that is, into the grape. So also Adam, when he had received nature free from every stain, defiled it with sin and various passions, and its quality was disseminated to us.

How, by the incarnation of our Savior, cleansing reached us all. They say again: If you take a melon seed and sow it soaked in honey, the sweetness of the honey is also transferred into the fruit. So also Christ, having purged nature from the oily quality—that is, from sin—through holy Baptism, assumed it unstained and unblemished, even as it was and had been created at the first; and having dipped it in the honey of the Divinity—in sweetness, that is to say, in the power of the Paraclete—He made us partakers of that sweetness, just as the seeds of the melon make the fruit [grown] from them partakers, and by way of succession.

VII

Of the same Theodore, Bishop of Carrae, on the struggle of Christ with the devil.

(Translated by Francisco Turriano.)

^C Question. Christ, being God, struggled with the devil and defeated him: what great thing has He done? the devil will say: I defeated a man, and I have been defeated by God. What benefit has our nature obtained from the victory of God?

Answer. The Jacobites say that God the Word simply struggled and conquered; the Nestorians, on the contrary, that it was a man simply and alone. But the Church, walking the middle and royal way, teaches that God the Word struggled with the devil in the flesh. For if, as the Nestorians say, it was a man who conquered and was slain, the death of a man profited us nothing. But I omit to say now how many errors one necessarily falls into, before it can be taught by them that a man alone conquered. If, however, it is as the Jacobites say, the death of Christ is nothing to us if God simply conquered. But since the proper composition and ordering of the life of Adam pertained to Adam and to his descendants, when the devil saw it was defeated by him, he did not consider the person of Adam and the remaining men to be the ones defeated, but the nature itself. For thus he said: "Because God created man who could not withstand me nor sin, for this reason God the Word, having assumed the perfect nature of humanity, made use of its own free will, and senses, and all natural powers...

by His own will, and by the senses, and by all the natural faculties in accordance with nature, and in accordance with duty, and in accordance with the will of God; and thus He overcame the devil, not by adding a divine and greater power to nature and supplying it in the struggle, but as it befitted God—using the law, using the natural things, and all the parts of nature, and the powers, and the organs, so composed as was fitting, as the measure of humanity demanded. And thus He conquered, and showed nature to be victorious, and hence the victory and justification are attributed to nature. ^B

B. Tell me, was the human mind itself, which struggled with the devil, moved of its own accord, or by another?

A. Just as your mind, or foot, or hand is not said to move itself—for you are the one who moves and regulates your mind, and members, and faculties as you wish—so too was God the Word Himself, who moved and governed His own human mind, and senses, and natural habits, and faculties as He wished. But as for what you asked, whether the mind of Christ was moved by itself or by another, we answer that the mind, and the soul, and the body, and the parts of the body, and the senses, each one of these has its own proper, simple, and natural motion. For if these did not possess some motion according to nature, we would not be able to move them. We therefore, taking up this natural and simple motion, move and regulate it as we wish, whether for good or for ill. For instance, the feet naturally possess the motion of walking; but I use the walking as I wish. The eyes have the faculty of seeing simply; but I use the sight as I wish. Thus, that I see is from nature; but *how* I see is from myself. It is likewise concerning the will, and the remaining parts of nature, and concerning the mind itself. For it, too, naturally possesses the ability to reason simply, and this or that; but I use this natural faculty of the mind as I wish, according to my judgment, reasoning either good or evil things, and exercising the power of the mind toward whatever I desire. Therefore, to be moved simply is according to the property of each part of nature; but *how* one is moved belongs to the person. Understand it in this way concerning Christ. Just as it is said that the carpenter made the chair with his own hand, and we say that the hand of the carpenter made the chair, so we say that God the Word overcame by the flesh, and we say again that the flesh overcame—that is, the nature of humanity. ^C

B. How was Adam overcome? Was it not by doubting, or rather by disbelieving the word of God and believing the devil?

A. The smoothness of pleasure first charmed him with desire, then he doubted. For if it had not appeared fair to him, he would not have deceived himself; nor would the forbidden plant have appeared fair to him, nor would he have deceived himself, and... ^D

^A accepted the suggestion of the enemy. And take note of what I say: if the devil had shown him a foul-smelling, thorny, and bitter plant, and said to him, "If you eat of this, you shall be God," he would not have accepted the deception without proof and examination. But he would have inquired curiously, questioning and saying: "Whence do you know this, or whence do you provide me with such assurance and proof?" And, in short, he would never have been persuaded to accept his word without a non-fallacious demonstration. But since desire blinded him, he deceived his own reasoning. So too, those who have followed the pseudo-prophet of the Agarenes have believed in him, being beguiled by the pleasures given to them and promised to them; for he gave them much spoil, and plunder, and a loose and lax law, and one agreeable to their cravings, and ^B they foolishly deceived their own conscience and believed that he is a prophet and an apostle of God. For if he had not proposed what was pleasant to them, but rather had set before them things burdensome and difficult, they would immediately have answered him sternly and boldly: "Whence do you persuade us that God sent you? And what proof do you give?" And they would have demanded from him clear evidence of what he was saying. And to say it in a word, when that part which desires is diseased, it then drags the mind and lures it toward assent.

B. Could he who was united according to hypostasis to the Word of God, and that flesh, be dragged entirely by the pleasures ^C of him who tempts, and of the world?

A. We say he could not, not because of infirmity and weakness, but because of the consistency of reason and propriety; just as we say that God cannot do an injustice.

VIII. Interrogation of the Arabs against the Christian.

A. Christian. B. Arab.

B. Tell me, is Christ your God?

A. Most certainly.

B. Do you then have another God besides him?

A. By no means.

B. Therefore the Father and the Holy Spirit have fallen away ^D from you.

A. Listen also to me. Let there exist here your scripture, which you say descended from heaven; I ask you, do you have another scripture besides this one?

B. I answer you that I do not.

A. You deny, therefore, every other scripture?

B. Yes.

A. What then? If another book were present, having the same scripture, do you deny that scripture?

B. It is not a different scripture, but the same, even if it is set down in another book.

A. So I also say, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not other and other besides the Son, although they are found in another and another hypostasis.

[IX.]

Question proposed by the Agarene to the same.

A. The Christian. B. The Agarene.

B. Tell me, did the Jews, when they crucified Christ—whom you say is your God—do this with his will or against his will? A. With his will. B. Then they are not only free from punishment, but you even owe them thanks. A. Answer me in turn, as I question you: when I daily blaspheme your God, as you say, do I do this against his will or with his will? If it is against his will, he is weak and feeble; but if it is with his will, not only should no tax or tribute be exacted from me, but I should rather bring him gifts, since I am fulfilling the will of your God. Answer me further: when you go forth to the Roman territories, if one of your number is killed there, does he not go to paradise, as you teach and hand down? B. Most certainly. A. If in that case you had gone there together with your own genuine brother and son, and had campaigned against the Romans, and then some Roman had killed your son, would you be obliged to avenge yourself on the one who killed him as an enemy, or rather to honor, embrace, and kiss him as a benefactor? B. I would certainly have killed him a thousand times over, and torn him limb from limb, if I could. A. And how do you judge it to be just to kill the one who was the cause of such and so great a salvation and delight for your brother? ^C Tell me another thing: if you had a very painful and mortal wound in your eye, and one of your enemies wanted to give you a mortal blow and, seizing the opportunity to take away your life, struck the blow not on another part of your body, but on the wounded eye so that, as I said, he might quickly take you from life—but the eye, struck by the blow, discharged pus, and humors, and liquid corruption; and you, being freed from the pain through that blow, were thoroughly healed—would you then regard the one who gave you the blow as a friend and benefactor, not looking at his intention, but at what happened beyond his intention, despite his own will, and would you love and treat him well; or would you consider him an enemy? B. I would punish him with great torment if I could, and I would torture him as my greatest enemy and most malevolent foe. A. Think in this way concerning the benefits which the Jews, against their own will, brought to us. ^D

Dissertation of the same Theodore with a Jew.

A. The Christian. B. The Jew. B. I, says the Jew, argue with you from the Scriptures; for I know nothing else besides these.

^A A. Neither do I reject them; but it is fitting that I first explain to these listeners how I understand the Scriptures. For if someone entered a house where a likeness of Paul was painted, and, let us suppose, looked at the image, he might say, pointing with his finger by way of indication: "This is Paul of Tarsus, who stood consenting to the death of Stephen, and who, having received letters from the priests, set out for Damascus, and delivered Christians into custody; this is he who, by divine vision and led by repentance, was converted to Christianity, and became the preacher and teacher of the Gentiles," and other things of this sort. He who is intent upon the image of Paul refers all these things to Paul, whose that image is, and not to the painting and the colors which he sees. But if he were to say, "The painter did not depict Paul well; for he has made his shoulders excessively broad, and has not painted his eyes well, and has made his legs thin or maimed," these and other things of this sort are not referred to Paul, but remain confined to the image alone. ^B Such are the things that are said in the Scripture concerning the saints: some things are referred to Christ, who is prefigured and foreshadowed in them, while others reach only to the persons themselves. Does such a reading and explanation of Scripture please you, Jew?

B. By no means. I do not approve of this, but I understand the letter only, as, for example, what is said of David, I understand only of him, and what of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Judah, and the rest similarly.

A. See what you are saying, and know that, in this way of speaking and understanding, you make God a liar.

B. How?

A. Did not God say to Abraham: "All this land which you see, I will give to you and to your seed?"

B. It is so.

A. Was Abraham ever the master of that land?

B. How the master, when he did not have even a foot's breadth of ground in it? ^C For he could not bury Sarah until he had bought a place.

A. The word of God, then, has failed.

B. He is about, he says, to give them the land.

A. But God did not say it in this way, that "I am about to give it to your children," but, "To you and to your seed." Similarly He said to Jacob: "This land, which I gave to your fathers, Abraham and Isaac, I will give to you and to your seed after you." And Jacob did not have even a foot's breadth; but rather he died in a strange land, in Egypt. ^D Do you see how, when you understand the Scriptures thus, you make God a liar?

And what of that which the Scripture said concerning Jacob: "Nations and congregations of nations shall go out from you"? Where, or how, were nations generated from Jacob? And again He said to him: "And the sons of your...

