VIII. From the same royal codex: Collected by Barlaam.
A From the passage: *“And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.”* He increased in stature, his body being brought to its full maturity according to nature. In wisdom, for the sake of those whom he was shaping unto wisdom. In favor, by which we, being recreated, make progress, certain in faith that those things spoken by him concerning our hope will be fulfilled. With God: for he brought to completion the work of the Father, having assumed flesh and having redeemed us. And with men: because of their migration from idolatry to the knowledge of the divine Trinity. In these ways, then, he increased, and he truly does so. For he did not—according to what the senseless imagine—advance from something worse to something better.
B IX. From the same royal codex. By the same, on the passage: *“Destroy this temple.”* And the temple of the body was destroyed at the time of the Passion, for the three days of the burial, according to his own will; and again he raised it up and was united to it by an ineffable and unspeakable Word—not having suffered mixture in it, nor having cast off the flesh, but preserving in it the unconfused property of two diverse natures according to his essence.
C X. From the same, from the discourse on the passage: *“The Son can do nothing of himself.”* Who, then, was the Adam who was disobedient in the heavens? And who is the first-formed man who was fashioned from a heavenly body, contrary to the first? But the one who is from the earth was fashioned from the beginning; the one from the earth was disobedient; the one from the earth was assumed. Therefore, the one from the earth was also saved, so that in this way the reason for the incarnation might appear both true and necessary.
C From Saint Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, from the discourse on the passage: *“The Son can do nothing of himself.”* After the Resurrection, the Lord shows both things: that the body is not of such a kind, and that this [very body] is what rose again. Recall the history to memory. The disciples were gathered together after the Passion and the Resurrection, and while the doors were shut, the Lord stood in their midst. He had never done this before the Passion. But was it not that Christ could have done this even formerly? For all things are possible to God. Yet he did not do it before the Passion, lest you should think the incarnation consisted in empty appearance and opinion; or lest you should think the flesh of Christ was spiritual, or had descended from the heavens, or was of a different substance than our own. For certain people, imagining all these things and thinking that by these D means they honor the Lord, fail to realize that under the pretext of thanksgiving they are actually blaspheming, and are attributing the charge of falsehood to the Truth. Besides the fact that it is a lie, it is entirely irrational.