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It is worthy of note that the flesh of the Lord is not said to have
been deified and made equal to God and God in respect of any change or
alteration, or transformation, or confusion of nature: as Gregory
the Theologian says, "Whereof the one deified, and the other was
deified, and, to speak boldly, made equal to God: and that which
anointed became man, and that which was anointed became God." For
these words do not mean any change in nature, but rather the
oeconomical union(I mean the union in subsistence by virtue of which
it was united inseparably with God the Word), and the permeation of
the natures through one another, just as we saw that burning permeated
the steel. For, just as we confess that God became man without
change or alteration, so we consider that the flesh became God without
change. For because the Word became flesh, He did not overstep the
limits of His own divinity nor abandon the divine glories that belong
to Him: nor, on the other hand, was the flesh, when deified,
changed in its own nature or in its natural properties. For even after
the union, boil the natures abode unconfused and their properties
unimpaired. But the flesh of the Lord received the riches of the
divine energies through the purest union with the Word, that is to
say, the union in subsistence, without entailing the loss of any of
its natural attributes. For it is not in virtue of any energy of its
own but through the Word united to it, that it manifests divine
energy: for the flaming steel burns, not because it has been endowed
in a physical way with burning energy, but because it has obtained this
energy by its union with fire. Wherefore the same flesh was mortal by
reason of its own nature and life-giving through its union with the
Word in subsistence. And we hold that it is just the same with the
deification of the will; for its natural activity was not changed but
united with His divine and omnipotent will, and became the will of
God, made man. And so it was that, though He wished, He could
not of Himself escape, because it pleased God the Word that the
weakness of the human will, which was in truth in Him, should be made
manifest. But He was able to cause at His will the cleansing of the
leper, because of the union with the divine will. Observe further,
that the deification of the nature and the will points most expressly
and most directly both to two natures and two wills. For just as the
burning does not change into fire the nature of the thing that is
burnt, but makes distinct both what is burnt, and what burned it, and
is indicative not of one but of two natures, so also the deification
does not bring about one compound nature but two, and their union in
subsistence. Gregory the Theologian, indeed, says, "Whereof the
one deified, the other was deified," and by the words "whereof,"
"the one," "the other," he assuredly indicates two natures.
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