^A father—he himself, and your seed—shall bow down to you; and your seed shall have dominion over them." How did He say, "Your brothers," in the plural, when he had no brother but one, Esau? And where did Esau himself bow down to Jacob? Nay, rather, Jacob himself bowed down seven times to the ground before Esau, and called him lord [P], and for the whole time of his life he persisted in fearing and trembling before him. And not only these things, but even after so many years, when they departed from Egypt, Moses openly said to the first prince of the sons of Esau: "We are your brothers; signify to us so that we may pass through your land; we will go by the king's highway; we will not turn aside to the right hand or the left, but we will buy water and bread at a price, until we pass into the land which God has given to us [Q]." And he signaled to them in turn, clearly saying: "By no means; for if you pass through my land, we will come out and slay you [R]." And God did not overturn this, but rather confirmed and strengthened it, saying: "That land which I gave to Esau, do not approach it [S]," and the rest. Where then did God fulfill for Jacob what He had said, that "The sons of your father shall bow down to you, and you—and your seed shall have dominion over them," and such like? Do you see, O Jew, that everywhere you make God a liar because of your evil interpretation and lack of understanding? Did not God, when He appeared to Jacob and wrestled with him, say to him: "From now on your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel [T]"? And yet a thousand times after that, both God, and the Scripture, and he himself called himself Jacob. What then? Have the words of God fallen away, and have they thus become weak and unstable?

B. But I, he says, am the son of Israel, and to me the promises were made.

A. By no means; rather, I am the son of Israel. For regarding what in Israel do you boast? Was it that he had curly hair, or was the largest in body compared to others, or was he the strongest, or did he have a different form?

B. Not at all—but because he was pious toward God.

A. Every one, then, who is pious and dear to God 41, who reveres the ways of Israel and loves them, I say says: "I am a son of Israel, being conformed to him in manners and in faith." For just as the blessings were Esau's, the firstborn, but Jacob came and said to his father: "I am Esau [U]"—though he was not Esau—he took the blessings, and Jacob did not change them even after discovering the deception; so I, too, take your blessings for myself by saying that I am a son of Israel.

XI. Theodore Abucara’s Dialogue against a Nestorian.

^A (Catholicus). ^B (Nestorianus). A. Who said: "All authority has been given to me in heaven [42 ...]"

^A and on earth"? Is it the Son of the Virgin, that is, the man, or the Son of God? B. The man. A. Since, then, all authority over things in heaven and on earth has been given to this man, do those who pray to God or ask anything of Him do wrong and act against the will of God, seeing that all things are this man’s? And whatever we may request, whether of earthly or heavenly kingdom, all these are the man’s. Therefore, either they sin who make requests of God—for he alone possesses the authority, and the gifts of God are without repentance—or, if it is necessary to approach God through prayer, this man has deceived himself and boasts in vain when he says: "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth," when another governs and rules over the things which he says he possesses.

XII.

Interrogation against a Nestorian.

XIII.

Another interrogation.

^A and demonstrating to the Agarene that God has a Son. Then again the Catholic asked the Nestorian: Did Christ, that is, the man, recognize God the Word in the womb of his Mother? B. By no means. Then the Nestorians who were present, deeming it blasphemy that this was the answer, rebuked him who was defending the heresy of Nestorius; and they departed from him.

XIV. Dialogue with a Nestorian.

B. Why do you name Mary Theotocos, and not rather Christotocos? Demonstrate from the Scriptures the term Theotocos. A. Do you demonstrate to me the term Christotocos. B. Was not the generation of Jesus Christ thus? "For when his Mother was betrothed," ^B and the rest. Therefore, she who gave birth to Jesus Christ shall clearly be called Christotocos. A. I requested that this term be shown to be explicitly stated, just as you requested the term Theotocos from me. But if you provide the demonstration in this manner, I also—by means of infinite authorities from Scripture proving that Christ is God—simultaneously prove that she who gave birth to him ought to be called Theotocos; for how is she not Theotocos who has God as her Son? Or say, if you dare, to the king’s mother: "You did not give birth to a king, and you are not the mother of the king." And why, when he is called Jesus Christ, do you not call his Mother Jesutocos, but rather, passing over the first name, Jesus, ^C you call her Christotocos? Therefore, what you did in the name of Jesus—passing over the name Jesus and choosing the name Christ—this I have also done, passing over the name Christ and choosing the name God, which is primary, proper, and excellent. For appellations are made and names are imposed from the better part, not the lesser, especially by those who wish to praise and to honor. B. But if I say Theotocos, I signify that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit were born of her. For he who says "God" absolutely, without indicating the hypostatic property of fatherhood, or of sonship, or of the Holy Spirit, has signified the whole Trinity. A. What you say is not true, but you make excuses in your sins; for read the beginning of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. ^D B. "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God." A. Who is this God? And what manner of person? B. The whole Trinity. A. You have lied rightly against your own head. Read what follows.

^A “Which He had promised afore by His prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning His Son, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh.”

A. What then? If Christ and the Son is one of the holy Trinity, do you not see your wickedness refuted? Read also the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which also refutes your evil mind. And in many places of holy Scripture this heresy is plainly refuted; for very often the name God is used of the one person of the Son. Just as: “And the Word was God.” And again, the divinely inspired Paul says concerning the Son: “Who is over all, God,” and many other such things. But I do not now have the leisure to amass authorities. But for those who seek the truth, and do not contentiously contradict, these things shall suffice.

XV. Another Dialogue against the learned Nestorius.

XVI. A question proposed by an infidel to Abucara.

it is in you? ^A By no means; for in you the mind is united essentially, but in those things it is not so. In this way, therefore, understand for me that God the Word is in His own flesh, and when He was in the virginal womb, and after the birth, He was essentially united according to hypostasis, and incarnate, and everywhere governing and containing the universe by His providence and operation, ^B not as if He is one thing by substance and another by operation. For in essence He is not separated from operation, but is in that same reality in His own flesh according to hypostasis, and in the universe; yet God is above every example; for although we receive certain leads and aids of the intellect from things in the Author of all, who is above all, it is not therefore to be imagined that this is the same as that which is above all substance.

XVII. ^C Question proposed by an infidel to Abucara.

B. How, since Christ clearly declares and proclaims: "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," can it be that those who were just before His coming, being unbaptized, enter into it?

A. Because Christ was baptized for them, just as He also died for all; for He says, "I sanctify Myself for them." But beyond this, they were also physically baptized.

B. How could this be possible?

A. Do you not know that those who die do not perish utterly into nothingness, but are rather resolved into the elements ^D from which they were composed?

B. That is so.

A. And it is written that when His side was pierced with a lance, blood and water flowed from His side.

B. Yes, it is so written.

A. Therefore, that water having been resolved into the elements, Christ sanctified all things and baptized those who were divided and resolved into the elements.

B. By this line of reasoning, were even the infidels, and indeed all who had died before, baptized?

A. By no means; but only the bodies of the faithful, whose souls, when Christ—or rather, His holy soul—descended into Hades, believed in Him.

For just as if someone has an aqueduct or a stream of living water and many trees planted or grown beside it, some being completely dead and withered, while others are still living and green, what seems to you? Do all the trees which the water touches receive benefit, and draw in quality and life, or only those that have the power

of receiving and drawing? For that which is completely dry is not helped by the water at all. Thus, the faithless gained no benefit from that water which passed away into the elements.

XVIII. We have already omitted Opusculum XVIII, as it was published among the works of St. John Damascene in volume XCIV of this Patrologia, col. 1595.

XIX.

That Mahomet is not from God.

It is a customary practice among the hypocrites of the Saracens that, if they chance upon a Christian, they do not deign to greet him, but say immediately: "Christian, give testimony that there is one incommunicable God who has taken Mahomet for Himself as a servant and apostle." A certain one from the number of such hypocrites proposed this same thing to Abucara. He replied to him: "Does it not suffice for you that you are condemned for false testimony, unless you also incite others to testify falsely?" Barbarian. I do not speak false testimony. Christian. Desist then from saying that Mahomet was sent by God. Barb. By no means. But that which my father testifies, I also testify. Christian. If those things which are handed down by fathers to their children must necessarily be true, it follows that the Samaritans, and the Jews, ^B and the Scythians, and the Christians, and the Greeks all hold the right faith, since every one of them carries the conviction with which they were imbued by their ancestors. And what difference does your religion contain, since you hold the faith of your father? For this is common even to the nations that live like brute beasts. Barb. Since you have cast me into doubt, tell me, I pray you, do you not also feel and teach those things which you were taught by your father? Christ. Certainly. But my father taught me one thing, and your father taught you another. Barb. What then did your father teach you, and what did my father teach me? Christ. My father taught me to accept a prophet already foretold long ago, or one who procures for himself belief through signs and wonders. Your Mahomet is destitute of both. For no one from the number of the ancient prophets prophesied anything concerning him as a prophet, nor did he himself establish belief for himself through signs and wonders. ^D Barb. Indeed, because Christ said in the Gospel: I send you a prophet named Mahomet. Christ. But the Gospel makes no mention of him. Barb. It did have it, but you erased it. Christ. If someone brings a document before a judge, regarding the

debt owed, ^A which contains nothing of what is sought or what is being discussed, what does the judge decide the claimant should receive? Barb. Nothing. Christ. Therefore, you have nothing from the Gospel. Barb. Even if I have nothing from the Gospel, he still appears as a trustworthy prophet from the signs which he performed. Christ. What sign did he perform? The Barbarian, having turned to false mythology and being unable to say anything true, fell silent.

XX. Another inquiry, by way of example, that Mahomet was an enemy of God and was harassed by a demon. Translated by Gretser.

^B If the Lord of all the earth under heaven, burning with anger against the inhabitants of some province who were speaking insults against him and mocking his power and majesty, were to send some military commander to them, who would turn them away from curses and teach them to speak well, or punish with the sword those who would not submit—and if he, having reached the region of the slanderers, bribe-taken by money, were to incite them to insult the king even more, and instead of the money were to write out for them a document of encouragement in his own hand, could any enemy of the king be found greater or more capital than one who dared to do such things? I think none.

But perhaps someone will say: "And who would proceed to such madness, that having accepted money, he would give them free license to slander his own master?" ^C I answer him that this very person is the mad pseudoprophet of the Hagarenes, Mahomet, just as he is found bragging in his own lies. For he confessed, as though driven by the devil, that he was sent by God to shed the blood of those who affirm that the divine Numen is a trinity of persons, and of all those who do not say: "God is one or solitary, consisting of a single person, who neither begot nor was begotten, nor had any consort." For this is the theology of the madman, to deny that the Generator of light and the Producer of sanctification is God, and to boast that he was commanded by God to slay with the sword the Christians who profess this, as being abusers and slanderers; yet, having been softened by money, he allowed them to insult the very one by whom ^D the demon-possessed man claimed *he* was sent.

And so that no one may assume we are speaking falsely when we call him possessed by a demon, let him read the history that circulates among them, under the title: "The Dismissal of Saissa." For this was his wife, whom he sent back to her parents as suspected of adultery, and after some days, while sitting among his close associates, he was seized by a demon

and contorted, so that those passing by said a most grievous oracle had descended upon him. Recovering after a short while, he was asked, "What is the vision?" He said, "The forgiveness of Saissa has descended upon me, and as one assured by an angel that she is clear of the suspicion, I have taken her back." ^B

XXI. A question that the dogma of the Christians is also confirmed from the humble and lowly words of the preaching of the Gospel.

