A Likewise, those who had departed from Jewish unbelief, and who had condemned those [Jews] as senseless and ungrateful, and had believed in our Lord Jesus Christ, and had understood that He is everywhere witnessed to as God, and is recognized from His power, and from His signs, and divine works, and from the Lordly authority, ought no longer to fall away into [viewing Him as] a common and mere man because of His outward appearance; nor, according to the visible form, to define His invisible nature; nor, because of the body and bodily passions, to suppose Him to be a mere man, and as one of us, subject to suffering. For these were the evils of the Jews; these things took away their faith and proved them to be fighters against God. These things also some now B emulate, suffering from the Gentile and Jewish disease, and neither admitting nor believing at all that God was incarnate, but wishing rather by human reasonings, and contentions, and Greek philosophy, to know and indeed to comprehend the great and incomprehensible things: how the incorporeal is begotten; and how He proceeds, and where He is who is everywhere, and contains all things, and fills all things. And through that "how" and "in what way" they have gone into unbelief, and instead of generation they have invented a fabrication, and instead of a procession they have constructed a creation and a passing.
2. Again concerning the incarnation they seek: how God is incarnate, by what reasoning He assumes a body, in what manner He who cannot be contained coalesces with a small body; how the uncreated is joined to the created, and the uncircumscribed to the circumscribed; how that great, immense, and indivisible One C is held to be in a certain part. For either the great is contracted into a small place, or the small has become great, or [He has received] a part of the divinity and not the whole, which is impious to utter. And from that "how," and "in what manner," and "by what sequence," these too have gone into unbelief; and they have constructed an indwelling instead of an incarnation, and instead of a union and composition, a human virtue of action, and instead of one hypostasis of our Lord Jesus Christ, [they propose] two hypostases and persons; and instead of the holy Trinity, they improperly and impiously conceive of a quaternity; improperly, indeed, because they join D a man to God, and number a servant with the Lord, and place a created person with the uncreated persons; and impiously, because they make the one hypostasis into two, introducing into the Trinity a fourth hypostasis, entirely strange and of a different nature, and the lowest, last, and smallest of all rational creatures. But if you again accurately pay attention, and to the matter
and desire to apply your mind to this business, you will discover that they cast our Lord Jesus Christ A outside the holy Trinity, as a slave, as a man not to be adored, even though he is the adorable one; and that they think he is rather an adorer, worshipping with all others, and subject to the holy Trinity—just as Marcellus and Paul of Samosata misunderstood, dragging the divine and apostolic scripture to their own understanding: “When,” it says, “all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself also,” that is to say, the assumed man, “will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, so that God may be,” he says, “as he was even before the incarnation, in all things, being incorporeal and having no body.” And the assumed man, as one counted among all others and coming before him, is subject and renders worship to God. Consider, I pray you, into what folly those who seem wise to themselves have fallen, into what madness and B infidelity they have gone, to the point of inventing non-existent things, and framing them, and telling tales.
They have not only refused to approach the faith, but have also devised deceits and contrived villainies; they have invented foolish and unlearned questions, aiming at the error of many and lawless apostasy. For if they expected the future, and believed in the coming of God and the judgment, and feared punishment, they would approach in faith, obey the Gospels, and follow the apostles rather than human reasonings. For the apostles, immediately upon setting forth, preached Christ in harmony and consistently as the Son of God. This one, born in Bethlehem from the seed of David according to the flesh, who became like men C and was crucified for men under Pontius Pilate, they declared to be both God and man; the Son of God and the Son of man; from heaven and from earth; impassible and passible—not another, not two persons, not two hypostases, not two adorations. What need is there for questioning and word-strife? It is fitting to believe, and to honor, and to adore in silence. I know him to be God truly from heaven, impassible; I know him to be from the seed of David according to the flesh, a man from earth, passible. I do not ask how the same one is passible and impassible, how he is God and how he is man, so that, by inquiring into the "how" and searching for the manner, I do not fall away from the good thing set before us. For D it is necessary first to believe and to glorify, and secondly to seek the constitution of these things from above, and not to provide it from below, from blood and flesh, but from divine and heavenly revelation. For “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in the heavens,” and: “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The word is faithful, and immovable
A is the promise, and the Church is unconquered, even if the gates of hell should arise (75), even if Hades itself should be moved, even if the rulers of the darkness that are in it. Take heart in Him who said: “Take heart, I have overcome the world,” and by my sufferings I have similarly overcome; for the Lord of this (76) also, by suffering, rather conquered, and by being crucified He saved, and by dying He brought to life. You see and hear that He is at once God and man. For if He were only God, how did He suffer, how was He crucified, and how did He die? For these things are foreign to God. And if He were only man, how did He overcome through suffering, how did He save, how did He bring to life? These things were above man. But the same One both suffers, and saves, and by suffering overcomes. The same One is God, the same One is man; the two are as one, each as only one.