One of the learned Saracens, when he had heard of the bishop and was sitting with ten others from among the magistrates, had him summoned. Trusting in his own eloquence, he had called them together so that he might receive from them praise as an invincible debater. When the bishop entered and was told to sit, he said, "I have heard, Bishop, that you boast and profess to be able to confirm Christianity from humble and lowly things."

Theodorus, however, knowing his audacity and confidence, said, "You heard correctly."

Sarac. "If you cannot achieve this, what are you willing to suffer?"

Theod. "That I no longer have the power of debating with a Saracen."

Sarac. "And if you can do this, then let me not have the faculty and power to debate with a Christian."

Theod. "What else do you agree to suffer?"

Sarac. "Whatever you have agreed upon, I agree to the same."

Theod. "It is not the same; for if you exclude me from the conversation of the Saracens, you will be doing them a very great favor. You, however, even if you speak much, the Christians consider to be of no consequence." ^C When the Saracen laughed gravely at this, marveling at the bishop's boldness, he said, "Go ahead, O bishop, let us speak, with no pledge made against one another."

Theod. "Answer the one who asks."

Sarac. "Ask whatever you like."

Theod. "How many categories of men are there?"

Sarac. "I do not know."

Theod. "There are three in all: the wise, the middling, and the foolish."

Sarac. "I agree."

Theod. "Is there any part out of these three even one, which admits to having a crucified God?" ^D

The Saracen, as if he had already nearly won, without delay said, "None."

Theod. "Pay close attention, lest you be ensnared, and while you hope to win, you are found to be vanquished."

Sarac. "I do not repent," he said. "God forbid that any man, whether wise, or middling, or foolish, should profess to have a crucified God."

Theod. "Therefore, in your opinion, the Christians are not...

^A even a fourth part of mankind, or more; and how do you dare to deny that any of mankind would dare to have a crucified God?" Sarac. "And in what way do you say that three parts of humanity have deigned to have a crucified God? For I am in doubt, being ignorant of the hidden cause of such an acceptance." Theod. "As I promised a short while ago, I will demonstrate through those very dogmas of ours which seem to you base and humble, that the dogma of the Christians is confirmed and established." Sarac. "Show me." Theod. "Lest I spend time by going through things one by one in my discourse, I will set about making a brief description for you. Suppose, therefore, that you are ten princes of ^B nations—idolaters, that is: one of the Greeks, one of the Romans, one of the Franks, and others of others—and suddenly a man appears before you, a stranger, poor, and ugly in appearance, squalid, ragged, barefoot, without a staff, with one tunic, without copper or silver, and with great boldness he cries out to all: 'Why do you err, O men, preferring impiety to piety?' And it seems you replied: 'And what, wretched man, is this piety, to which we have preferred impiety?' And he says: 'To worship a crucified God; for this is true piety.' And you, hearing this, and gnashing your teeth, rushed to kill him, but could not; and then, resuming the question, you replied: 'Tell us clearly this unacceptable proclamation of yours.' And he says: ^C 'The Son of God, descending from heaven, was incarnate from a woman, and having become man, was reared as an infant; and being sought by his enemies, he flees into Egypt, and returning from there, he is seized, buffeted, and beaten with fists; his head is struck with a reed, he is spat upon, he is mocked and clothed in a scarlet cloak, he is crowned with a crown of thorns, he is crucified, he is given vinegar to drink, and his side is pierced with a lance. And with a cry he said: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" and he breathed out his soul; dead, he is covered in a tomb—he said no more—and on the third day he rises from the tomb, so that he may not be thought to have deceived his hearers | by using grand words or beguiling them with polished ^D speech.' Having heard these things, then, you replied: 'O stranger, no one could ever appear more foolish than you.'"

' ^A And what, then, is the claim of the one who has suffered these things, to those who believe in him? ^B For he says: 'Asceticism, abstinence from pleasures, separation from many marriages; offering the left cheek to one who strikes the right; going two miles with one who compels you one; stripping off one's tunic for one who takes away one's cloak; loving enemies; and blessing those who revile us and pursue us with curses, and praying for them.' ^C And you asked: 'What reward awaits those who patiently endure these things from him?' ^D And he (54) replied: 'None, indeed, in the present life; but on the last day, when the dead are raised from the sepulchers, a most rich and bountiful reward of eternal goods shall be given by him to those who have brought themselves to keep these things.' And you replied to this: 'O man, the weakness of the one preached by you is manifest, and the difficulty of fulfilling this promise is no less clear. Add to this that the retribution for so many hardships endured is too long delayed; and furthermore, it is uncertain. And who would be found who would wish to embrace such a religion?' But he said: 'Tell me, does the creature suffer that it should serve and be subject to any other rather than to the Creator?' And you: 'By no means, but to the Creator.' And he says: 'Bring me a blind man.' And when the blind man was brought, the preacher cried out: ^A 'I say to you, O blind man, in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, who was born of Mary in Bethlehem, and fled to Egypt, who was seized by the Jews, and beaten, and spat upon, and crucified, and upon the wood of the cross cried out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" to whom a drink of vinegar and gall was given, and whose side was pierced with a lance, and who was buried in the tomb, look up!' And he immediately looked up; and by his invocation he cleansed lepers, cast out demons, healed paralytics, and raised the dead. ^B Whence you, and all who saw, men and women, youths and elders, the wise and the foolish, and those in between, in short, every class of men, without any doubt recognized that the Nazarene is God, and the Son of God; and that he has willingly suffered these things for a certain reason that has hitherto escaped the minds of those who saw. Lo, it has been demonstrated to you, as I had promised, that our Christian preaching is confirmed by those things in it which appear vile and humble. ^C

400 XXII.

Another dogma, proving that the bread blessed is the body of Christ.

Sarac. Come, Bishop, why do you priests mock the Christians? From one flour, having made two breads, you leave one for common food, and the other, divided into particles, you distribute to the people, and call it the body of Christ; and you affirm that it provides remission of sins to those who receive it. ^D Do you mock yourselves, or those over whom you are set?

Theod. We mock neither ourselves nor them. ^A Sarac. Convince me not from your Scripture, but from common and acknowledged notions. Theod. And what do you say? Does bread not become the body of God? Sarac. I am at a loss to answer either side of the contradiction. Theod. Did your mother give birth to you at such a height? Sarac. Not at all; but small. Theod. Who made you increase? Sarac. God willing, food. Theod. Therefore, bread has become body for you. Sarac. I agree. Theod. And how has bread become body for you? Sarac. I am ignorant of the manner. Theod. Food and drink descend through the throat into the stomach, as into a pot. Once it has descended, it is cooked by the embrace of the stomach and the heat of the liver, and it turns into chyle. The thicker part moves downward, but the fine and chylified part floats. Since the liver is hot and possesses a cohesive quality, it draws it in and changes it into blood. ^B By way of canals, it irrigates the entire body through the veins, distributing the food that was chylified in the stomach and bloodified in the liver, changing it to match each of the members—what each of them is: bone to bone, marrow to marrow, nerve to nerve, eye to eye, hair to hair, skin to skin, nail to nail. And such is the growth of the infant into a man: the bread itself has become body, and the drink, blood. Sarac. It seems so. Theod. Think of our mystery as coming to pass in the same way. For the priest places the bread on the holy table, and likewise the wine, and as he prays the holy prayer, the Holy Spirit descends upon the things laid out; and by the fire of His divinity, He changes the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, no less than the liver changes food into the body of a man. Or do you not grant, my friend, that the Holy Spirit can accomplish what your liver can accomplish? Sarac. I grant it, he said. And sighing, he was silent.

XXIII.

Another inquiry: that Christ, having become man, is at the same time true God.

Sarac. Christ said, "The Son can do nothing of His own authority, unless He sees the Father doing it." How then is He God, as you say, who can do nothing of Himself? Abuc. Can you fly? Sarac. Not at all. Abuc. But if you were to see an eagle flying in the heights, and you were able likewise to be raised into the heights and to fly like an eagle, which of you would be more admirable to those watching: you, or the eagle?

Sarac. I. Abucar. Therefore, Christ is more admirable than your God.

^A XXIV.

Another dogma concerning one wife.

Sarac. Whence does it seem to you, Bishop, that to have one wife is more honorable than to have many? For you, who shrink from the marriage of many, ought logically to shrink from the marriage of one as well. For that which is evil in the general case, is evil in the particular, and that which is good in the particular, is also good in the general; for the general is necessarily predicated from the particular cases. Theod. This particular is not a particular of a general, ^B just as a certain man is a particular of general humanity; rather, this particular is opposed to the general, as moderation is to immoderation, and justice to greed. Sarac. Convince me, not from your Isaiah or Matthew—to whom I do not pay much attention—but from common, compelling, and certain notions. Theod. From wherever you wish, I have the means to satisfy you. For what reason is a woman betrothed to a man? Sarac. I do not know. Theod. For the sake of two things: for pleasure, and for the procreation of children. Sarac. That is evident. Theod. From the first-formed Adam until now, do you know of any man who obtained every kind of pleasure and delight ^C from God more than he did? Sarac. None at all. Theod. Did he lack even one single kind of pleasure? Sarac. By no means. Theod. And how many wives were fashioned for him? Sarac. One. Theod. It is demonstrated, then, that pleasure through one wife is more perfect than pleasure through many. Sarac. That is a necessary induction of agreement. But, as it seems, the procreation of children is more abundant through many marriages. Theod. Which time seems to you to have been in greater need of the procreation of many children than that time? Sarac. None. Theod. It is demonstrated, then, that having one wife is more effective for receiving many children than having many wives. And it is not hidden that the mindset opposed to God and loving of the flesh, belonging to those who, when there was a multitude of men, established the right of having many wives—when the Author of the world had, at a time when there were few men, sanctioned the marriage of one—is ^D clearly contrary to the truth.

The Saracen, ashamed to confess himself defeated and scheming to cloak and obscure the shame of his dogma, says: "Give me another example."

^A Theod. Let there be two servants of one master sent on a journey, and let the master command one to be clothed in many garments, as many as he wishes, while the other is ordered to wear but a single tunic; and should either of them shiver with cold, let him be beaten with eighty lashes. Does that master who makes such a law for them seem to you just or unjust, especially if the one he orders to wear a single tunic is the weaker?

Sarac. Unjust.

Theod. Therefore you accuse God of injustice, when you say that He enacted a law that the woman, who is weaker in resisting lust, should have only one husband, while the man, who is otherwise more enduring, should have four wives—to say nothing of the herd of concubines—and that for every act of fornication the penalty is eighty lashes. For what could be more iniquitous than this iniquitous legislation?

Sarac. Come now, give me another example.

Theod. Which of the two does God delight to see practiced among men: peace or strife?

Sarac. Peace.

Theod. Does a man seem to you to be more in peace when he has many wives than when he has one?

Sarac. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

^B Theod. Can it ever come to pass that they love one another?

Sarac. Not at all.

Theod. Do they not often use poison to destroy both their husband and one another? And when contentions arise among their kin, do they not kindle unceasing battles? Whereas marriage to one has united the houses of two that were previously at variance, and joined together what seemed to be sundered.

Sarac. It is reasonable to believe so.

Theod. Hence it follows that to have one wife is more honorable, more lawful, and more divine. But if you wish, I shall add another example for you.

Sarac. As I lend you an attentive ear, you have made me nearly a Christian. But this suffices me.

^C

A demonstration that God has a Son who is consubstantial, both beginningless and coeternal.

The thinking of the Hagarenes, and all their effort, is bent on denying the divinity of the Word of God; and they... ^D

^A prepare for battle against it from every side, striving to show that He is not God, nor the Son of God. For their false prophet, having been a listener to the error of Arius, handed down this godless and impious dogma to them; whence one of those among them who was puffed up with eloquence, sitting in a public assembly, asked the bishop, saying: "What do you call Christ, O Theodore?" The bishop: "God, and the Son of God." The Saracen: "And is it possible for God to have a Son?" Theodore: "It is impossible for Him not to have a Son." Sarac: "In what way, and for what reason?" Theod: "Can God fail to have sovereignty?" Sarac: "By no means." Theod: "And of whom is God the sovereign?" Sarac: "Of His own creatures." Theod: "Then sovereignty has become an accident to Him, and not a natural quality; and it would be said that He has an adventitious and acquired sovereignty, recent and not, as He Himself is, beginningless. For before the creatures existed, as you say, He did not have sovereignty; but the creatures were for Him the cause of sovereignty, and they themselves made Him a sovereign, namely, an authority, which by nature He was not before. And He must owe them gratitude, because through them He was deemed worthy of sovereign honor; and if it should seem good to Him that they return into nothingness, they would not obey, and furthermore, according to your opinion, He would be stripped of His sovereignty over those whom He rules. And in addition to such absurdities, another even more absurd consequence must necessarily follow." Sarac: "What is that?" ^B Theod: "That the sovereignty of an earthly king would be understood to be much better and nobler, and more excellent than can be spoken, than the sovereignty of God." Sarac: "How so, and why?" Theod: "Because the earthly king is sovereign of those who are of the same nature and of the same time; but God, of those who are of a different nature, and much inferior and later." Sarac: "I do not understand what you have said." Theod: "If someone were to approach the king and say: 'Hail, O King of the donkeys,' what punishment would you say he ought to suffer?" Sarac: "The ultimate punishment." Theod: "And which are more akin to one another; the creatures to God, or the donkeys to the earthly king?" Sarac: "The donkeys to the king; for both are creatures, of the same kind and fellow-servants. But come, answer me now that I am asking: Over whom does God have sovereignty, if, as you say, He does not have it over creatures?" ^C Theod: "Those over whom anyone is sovereign are threefold: they are either greater than the sovereign, or lesser, or equal. But to say that God is sovereign over those greater than Himself is blasphemous; for nothing is greater than God. And as for the lesser, it is dishonorable, according to the absurdities mentioned above. It remains for us to say, equal and likewise beginningless."

^A

Saracen: And who is equal to God and beginningless, who is also ruled by Him? Theodore: Those who are ruled are of three kinds: one who is willing will have a ruler; another is ruled by tyranny; and a third is neither willing nor compelled by tyranny. But God does not rule those who are willing, lest, if they should wish to, they might depose Him; and besides, He would not have a beginningless or natural rule, but one that is subject to will, recent, and dishonorable, as has been said. But He does not rule those who are led by tyranny either; for that is unseemly, along with the other absurdities. It remains, therefore, to say that God rules one who is neither willing nor compelled by tyranny, but one who is ruled by a natural rule.

Saracen: And who is it who is naturally ruled by God? ^B Theodore: Rulers are of three kinds: one is a ruler by the suffrage of those he rules; another by tyranny; another by nature. Now, God is not a ruler by the suffrage of those He rules, because of the aforementioned incongruities that would be spoken of God; nor yet by tyranny, for tyranny is far removed from God. There remains, therefore, the third mode, according to which God is called a ruler, superior to all suffrage and free from all tyranny, which is the natural mode.

Saracen: And who is it who naturally has God as ruler? Theodore: His Son, through whom God, as ruler and Father, is known as without beginning. For every natural thing precedes the will of choice. ^C

Saracen: What do you mean by that, for instance? Theodore: For before we will to breathe, we breathe; and before we will to hear, we hear; and before we will to see, we see. Behold, therefore, O you denier of the divinity of the Word of God, it is demonstrated that there is for God a Son, consubstantial and beginningless and co-eternal with Him, sitting with the Begetter in the excellencies of divinity, served and worshipped with Him by all creation, invisible and visible, as Creator and Lord, having heaven as His throne and the earth as His footstool; furthermore, to speak prophetically, ^D who measures the heaven with a span, and the earth with his fist, before whom all nations are as the weight of a balance, and as a drop from a bucket.

XXVI. Demonstration by Theodore the Monk, that the Father always begets, and the Son is always begotten.

Heretic: How does it seem to you? Everything that comes to an end, did it begin, or not?

Orthod. Why should it not?

^A Heretic: So the Father begat, and the Son was begotten? Orthod. Certainly indeed. Heretic: If then the one begat, and the other was begotten, these things have passed away—namely, the Father's begetting and the Son's being begotten—and things that are past have received an end. But that which is of such a kind has begun, as is conceded; therefore the Father began to beget, and the Son to be begotten. It follows that He also began to be Father, and likewise to be Son. Or do these things not seem to you to be concluded in this way? Orthod. They do not seem so to me. Heretic: Why not? Orthod. Because if "He begat" and "He was begotten" were spoken of God in relation to time, what is said would be a difficulty. But since the pious mind posits these things eternally, they are no longer to be taken as passed away, but as things that are always; for just as God was, not as one having a past essence—for He is always—so He begat, and the Son was begotten. Heretic: The generation is therefore imperfect, since the former is always begetting and the latter is being begotten. Is it not so? Orthod. By no means. For the Father is always, and similarly the Son; therefore the essence of the Father and of the Son is imperfect according to you, because it does not receive an end. But rather, this is most perfect, which has the end from itself ^B—that is, from itself—and is always in the end, and the end does not accrue from without. Furthermore, because the Son's being begotten signifies nothing other than having essence from the Father; but He always has essence from the Father: therefore He is always begotten. For it was fitting that He who is properly the Son should always have His essence from the Father, and not as we, who have only our beginning. For "to be begotten" is equivocal; for with us it is a way to having essence, but with the Son of God, it signifies the very essence itself, and not a way to essence; they differ only in manner. For "to be," accepted in itself, is essence; but as it is understood as being from the Father, it is called "to be begotten." Since, therefore, two meanings of "to be begotten" have been demonstrated, in the first ^D it is absurd to be always begotten, but in the second, by no means; for in that which is "to be begotten," which is twofold, as to the first it has its end in the essence itself, which if it does not receive an end, is imperfect; but in the case of the Son of God, it lacks nothing...

NOTE. A dissertation by the same, demonstrating, etc. It is referred to Abucara because in the immediately preceding dialogue this was the inscription: Theo-dori philosophi, episcopi Carum, Abucara. Whether Theodore Abucara and that presbyter of the Laura, or monastery, of Raithu, are one and the same, I do not know. It was certainly the custom to bring forth bishops from the monasteries. A booklet of Theodore, presbyter of Raithu, or as others call it, of Raithu itself, exists in volume I of the Bibliotheca SS. PP., translated by Godfrey Tilmann, against the heresies by which, already long ago, the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ was attacked. Turrianus rendered the same into Latin; indeed, even the Calvinist Beza not only translated it, but published it in Greek-Latin. Let the learned inquire whether one or two "Theodores" lie hidden under these names.

^A which truly, if it does not receive its own end, is imperfect. But in the Son of God it is not so, for this, to be generated as the Son, does not have the essence itself as an end, but is an end and is perfect. Since, therefore, it has been demonstrated that the Son is always generated—that is, that he always has his essence from the Father—and the Father is surely always generating—that is, is always the source of the Son—let these points be defined thus.

^B Scholium of the same. The problem which seems full of doubt is therefore solved—I mean the question whether the Father begat the Son as existing or as not existing. For since this signifies nothing other than whether the Father was the source of the Son as existing or as not existing, the response which would be given to this question must be accommodated to the other question equivalent to it. Since, therefore, the Father is always the source of the Son, it becomes manifest that the Father is always the source of the existing Son. Therefore, it is the source of the existing Son. This is the same as that: he begat the existing; therefore, he begat the existing. Nor is this absurd. For that word, "begat," does not signify in God the producing of something from non-existence into existence—for thus it would be absurd to say the Father begat the existing Son. But in the way we affirm it, it lacks any absurdity.

XXVII.

Disputation of Theodore Hagiopolites on the Name of God (57)

^C The name "God" is spoken from a certain operation; nevertheless, it does not signify the operation, but the nature performing the operation. For if the name "God" signifies an operation, and every name is the name of that which it signifies, then the name "God" is the name of an operation. Therefore, that which is named "God" is the operation of God. Therefore the operation of God is God, and God is His own operation. Therefore God and the operation of God are the same thing, which is impossible.

If, however, anyone should contentiously say that this can be posited and conceded, let him know that many absurdities follow from it. First, to be said of the same. For those things which are the same are said of the same; but the operation of God is called "God's operation," but God is not spoken of as being the "God of God." Furthermore, the operation of an operator is an operation; ^D but God is not the God of an operator. Again, if God and the operation of God are the very same thing, both would be predicated of the same subjects; but God is predicated of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, but the operation is not so. For the Father is God; similarly also the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But the Father is not an operation, nor is the Son,

nor the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the Father is not an operation, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, but rather they are [the ones who are] operating. But the greatest point is to say that God is not prior to his operation, but contemporaneous [with it]; for it is necessary to confess that the same things exist together. If, therefore, God is eternal, his operation is also ^A eternal. 58 Whence it follows that the effect of the operation is eternal, and the effect of the operation is the world; therefore, the world is eternal, as was posited. But to say this is not only impermissible, but impious.