4. But perhaps some one of the wiser and more noble, stepping into the midst and being a precise inquirer, might say: The body, therefore, is a part of the Word, and a complement of the Son’s hypostasis, so that He might be one Son of God composed of both, and being imperfect in Himself, and needing the body for His perfection. Otherwise, how is He one? Or how is there one hypostasis and one person? Otherwise, again, if there is one hypostasis of the Word and the flesh, how then (77) is this the Son of God? The flesh, therefore, will be consubstantial with God, which is impious to assert. But if this is so, neither will the Word who is the Son be consubstantial with God, which is absurd; for the Word is perfect and consubstantial, and always has His own hypostasis in Himself, and stands in need of nothing. Those who bring these charges make their own opinion manifest, that there are two hypostases of our Lord Jesus Christ, and they slander us, and attempt by every means to twist our words toward some absurdity, to make us say that the body is a complement of the Word’s hypostasis, or is consubstantial with God, or is altogether strange and foreign to the hypostasis of the Son, which are their own words; for they introduce another hypostasis of the flesh, or, as they themselves say, of the assumed man, and another of the God who assumed it: another person of the Son of God, and another person of the Son of man, who is from the seed of David according to the flesh. So that neither is the Son of God the Son of man, being of a different substance from David; nor is He who was born according to the flesh the Son of God (79), being of a different substance from God. But we, brothers, say that God is one and the same, obeying the prophets and apostles, and believing the Gospel D rather than applying our minds to Gentile wisdom, or being troubled by human reasonings. And contending for our own salvation, we confess one God the
A one, and that both are together one hypostasis and one person: not that the body might become a complement to the hypostasis—for that is impious, since the divinity is perfect, incapable of diminution, simple, singular, and non-composite, into which the difference of members does not fall, nor that of things, namely, of body and incorporeality; for the Word is perfect and altogether incorporeal. For God did not become God when He was incarnate, nor did the Son of God when He received a human body, nor the Lord of glory when He bore the form of a servant; but the Son of God is man and the son of man, and He who is Lord by nature is a servant according to the form. The body, therefore, has not become a complement to the divine hypostasis; but He who is truly perfect has perfected the imperfect, and He who was in need of nothing joined Himself to B and was united with flesh, and He who had no need gave Himself to the body that was in need. For no one of those who are sound in mind, or who are at all able to be sober and to understand, would say that, just as the Word, being perfect and having hypostasis, did not need flesh so that He might become perfect God, so also the body of the Word did not need to become perfect and to have hypostasis as a man; but we were in need of a heavenly Savior, a heavenly Liberator, by the abolition of sin, renovating us from the corruption and removing the miseries arising from it.
5. Therefore, straightway from the birth, newness appeared, and the celestial nature of Him who was begotten was shown through His birth; for He was not born according to the generation of ancient man from man and woman. For it is impossible C for a woman to be pregnant without the work of a man, because God has established the substance of those who are born in their fathers, just as Scripture declares that Levi was in the loins of his father Abraham. But the Redeemer, not taking the being of Adam, but receiving the form from Adam—I mean the flesh with a human soul—and having become man according to the visible, introduced newness into the world according to the invisible; against which neither the decree of death nor the tyranny of the devil prevails, but there is present communion of the Word with the mortals and those tyrannically oppressed; and a great difference has been brought into human affairs by reason of immortality, liberty, and deliverance from tyranny. The Virgin Mary herself marveled D when she received the message of the birth of the Savior from her. "How shall this be to me," she said, "since I know not a man?" (Luc. I, 34). Yet she was announced the divine essence of Him who was born of her in a form of flesh. And the gift was heavenly, and the growth earthly; there was a reconciliation of the earth, and a likeness toward the heavens, according to the joy of the angels who were crying out: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace
A to men." 86 Rejoicing, therefore, at the birth of Christ, we do not rejoice with a human joy, such as the joy men feel at the birth of a child, nor do we celebrate a birthday festival; rather, we rejoice at the manifestation of Christ and the dawning of divine light, not having one who shares in our captivity, but a Redeemer, according to the Apostle. What, moreover, was present in these things? The anointing, through which Christ, being born, was born in a manner more divine than men, and, having been reared, was reared in a manner more divine than us. Therefore, in his form according to the flesh, he is washed in the waters with the Jews. John is baptizing, the river Jordan is washing the divine body, and the arrival of the Spirit from heaven is upon the pure body of Christ, from which the purification B passes over to us through likeness, so that we also may follow him, fulfilling all righteousness, and being purified in the Lord himself, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
ADMONITION CONCERNING THE FOLLOWING WORK
1 It is the old error of all the manuscripts (except the Basle copy) that this work, along with an exposition of the text: "All things have been handed over to me by my Father," should be joined together under one and the same title: namely, in this order, that first the treatise on the text "All things have been handed over to me, etc." be placed. Second, a fragment from the book on the Decrees of Nicaea, p. 241, "This is the true doctrine, etc.," under the same title, with a few words changed. Third, this little book on the Sabbath, consequently and with an identical title. And in such a way they lie in all the printed Latin editions of Athanasius from the translation of Nannius. But in what circumstance things so disparate came to be placed together under the same title, who could guess? These works or fragments were finally rightly divided by the Commelinian editors, whom the Parisians followed in such a way that, after they had reported those three treatises separately in the first volume, as the matter required, they re-posed the fragment in the second volume, p. 64: "For this is the true doctrine," and consequently this work on the Sabbath. Furthermore, the first treatise, namely on the text: "All things have been handed over to me, etc.," shows itself by its own marks to be Athanasian. See in the first volume p. 81. But the fragment: "For this is the true doctrine," we have said was excerpted from the book on the Decrees of Nicaea. As for this treatise, whether it is Athanasius's or not, it can scarcely be detected, since no mark of either spuriousness or authenticity appears anywhere: for it bears the appearance of a homily, of which style of writing Athanasius produced nothing that has reached us: whence it seems that scarcely anything can be discerned from the style. 2 It deals here with the Sabbath, which is defended as having been given not for idleness, but for the sake of knowing God, and likewise about the Lord's Day, circumcision, and baptism. And indeed, this work presents a certain semblance of dignity, such that if it is not Athanasius's, it may be thought to be the work of at least some pious and learned man. Finally, we have deemed it necessary to advise that to the fourth discourse against the Arians, vol. II, p. 496, in the margin of the Basle, Gobler, and Felckm. 1 codices, these things are read: "The things concerning the Sabbath and circumcision were lying here." What the reason may be that it was translated to that place, it is not even permitted to conjecture; since it deals with matters there that are far disparate.