In addition to these points, all things which are said properly and chiefly of individual subjects are either nature or a part of nature; God, however, is said properly and chiefly of the three persons: therefore, God is either nature or a part of nature. But since "part" cannot be predicated of God, it remains that he is nature. God, therefore, is nature, and the name "God" signifies nature. For just as the name "man" is derived from a certain operation, it does not, however, signify the operation, but the nature and the substance; similarly also [the names] "soul" and "angel," and almost all names of substances, are spoken from an operation or an affection or a passion; yet they do not signify the operation or the affection or the passion, but the substance and the nature: so should you understand the name of God. ^B And you must not be led astray by following etymologies and the rules of grammarians, while neglecting the rule of truth, which many profess to use, but few actually do use. But enough of these matters.

Disputation of the same [author] concerning God and Deity.

^C XXVIII.

Haretic. Does God and Deity seem to you to be the same, or something else? Orthodox. The same. Haret. Are not those things which are the same predicated of the same thing? Orthod. It is not necessary. Haret. If they are the same, how are they not predicated of the same thing? But if they are not predicated [of it], how are the things which are the same not diverse? Which is impossible. Orthod. It is not enough for things to be the same for them to be predicated of the same thing, ^D but it is necessary that they concur in this: that they are spoken of and understood in the same way. Since, therefore, God and Deity are, according to our understanding, the same, the mode of signifying, however, is distinct—for God and Deity are not understood in the same way; for when we understand and speak of God, we understand and speak of the nature as if in a hypostasis. But when we speak of Deity, [we understand] the nature itself, as being naked and contemplated without a hypostasis; for

(since we do not say: the Father is Deity, but God) we speak of Him as considered by Himself and alone without persons. ^B

It must be noted, however, that the Deity is not without the three hypostases. But when considered by itself and alone, it is considered without the persons. For contemplation does not prevent existence. Since the Deity, when thought of by itself, is understood as a nature without properties, it is clear that it is considered without hypostases; for if it were considered by itself with hypostases, it would clearly be considered with properties, which is not what was posited. Furthermore, that which cannot be understood without another is necessarily a relative, and not a substance. But the Deity is not a relative; it is a super-substantial substance. Therefore, it can be considered by itself alone, and not with another. Again, just as a man is not without place, but when he is considered by himself and defined, he is considered and defined without place. Also, the soul of a living man is not without a body, but when considered by itself, it is considered without this. Thus, too, the Deity is not without hypostases, but when considered by itself, it is considered without them. ^C

Heretic: Is sustenance something else, and hypostasis something else? Orthodox: They are different, not as one thing being other than another thing, but as hypostasis signifying one thing and substance signifying another; just as a grain of wheat is called both seed and fruit, not as one distinct thing and another distinct thing. Yet "seed" signifies one thing, and "fruit" another, for the seed is the seed of future agriculture, whereas the fruit is the fruit of past agriculture. Heretic: What does substance signify? And what is hypostasis? Orthodox: Substance signifies the common, and whatever is proper to that substance is common to the hypostases that are under the substance. But the hypostasis has a property which is not common to the hypostases of that same substance, and it admits of number. Heretic: Does substance not have a property? ^D Orthodox: It neither partakes of a property—since there is nothing common among the hypostases of the substance—nor does a single substance admit of a plural number. For that which admits of a plural number necessarily has a property, and that which has a property admits of number; for this property is what introduces number. Heretic: I do not understand what you are saying. Speak more clearly. Orthodox: Do you say the Father’s substance is immortal...

and the rest [of the attributes], and do you also call the Father the substance itself? Heretic: It is so. Orthodox: But do you call the Son the Father? Heretic: Not at all. ^A Orthodox: Therefore, the [name] Father is not a property of the substance, but of the hypostasis itself. Heretic: How? Orthodox: Because the properties of the substance are in like manner common to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; but the [name] Father is not common. If, therefore, the property of the substance is one thing, and the property of the hypostasis is another, substance and hypostasis do not signify the same thing. Heretic: Is not the unbegotten the property of the Father, the begotten that of the Son, and the proceeding that of the Holy Spirit? Why then do we not say three substances? Orthodox: Because it is necessary to assign the property to number, and property is diversity. But diversity of substance makes a different substance. Now, that which is different in substance is not similarly immortal, similarly incorruptible, and holy, and immutable. But the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are similarly immortal and the rest. Therefore, there is one substance of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. But when we say three hypostases, we say—which is the truth—that the difference of properties is in the hypostasis. ^B Heretic: If there is one Deity, there is one hypostasis. Orthodox: If you knew the gift of God, you would recognize that Deity signifies a common existence of the hypostases. But hypostasis signifies the "what it is," [the] "being this particular thing," just as humanity signifies a common existence, but hypostasis [signifies] the "being this particular thing." For not every hypostasis is Deity, nor is every hypostasis humanity. But if not every hypostasis is humanity, nor [does it follow that] every hypostasis is Deity; therefore, hypostasis, Deity, and humanity do not signify the same thing. Heretic: Does humanity not exist by itself? ^C Orthodox: Most certainly, that is, when considered in the individuals. Heretic: Therefore it is a hypostasis. Orthodox: I said: "when considered in the individuals." Heretic: What is an individual, and what is humanity? Orthodox: An individual is each one of our hypostases. Humanity, however, is the community of the substance. ^D Heretic: And what is the difference between community and hypostasis?

^A Orthodox: That your hypostasis is not that of all men, but humanity is common to all men. Heretic: Is the hypostasis of the Father not Deity? Orthodox: Yes. But Deity signifies 'to be,' whereas hypostasis signifies 'this particular being.' Heretic: And is the hypostasis of the Son not Deity? Orthodox: It is. Heretic: Then there are two Deities. Orthodox: By no means; for it is not a different and another Deity. Heretic: It is one hypostasis and another. Orthodox: But I said that Deity and hypostasis do not signify the same thing. For Deity signifies 'to be,' while hypostasis signifies 'this particular being.' For just as Peter and Paul are not two humanities, so there are not two Deities of Father and Son. Heretic: Is, then, the hypostasis of the Father not Deity? ^B Orthodox: The hypostasis of the Father is Deity, and the hypostasis of the Son is also Deity. Yet it does not follow that because there are two hypostases, there are therefore two Deities. Heretic: How is that not so? Orthodox: Because the hypostasis of the Father is immortality, and the hypostasis of the Son is immortality; yet there are not two immortalities. Heretic: How? Orthodox: Because there is no difference in immortality; for immortality does not differ from immortality, provided it is immortality. Heretic: If in truth there is one hypostasis and another, why is there not also one immortality and another? ^C Orthodox: For while we have one hypostasis and another, we do not have one humanity and another. The hypostasis of Peter is human nature, and the hypostasis of Paul is human nature; yet they are not different human natures. And we have one hypostasis and another, but not one immortality and another, which we received through the one baptism. For if there were one immortality and another, there would be one baptism and another, and one faith and another, and there would no longer be one Lord, one faith, one baptism? Heretic: But if our hypostasis is something other than immortality and baptism, then the hypostasis of God is something other than immortality. Orthodox: By no means; rather, the hypostasis itself is immortality, and not only immortality, but incorruptibility and justice. And God is not these by way of composition, ^D but is spoken of as such according to different notions. Immortality, because it is endless; incorruptibility, because it cannot be dissolved; justice, because of equality; sanctification, because it preserves from sin;

^A redemption, because it saves our life from corruption; dominion, because it rules over all; power, because nothing resists it. And all these things are likewise contemplated in the hypostasis of the Son, as they are in the Father, and not by participation. And for this reason, we speak of two hypostases, of the Father and of the Son, but one Deity, and authority, and power.

Heretic. How is it said of the Holy Spirit: "He shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak," if he is of the same nature? Orthodox. This is what it declares, that he is not a liar and that he is of the same nature. Heretic. How? Orthodox. Because every created being, if it is a participant in reason, speaks of itself when it wills, because it has its own volition, to which it imposes silence ^B so as to speak the will of God. But the Holy Spirit is not so, but, as the Spirit of God, he has the will of God. And this is what it says: "He shall not speak of himself." For even the Son said of himself: "I do nothing of myself, but as the Father has taught me, I speak these things."

Ex codice Bavarico.

Heretic. Are not all things which are said concerning God, said of him either essentially or notionally? Orthodox. Certainly. Heretic. Are not all things which are essentially predicated of anyone present in all those who participate in the same essence? Orthodox. Certainly. Heretic. But are not those things which are notionally, and as it were adventitiously, predicated with respect to the essence, separable either by thought or in reality? Orthodox. Most certainly. Heretic. How then is the name "Father" said of ^C the Father? If essentially, then it is also said of the Son. But if it is as something supervening or superadded to the essence, then the Father could be conceived as not being. Again, if those things which are predicated as adventitious to the essences are posterior to the essences, then for the Father to be a Father would be natural. From which it follows that the Son and the Holy Spirit are equally the Father.

Disputation of the same Theodore with a Nestorian. XXIX.

Orthodox. Behold, the contest of the disputation is at hand. From where, then, should our disputation begin? From that art which pertains to the acquisition of knowledge? Or rather, first from that which is most necessary from among other questions? But what is this? To investigate accurately those things which are doubted concerning the faith. Heretic. One must certainly begin from the dogmas of the faith. Orthodox. The Son of God, born of a woman, ^D what did he receive from her? Nature, or hypostasis?

Heretic. Nature. Orthodox. Then, with properties, or without them? ^A Heretic. He received nature alone, without properties. Orthodox. It remains, therefore, that it was without color, and form, and the mixture of elements, and without size. Wherefore it was neither recognized, nor seen, nor held, nor did it grow from a boy into a man. What then? Do you confess in Christ the destruction of color, and form, and the rest that have been set forth? Heretic. God forbid. Orthodox. Do you confess, then, the existence of these things? Heretic. I confess it. Orthodox. What then? Are these not properties? Heretic. Why not? Orthodox. Christ therefore had our nature with properties. Now nature with properties is hypostasis; or does this not seem so to you? Heretic. It certainly does. Orthodox. It was hypostasis, therefore, that he assumed, and not nature alone, as you previously suggested. Heretic. It is so. Orthodox. But this is also impossible. Heretic. And from where can you prove this? Orthodox. For ^B either the hypostases were united, or they remained separated. If indeed they remained separated, there will be two, Christ, and not one. If, therefore, you worship Christ as being two, and you also worship the Father and his Spirit, you will run the risk of being seen as a worshipper of a quaternity. But if the hypostases were united into one composite hypostasis, the composite hypostasis will be neither purely divine, nor human, but intermediate between them. If, however, Christ is a composite hypostasis, then according to you, Christ is neither a divine hypostasis nor a human one, but intermediate between God and man. But impiety must be avoided. How then do you solve this argument for us? Heretic. I am not at all capable of solving it. Therefore, as a favor to us, teach me: what did Christ assume, nature or hypostasis? Orthodox. Nature. Heretic. With properties, or without them? Orthodox. With properties. Heretic. He assumed hypostasis, therefore? Orthodox. Not at all. Heretic. And how is this clear? Orthodox. I will tell you. There is indeed something that is ^C called hypostasis, and there is something that is called hypostatic—that is, *of* the hypostasis—and it is common to both to be composed of nature and properties. They differ, however, in that the hypostasis is not a part of anything, and so it is a hypostasis; but the body of Peter is a part, ^D

and therefore it is hypostatic, and not a hypostasis, even though it is a nature with properties. But it is not sufficient for a nature to be composed with properties in order to generate a hypostasis; it must also happen that it is not a part. Therefore, since the assumed animate body is a part of Christ, it is for this reason not a hypostasis, but hypostatic. And just as the body of Peter is not numbered with Peter so that they are two, for one is gathered into the other, so too the assumed animate body is not numbered with the incarnate Son of God, so that they are two. And these things seem to me to be sufficient for the solution of the question.

XXX. Another dissertation of the same Abucara with a Jacobite.

^AHeretic. What does Christ seem to you to be, God or man? Orthodox. Both separately, and each together. Heretic. How? Orthodox. For He is God separately, and likewise man; and at the same time God and man. Heretic. Then, is this by nature, or in another way—by grace, for instance, or by some exercise, or progress? Orthodox. By nature. Heretic. Therefore, God and man are of one nature. ^BOrthodox. You are mistaken. For it is not by the same nature, but by another one that he is man; and by another, God. Heretic. Therefore, since God is one thing and man is another by nature, and these are Christ, then is Christ other than Himself? Orthodox. By no means; but He is other by nature. For this is what you must conclude from the things that have been granted. Heretic. What you say you have spoken obscurely; but explain it. Orthodox. Christ is both God and man; but God and man are different by nature; therefore Christ is different by nature. ^C You have therefore deceived yourself; for if He is different by nature, it does not immediately follow that Christ is different from Himself. Christ is not a nature, but He possesses a nature. Heretic. Let these things be so. What then does it seem to you? Is not Christ man, and is not man something other than God? Orthodox. He certainly is. Heretic. Therefore, Christ is something other than God. Orthodox. Apply the distinction: according to His human nature, He is other than God; according to His divine nature, He is not other.

VARIE LECTIONES. Turrianus varies here.

^B

XXXI.

Abucara. Origenist.

Origenist. What kind of justice is this, that one who has sinned for ten or fifty years should suffer punishment for myriads, or rather for endless ages?

Abucara. And what does justice seem to you to be?

Orig. That the punishment should be inflicted according to the proportion of the sin; that is, if someone has sinned for the space of fifty years, he should be punished for as many years.

Abuc. By how many methods do we learn what justice is? And from where did you learn this?

Orig. You tell me, by how many?

Abuc. We know all justice either from the law of God, or from the laws which men have enacted, or from the nature of things. ^C But none of these species of justice imposes a temporal punishment. For example, someone fornicates, or steals, or kills for the space of one hour. Yet the law of God and the laws of men, in condemning a murderer to death and inflicting the extreme penalty upon some evildoer, do not punish him for the space of one hour; but if they punish him with death, they subject him to an eternal human penalty, or if they scourge him, they bring upon him long-lasting pain from the ^D wounds they inflict. And you yourself, if you caught some adulterer with your wife or daughter, would you consider that he should be punished for only one hour, or rather that he should be delivered to death? Which is an eternal punishment of men. But the natures of things are likewise the same. For when it is forbidden for us, for example, to drink cold water or to partake of some harmful kind of food, yet we strive after what is forbidden, we certainly pay for it with long-lasting punishments. For it often happens that from the drinking of cold water, or from contact with fire, or from the use of vinegar, we incur a continuous disease. And yet nature is most just. But you, from where do you have, or where did you find, this justice? Tell me.

XXXII.

D. Theodori Abucarae, Bishop of Carum, against the Theopaschite Saracens.

While at a meeting, a certain Saracen, one of their notables, asked the bishop: "Come now," he said, "O bishop, did that God of yours, hanging on the cross, breathe out his soul?" "Assuredly," the bishop replied. But the Saracen, bursting into laughter and holding those Saracens and Christians who were present in mockery, stretched out his ^A hand and exclaimed: "The God of the Christians has been made without a hypostasis." Abuc. But whence do you conclude that the God of the Christians was without a hypostasis? Sarac. By my own example. Abuc. In what way? Sarac. I did not once exist, until two parts of me coalesced in my mother's womb—the body, I say, and the soul; from which a third something was born, which is I, who, from the concurrence and composition of either part, emerged as a single composite hypostasis. When, therefore, in the very article of death they were separated, will the nullity of my hypostasis not then be necessary? Abuc. Do you truly consider the example of your own composition to be the same as the composition of Christ? Sarac. Why should I not so consider it? Abuc. Before those ^B two parts of yours concurred, as you yourself confessed, you did not exist; but after you were born, you could not preserve the integral properties of either part, since you lost the immortality of the soul and the brutality of the body; and you emerged as a third something, as you said: neither soul nor body, but human. But the God of the Christians—just as you were cavilling in your objection—was even before the Holy Spirit; nay rather, before all ages, and by that very fact, that he proceeded composite from the Virgin, he lost nothing at all of the properties of his parts. For he remained perfect God, just as the Father is perfect; but he was made human, just as his mother was; since these are the parts of Christ: divinity and humanity. But, at the very time of the passion, when the soul was separated from the body, he remained inseparable from either part, bound by an unsevered conjunction, and existing as the one hypostasis of his own divinity and humanity. Sarac. Where then was the soul? Abuc. The body, indeed, was in the sepulchre; but the soul was in the underworld. Having said these things, the Saracen said with a great outcry: "But how," he asked, "was the Word joined to both, situated at such a great interval, when he remained unsevered from neither?" Theodorus, however, laughing, said: "It remains, from this opinion of yours, that your God cannot be found in the mosques of Makens and Magadens." Sarac. But were those two parts, however separated, participants in divinity? Abuc. No less than at the time when they were being joined. Sarac. But how did the body, being a participant of divinity, not move while lying inanimate in the sepulchre? Abuc. Because the Word was then preserving in it the incorruption befitting that sacred corpse. Then the Saracen, as if entangled in some net, and speechless, grew silent out of astonishment.

XXXIII. Another Dialogue of the Same against a Nestorian.

Abuc. Tell me, does this name, Christ, indicate either nature, the divinity or the humanity? Nestor. Not one or the other, but both hypostases, or rather, God and man together. Abuc. You judge correctly. Now explain this to me. Was Christ born of the Virgin? Nestor. Most certainly. Abuc. Therefore God the Word and man were born of the Virgin. For Christ, as you have confessed, is God and man. I ask this of you in addition: has Christ died? Nestor. Most certainly. Abuc. Therefore God and man have died. For Christ, as you intend, is God and man. For what cause, then, is he called Christ?

^A A person who is anointed, is Christ, and the man who is anointed is he; and finally, God the Word is one thing, and the man is another, as you wish. It follows that the man is Christ only in part. Why, then, do you impose upon yourselves and others that you declare Christ to be God and man?

XXXIV. On Time, by the same Abucara.

(Translated by Jacob Gretser)

^B Interrogation: Is time in time, or not? Response: One may answer this in two ways: either dialectically, and probably, and realistically; or demonstratively, and necessarily, and truly—though not improbably. Interrogation: How, then, do you wish to conduct the inquiry? Dialectically or demonstratively? Response: Dialectically. Interrogation: Time is neither in time, nor is it not in time. For if it were not in time, it would be separated from itself, which cannot happen. But if it were in time, it would be in itself; yet that which is in something is contained by it. And yet, that which contains and that which is contained are distinct things. Therefore, time is distinct from itself, which is impossible. If, therefore, as has been shown, it is impossible for time to be separated from itself, it is even more impossible for it to be something other than itself. These things followed from the hypothesis—that is, the supposition—regarding time, namely, that [it is] not in time; it is clear that it is impossible for time to be in time, or not in time. For every hypothesis ^C that leads to an impossibility is itself an impossibility, and these things have been said dialectically and probably.

If, however, you also wish me to speak demonstratively, I shall not hesitate. Time is not in time; it is possible to confirm this from similar cases. For just as place is not in place—since everything that is in place is a body, but place is not a body—and the soul is not in a soul, but in a body, and motion is not in motion, but in something moved, and colors are not in colors, but in colored bodies: so also time is not in time, but in temporal things. ^D These are things that are moved. For time is the number of motion. Thus, according to the first reasoning, time is in motion; and since motion is in that which is moved, time will also be in that which is moved by means of the motion, so that it is truthfully possible to say that time is not in time, but in motion or in something moved—firstly, indeed, in motion; secondly, however, in that which is moved, as has been said.

XXXV. Another dissertation, on the author of good and evil, held with a Saracen.

^A *Christian.* *Barbarian.*

*Barbarian.* Whom do you establish as the author of good and evil?

*Christian.* God is the author of all good things; of evil, however, he is by no means the author.

*Barb.* And whom do you declare to be the author of evil?

*Christ.* I say that this arises from our own sloth and from the craftiness of the devil.

*Barb.* On what account?

*Christ.* Because of free will.

*Barb.* What then? You have free will, and whatever you wish, you can do and perform?

*Christ.* Only in two things; in other matters I was not created by God with free will.

*Barb.* What are these?

*Christ.* If I do good, I do not fear the law; but I am honored and I obtain mercy ^B from God. Similarly, the devil was also created by God with free will; but he sinned, and for that reason was cast out from his own station.

But perhaps you will ask me: What are good things, and what are evil? Behold, the sun and the moon and the stars are good things. Create one of these. I tell you, therefore, that I, in the manner of men, perform good and evil. Good, such as the glorification of divinity and prayer. Evil, such as fornication and theft.

Since, therefore, as you affirm, good and evil have God as their author, God will be, by your reasoning, unjust—which it is a sin to even say. For since God commanded, as you say, the fornicator to fornicate, the thief to steal, and the murderer to commit murder, they will be worthy of honor, as those who perform the will of God. Furthermore, your legislators ^C will be liars, and your books will be falsely titled. For they command the fornicator and the thief to be destroyed, even though they were obeying the divine will, and they order the murderer to be put to death, whom they ought to have honored.

But the Saracen, wishing to show that God is the author of good and evil, and that God is a helper to both the fornicator and the adulterer, inquired: "Who forms the bodies of infants in the maternal womb?"

*Christ.* I do not find that, after the completion of the first week, God forms or creates anything. And you will by no means demonstrate that anything has been created after this, except for the rainbow, that is, the bow placed in the clouds in the time of Noah. For when He had created man in the first week, He said: "Increase and multiply, ^D and fill the earth" (Gen. I, 28); and because man is ensouled, having ensouled seed; since

it produces within his own wife. Thus man begets, just as divine Scripture also says: "Adam begat Seth, and Seth begat Enos, and Enos begat Cainan." It did not say: "God fashioned Seth, or Enos, or anyone else." ^A Adam, therefore, was fashioned by God alone; but others are begotten and do beget. So too, the earth germinates at the command of God; for He says, "Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass," which, falling again upon the earth or being sown by another, germinates, not because it is being fashioned by someone, but because it obeys the first command of God. For behold, as I said before, being free both in good and in evil, wherever I sow, whether into my own wife or into another woman, using my own authority, it germinates and comes to be by obeying the first command of God, because it contains within itself a seminal power; not that God fashions and works every day, since He made all things on the first day.

Barb. And how does God say to Jeremiah: "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee"?

Christ. God fashioned the seminal, animate power for every man from the womb and from the first origin, from Adam and successively, and every man, having a son beforehand in his womb, begets him, and the son likewise begets another. ^B But the passage "Before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee" has this meaning: because, as the Gospel testifies, "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, to them that believe in his name, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God"—that is, through holy baptism.

Barb. And was there baptism before Christ? For Jeremiah lived before Christ.

Christ. Yes, there was baptism through the sea and the cloud; for "All," he says, "were baptized unto Moses." But if you say, "And how are those before Moses baptized?" I tell you that my Christ says: "Before Abraham was made, I am." ^C And again elsewhere: "For their sake I sanctify myself." ^D

^A Barb. Do you call him who does the will of God good or evil? And if you say good, then accept also the Jews, as having done the will of your God Christ, as you say. Christ. You indeed call it will; I however call it patience and long-suffering. And how? Listen. When God says: "You shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill," [*] did he command us to steal, to commit fornication, to commit adultery, and to commit homicide? Barb. By no means; for if he had willed it, he would not have forbidden it. Christ. You rightly conclude that God does not will that we steal and commit fornication. If, therefore, I should now go away and ensnare myself in theft and fornication; will you call that deed of mine the will of God? Or patience and long-suffering? Barb. Patience and long-suffering. Christ. Thus, when God could have exacted punishment from them, he mercifully forgave. For if at last I do not perform perfect repentance, he will render the due reward. Barb. Whom do you say Christ is? Christ. The Word of God, the wisdom of God, the Son of God, the arm of God, power, and countless other things. But you, what do you say Christ is? Barb. I say that Christ is the Spirit and Word of God. Christ. And these, the Spirit and the Word, are they uncreated or created? Barb. Created. Christ. And who created the Word of God and the Spirit? For before God created them, how was God himself? Was he without Word and Spirit? And who would dare to posit God as wordless or without the Holy Spirit? To this the barbarian was silent.

XXXVI. Another short dissertation.

Are the oracles of God created or uncreated? The adversary proposes this, wishing to show that the Word of God is created, which is impious to say. For if you say they are created, he will immediately say to you: Created things are not called gods. But if you say they are uncreated, he will immediately answer you: Behold, all these oracles of God are created, but they are not gods; and lo, you confess that Christ, being the Word of God, is not God. Therefore, say neither that they are created nor uncreated, but say: I confess one single Word of God, subsisting in hypostasis, being uncreated. But I do not call the whole sacred Scripture "oracles," but "words." Barb. And how does the Prophet say: "The oracles of the Lord are pure words"?

^A

Christ. The Prophet spoke tropologically, and not literally. Barb. And what is tropological, and what is literal speech? Christ. Literal speech is a firm demonstration of a thing; tropology, however, is a weak demonstration. Barb. It is not permitted to say that the Prophet has brought forward a weak demonstration. Christ. It is a custom among the prophets to attribute personhood even to inanimate things; thus you see eyes and sight assigned to them: "The sea saw, and fled." [Ps. CXIV, 3] The sea, in fact, has no eyes, for it is not animate. And again: "What is it to you, O sea, that you fled?" [Ps. CXIV, 5] and what follows. And: "My sword shall eat flesh." [Deut. XXXII, 42] But to eat is the act of a mouth, of one eating and drinking. Yet the sword cuts, but it does not eat. Nay, they even introduce rivers clapping their hands, and hills leaping, and mountains bounding. Thus, by tropology, he also called "words" those things which are not words, but sayings. ^B

XXXVII. Another Question.

Barb. She whom you call the Theotokos, is she dead, or does she live? Christ. She is not dead, and I say this, relying on the proof of Scripture. For as, to give an example, the first man fell asleep and his rib was removed, so she also surrendered her most holy soul to God, as if in sleep. Barb. Behold, I have been wounded in a part of my flesh, and the wounded flesh created a welt, and within the welt a worm appeared. Who formed it? Christ. We say that after the first week of the creation of the world, we in no way find that God formed anything; but since He had created all things in those six days, He willed that from then on other things should be born from others by His will alone; for after the transgression, the earth was condemned to bring forth thorns and thistles. Then, therefore, our flesh also, undergoing the sentence of condemnation, brings forth lice and worms. ^C

XXXVIII. Another Question.

Saracen. Who is greater among you: he who sanctifies, or ^D

he who is sanctified? Christ. This he asked concerning the Baptist and Christ. Christ. When you go into the bath with your servant, wishing to be washed by him, whom do you consider greater: that miserable little servant, and slave bought for money, or yourself, who are being cleansed by him? The Saracen gave no answer to this.

XXXIX. Abucara, to one who asked him.

Answer. In the New Testament, nothing of those things which enter into the mouth defiles a man. But some abstain from eating certain things, not following the precepts of the law; but obeying their own conscience, in that it does not please them to eat this or that. Some also, out of zeal and love for continence, of their own volition, refrain entirely both from clean and unclean things; although they are not ignorant that every creature of God is good; and that nothing of those things is to be rejected, which is taken with thanksgiving. Nevertheless, we deem that thanksgiving which is situated in the zeal of continence to be more excellent than that which consists in the taking of foods. For these reasons, therefore, nothing is as if by parts common to the law and to grace; but all things belong to grace alone, whether one abstains, ^C or whether he takes these or those kinds of foods, as has been said.

Otherwise. Arethas. Faith does not consist in food; but ^D [in...]

^A in a firm resolve of the faith. The use of food is permitted to the custom of those eating, even before they become Christians. Furthermore, to the Jews, the distinction of foods was given not by chance, but as an enigma, ^B so as to intimate how they ought to institute and compose their own life; so that from that very manner of diet they might receive benefit. For example (for it is pleasing to bring forth one or another example), the law restrains the Jews from the eating of hares and swine, so as to demonstrate that there should be in them no trace of timidity or fear in those matters wherein piety and equity command them to act courageously; nor that they should pursue an impure life and a detestable filth of squalor. In the same way, regarding other animals whose consumption the law prohibited, it is necessary to consider the natural properties with which they are endowed, and to accommodate them to the appetites of the soul.

From the same Theodore Abucara, Bishop of Caria, concerning Adam. Of Photius.

[Jacob Gretsor, translator.]

XI.

It is necessary to know, and to think, and to say, that the body of Adam was by nature mortal and passible; but by divine grace it remained immortal and impassible, until his transgression stripped it of that natural gift; and this all the holy Fathers hand down.

XLI.

What is death; and how is death delivered unto death? For the Church celebrates even this: ^C "And behold, we are dying."

[Jacob Gretsor, translator.]

Death is neither a substance, nor does it subsist by itself; but it is a certain passion coming upon a substance; and it is said to exist as long as death arrives. Since, however, death is predicated of many things, one must note that for an angel, death is nothing other than the fall from that heavenly and light-filled glory of beatitude, into which that first angel collapsed, having become Satan. But for the devil, death is the lot and inheritance of the eternal fire in the last things. For man, death is the disjunction of the soul from the body. The death of the soul is the alienation from God. Death to death ^D is the first-fruits of our resurrection, who is Christ. For up until Christ, death used to serve the corruption of men, and life seemed to be that to it, because no hope of resurrection was at hand. But from the time that Christ died and rose again, this ministry fell into the contrary, for it no longer serves corruption devoid of hope, but serves the hoped-for resurrection; and this is death to it. For that which formerly killed, that same thing now, by the hope of the resurrection,

^A is destroyed; and it falls before a stronger power. Now the resurrection is stronger than death. Therefore, death is put to death by the resurrection of Christ. And to Christians 8 who die in the hope of the resurrection, death is thus served in a partial manner. But when all shall rise, following the First-fruits, then even death itself, according to the Apostle, having no longer anyone to serve, shall be utterly brought to nothing.

A Brief Doctrine Concerning the Divine Names, as well those Common to the Most Holy Trinity as those Proper to Each Person.

^B There are certain names common to the most holy Trinity and accustomed to be spoken of the divine essence or nature; such as God, Lord, good, just, wise, powerful, King, Master, Creator, provider, Savior, holy, and others of this kind, which are predicated commonly of the divine nature; and they are not proper to one person alone.

There are also names that are proper or hypostatic; such as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Among the common names, which are predicated of the nature, this one, namely "God," is attributed to the Father, and in a certain manner has become peculiar to him; because he is the principle of the Son and of the Spirit, and they are referred to him. Similarly, "Lord" is attributed to the Son, and "Holy Spirit" to the Spirit. Hence the Apostles, and almost the whole of divine Scripture, whenever they pronounce the word "God" ^C absolutely and indefinitely, and for the most part with the article and without any personal property, signify the Father. For example:

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God [g]," that is, of the Father. Again: "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers ," that is, the Father. And the Symbol of faith: "[I believe] in one God," that is, the Father, "and in one Lord," that is, the Son. And the Apostle: "For though there be that are called gods, yet to us there is but one God, the Father [i]." And: "Though there be many lords, to us there is but one Lord, the Son." God, however, is called Father in a peculiar way; since he is the union or explanation and, as it were, the sum of the Trinity, as the Theologian said: "To us, truly, one God the Father, because there is one divinity [i]." Again: "One God will be maintained if we refer things to one principle, ^D and do not compound or commingle them [k]." Again: "The Father is the union, from whom and to whom are referred those who are from him, the Son and the Holy Spirit 1." For the Son and the Spirit are said to be of the Father, not the Father of them. For instance: The Son of

^A God, the Wisdom of God, the Word of God, the Power of God, the arm of God, the right hand of God. Likewise also for the Spirit: the Spirit of God, the finger of God. Therefore they are referred to the Father, and not the Father to them. If, moreover, you should find the name "God" applied to the Son, and "Lord" to the Father and the Spirit, and likewise "Holy" and "Spirit" to the Father; as in the phrase: "Holy God," where it is manifest that the Father is meant, and in the phrase: "God is Spirit," you should know that these names and others of this kind are usually predicated of the nature, yet are sometimes also predicated of the hypostases.

Therefore, he is called Son and God simply due to his nature, and for the most part without the article, unless the discourse or phrasing that preceded is about the Son himself. In that case, ^B the article is referred to the Son as to a person already known, as in the passage: "Of whom is Christ according to the flesh," and: "Who is over all, God blessed for ever." And this also must be understood: that none of these names expresses the divine essence, as is the case with the names of other things. For if we name a stone, or gold, or an ox, or a man, we indicate the substance of each of these. If, however, we speak of God, or Lord, or King, or Father, or Son, or any other name applied to God, we signify an activity or a relationship. For "God" or "Creator" are names of activity; "King," however, or "Lord," or "Father," are names of relationship.

THEODORE ABUCARA

ON UNION AND INCARNATION

^C Concerning union and incarnation: and that the person or subsistence was incarnate, but the divine nature was united to the human nature in the person of the Word of God.

Incarnation is the assumption of humanity, and this assumption of humanity establishes him as a man who has assumed humanity. This matter truly consists in this: that he who has assumed humanity and has become man, besides the fact that he is predicated as man, he who has taken humanity into himself should also bear the name and definition of man, just as any other man: for he who is predicated as man is a term of nature, and nature is predicated of subsistence, but never nature of nature. Therefore, if we allow this, in the same way ^D the subsistence that has become incarnate, or that of the Word, has

^A become man without change, and he is at once perfect God and perfect man, and the name "God" is predicated of him, just as of the Father and the Spirit, and the name "man" likewise, just as of the rest of mankind. And he is the same Son and incarnate. But the divine nature is not for this reason said to be incarnate, since it is not possible for "man"—or therefore the human nature—to be predicated of it, as we have said before, because nature is never predicated of nature in any way whatsoever.

The eternal Son. ^B It has come to pass, then, to speak in a figure, that the subsistence of the eternal Son, much like a mountain torrent receiving two rivers, is said to be receptive of the two rivers, neither river absorbing the other. In this way, the eternal Son receives the name and definition of God, while God in no way receives the name or definition of man, nor does man receive the name or definition of God. But the subsistence of the eternal Son fully and perfectly receives the name and definition of both natures, I say, of the divinity and of the humanity; so that, even if it is said that man has been deified, it is not said that he has been deified as though the name and definition of man had received those of God. For if it were so, he would be consubstantial with the Father and the Spirit, just as the eternal Son, having become incarnate, has become consubstantial with us. And this is not even conceivable, to say that man is consubstantial with the Father and the Spirit; besides, if it were so, man himself would be the subsistence, and the divine nature would be subsistent in him and emptied by him, and it would be man who was moving the divinity. ^C One must also note this, that there is nothing predicated absolutely of the divine nature that is not equally predicated of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; for example, life, and light, and "without beginning," and "immutable," and things akin to these, are predicated of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. If, then, the incarnation were predicated of the divine nature, it would also be predicated of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, just as are the things mentioned before. But this is full of all absurdity and is merely some fantasy of a weak mind and blind heart, never to be uttered—namely, that one should say the Father and the Holy Spirit were incarnate.

But if anyone should say that all things predicated absolutely or primarily of the subsistence are referred secondarily also to the nature; and since the incarnation is predicated of the eternal Son, who is a subsistence from the all-holy Trinity, it should be referred from the subsistence to the nature as a secondary predicate: let such a one know that those things referred secondarily from the subsistence to the nature exist much earlier in the nature in potentiality, then in the subsistence in act.

Just as the division of species which is in potentiality in the genus, is in act in the species, it is reasonably referred secondarily from the species to the genus. For example, the rational is in the animal in potentiality, but in man in act; and the animal is called rational in a secondary sense, because man is rational. And just as the properties which are specifically characteristic of the subsistence of each individual human being are seen ^A in potentiality in the human nature, but essentially exist in act in Socrates and Plato; from there they are referred from the subsistence to the nature, or from Socrates to the human being. For example, we say Socrates is hook-nosed or bald, and in a secondary sense we say likewise that the human being is hook-nosed or bald, because of Socrates; just as we said that [the human being] has inherited from the human being [i.e., the universal human] the hook-nosedness and the baldness.

Therefore, for those things which have attached to the subsistence of the Word of God from the human mass, on account of the hypostatic union, there was absolutely nothing at all, neither in potentiality nor in act, in the uncreated and incorporeal and impassible divine nature. For this reason, the eternal [Word] is said to have been incarnate and crucified and to have died. But the divine nature [is not said so] in any way, even though such things happened to His subsistence.

^B If any man finds fault with himself, as being slow to understand the things said, and claims that the mind of each person cannot accept how the divine nature, being in the subsistence of the Son unchanged and uncontained, does not suffer along with Him who suffers, and that when something occurs in the subsistence, this is not said to have occurred also in the nature, which does not depart from the subsistence of the eternal Son: we, settling the difficulty, shall quickly provide him with a remedy, taking the demonstration from familiar things and those seen before our eyes and hands daily. You know by all means, whoever you are, that every man is composed of an immaterial soul and a material body; Socrates, for example, or Plato; and how the soul of Socrates exists within him, and if it were separated from him, it is impossible for Socrates to remain. Yet it is said that Socrates grows, and becomes ^C from small to great, and is cut or cauterized, while the soul itself undergoes nothing of these things, as is clear and hidden from no one. ^D In this manner, therefore, it is predicated of the eternal Son that He progresses in the flesh and grows, and whatever other such human things there are, with none of these things attaching to the divine nature, just as they do not to the nature of Socrates. Much more, therefore, will those things which are carnally predicated of the eternal Son on account of the assumption [of the flesh] not be predicated of the immaculate nature. Just as when we say that Socrates has been cut, we do not mean the soul of Socrates itself, but that the body has been cut.

^A We know that when we speak of the eternal Son as being pierced by the spear, we do not understand the wounding to have reached His divine nature, which is incorruptible and immune to destruction, but rather His flesh, which was capable of being wounded and cut. And we shall provide you with another solution to this difficulty. Our mind itself, existing as one, perceives through the physical eyes, yet it also possesses a vision of its own, distinct from that which is structured through the eyes, which we call contemplation (theoria). If, therefore, it should come to pass that the visual power of the body is impaired, we do not say that the mind does not see, since its natural, intellectual, and alert power of apprehension remains ^B unimpaired. In this way, also, the eternal Son is said to have suffered in the flesh, while His divine nature remains impassible.

But what need is there here for either word or deed, where this is perceived in body, magnitude, and density? For we all know that the mind sees through the eyes and hears through the ears; and the faculty of sight and hearing resides in the brain, each existing apart from the other, with which the mind itself dwells. Since these are thus connected and coexist in the same subject, it often happens that to the exterior vision, or to the hearing, or finally to the mind itself, some harm occurs; yet the injury of one does not harm the others, as the status of their natural power remains intact. ^C After this, it is not so very astonishing if, while the body of the eternal Son suffered, His nature nevertheless remained devoid of the suffering of dissolution, and persisted unharmed—that nature which is raised high above all things and rules everywhere, and in no way sustains passions; in which, according to the chief of the apostles, there is no alteration nor shadow of a turning. I will offer you another example, by which you may see, as in a mirror, how it is that if either passion or corruption happens to any subsistence, it does not reach the nature, even if it has no other subsistence except its one nature. Suppose, my dear friend, you have fashioned and crafted a statue out of gold or bronze, and then, if you melt it down again, the image of the man, which is nothing, perishes; but the gold or the bronze, which provided the nature for the statue, remains safe and whole. ^D For the rest, beware of pursuing examples too far, and prudently observe that you should not deduce every idea that rises in you from them to divine dogmas, but that they are crude shadowing forths and, as it were, certain guides, for the sake of contemplation alone, for which they are received, but only by analogy. Nay, remove far from pious men, and those who are properly consistent with themselves, whatever seems foreign and discordant. Always discern the similar from the dissimilar, like a most industrious winnower, who separates from the grain whatever bears even the appearance of chaff.

ON THE INCARNATION

The union, I say, of the two natures—that is, of the divinity and of the humanity—is said to have come to pass in the person of the Only-begotten, the eternal Son of God, in such a way that there was neither change, nor mixture, nor confusion. For He was as the co-beginning ^A with the Father and co-eternal Son, having in His own property no other nature predicated of Him save the divine, paternal, uncreated, and uncircumscribed nature. Yet, because of the abundance of His mercy and unspeakable philanthropy, for our salvation, in the last days, He descended from heaven—whence He never departed in His divinity that fills all things—and, being incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the all-immaculate and Ever-Virgin Mary, He possessed in Himself a perfect and lacking-nothing human essence, creaturely and passible, which is predicated of Him just as the divine nature is.

Since, therefore, the two natures have come together in Him, and are predicated of Him simultaneously with all their natural properties, for this reason both are said to be united in Him, in each other, immutably, inconfusibly, and inalterably. For they were united according to one and the same hypostasis of the eternal Son. ^B Whence also the same eternal Son is entitled and counted according to His divine nature with the Father and the Spirit, and is also counted with us according to our human nature; and according to this, the same One, even after His incarnation and the unspeakable, unblended, and unconfused union of His two concurring natures, is one of humanity, not "this" and "that" separately. It is He through whom we have been saved and called back to our ancient blessedness, through His saving sufferings, through His life-giving death and His three-day burial, and His resurrection from the dead, having been made immortal and incorruptible. To Him be glory, honor, and power, with His Father without beginning and with the all-holy Spirit, ^C unto the ages of ages. Amen.

FRAGMENT FROM THE SYRIAC CHRONICLE OF DIONYSIUS OF TEL-MAHRĒ

It pleases us to occupy what might otherwise be a blank page with a brief narrative concerning the imprudent directive of Emperor Phocas, who offered the saving mystery of baptism to be polluted by the sacrilege and treachery of unwilling Jews, contrary to the custom of the Christian Church. Assemani had touched upon this matter in but five words in his *Bibl. Orient.* II, 102: "Emperor Phocas compelled the Jews to be baptized." Nevertheless, the full text of Dionysius, translated into our language, is as follows:

In the year of the Greeks 928 (A.D. 617), Emperor Phocas commanded that all Jews subject to his rule be baptized; and he sent to Jerusalem and into all of Palestine George, the prefect of the province, that all the Jews in that city and in the neighboring regions ^D dwelling there might be driven to baptism. He asked those of their leaders who were standing before him whether they were slaves of the Emperor? Upon their affirming this, he said: "The lord of the earth commands that you accept baptism." As they remained silent, the prefect said, "Why do you not answer?" Then one of the leaders, named Nunus, replied: "Whatever the lord of the earth commands, we will immediately fulfill, with this one exception, which we cannot perform, because the time for receiving holy baptism has not yet arrived." Hearing this, the prefect was greatly enraged, and rising, he struck Nunus a blow, saying: "Since you are slaves, why do you not obey your master?" And he ordered them to be baptized; and so, willing or not, they were all baptized.