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When we say that Christ is perfect Gods and perfect man, we
assuredly attribute to Him all the properties natural to both the
Father and mother. For He became man in order that that which was
overcome might overcome. For He Who was omnipotent did not in His
omnipotent authority and might lack the power to rescue man out of the
hands of the tyrant. But the tyrant would have had a ground of
complaint if, after He had overcome man, God should have used force
against him. Wherefore God in His pity and love for man wished to
reveal fallen man himself as conqueror, and became man to restore like
with like.
But that man is a rational and intelligent animal, no one will deny.
How, then, could He have become man if He took on Himself flesh
without soul, or soul without mind? For that is not man. Again,
what benefit would His becoming man have been to us if He Who
suffered first was not saved, nor renewed and strengthened by the union
with divinity? For that which is not assumed is not remedied. He,
therefore, assumed the whole man, even the fairest part of him, which
had become diseased, in order that He might bestow salvation on the
whole. And, indeed, there could never exist a mind that had not
wisdom and was destitute of knowledge. For if it has not energy or
motion, it is utterly reduced to nothingness.
Therefore, God the Word, wishing to restore that which was in His
own image, became man. But what is that which was in His own image,
unless mind? So He gave up the better and assumed the worse. For
mind s is in the border-land between God and flesh, for it dwells
indeed in fellowship with the flesh, and is, moreover, the image of
God. Mind, then, mingles with mind, and mind holds a place midway
between the pureness of God and the denseness of flesh. For if the
Lord assumed a soul without mind, He assumed the soul of an
irrational animal.
But if the Evangelist said that the Word was made flesh, note that
in the Holy Scripture sometimes a man is spoken of as a soul, as,
for example, with seventy-five souls came Jacob into Egypt: and
sometimes a man is spoken of as flesh, as, for example, All flesh
shall see the salvation of God. And accordingly the Lord did not
become flesh without soul or mind, but man. He says, indeed,
Himself, Why seek ye to kill Me, a Man that hath told you the
truth? He, therefore, assumed flesh animated with the spirit of
reason and mind, a spirit that holds sway over the flesh but is itself
under the dominion of the divinity of the Word.
So, then, He had by nature, both as God and as man, the power of
will. But His human will was obedient anti subordinate to His divine
will, not being guided by its own inclination, but willing those
things which the divine will willed. For it was with the permission of
the divine will that He suffered by nature what was proper to Him.
For when He prayed that He might escape the death, it was with His
divine will naturally willing and permitting it that He did so pray and
agonize and fear, and again when His divine will willed that His
human will should choose tire death, the passion became voluntary to
Him. For it was not as God only, but also as man, that He
voluntarily surrendered Himself to the death. And thus He bestowed
on us also courage in the face of death. So, indeed, He said before
His saving passion, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass
from Me," manifestly as though He were to drink the cup as man and
not as God. It was as man, then, that He wished the cup to pass
from Him: but these are the words of natural timidity.
Nevertheless, He said, not My will, that is to say, not in so far
as I am of a different essence from Thee, but Thy will be done, the
is to say, My will and Thy will, in so far as I am of the same
essence as Thou. Now these are the words of a brave heart. For the
Spirit of the Lord, since He truly became man in His good
pleasure, on first testing its natural weakness was sensible of the
natural fellow-suffering involved in its separation from the body, but
being strengthened by the divine will it again grew bold in the face of
death. For since He was Himself wholly God although also man, and
wholly man although also God, He Himself as man subjected in
Himself and by Himself His human nature to God and the Father, and
became obedient to the Father, thus making Himself the most excellent
type and example for us.
Of His own free-will, moreover, He exercised His divine and human
will. For free-will is assuredly implanted in every rational nature.
For to what end would it possess reason, if it could not reason at its
own free-will? For the Creator hath implanted even in the
unreasoning brutes natural appetite to compel them to sustain their own
nature. For devoid of reason, as they are, they cannot guide their
natural appetite but are guided by it. And so, as soon as the
appetite for anything has sprung up, straightway arises also the
impulse for action. And thus they do not win praise or happiness for
pursuing virtue, nor punishment for doing evil. But the rational
nature, although it does possess a natural appetite, can guide and
train it by reason wherever the laws of nature are observed. For the
advantage of reason consists in this, tire free-will, by which we
mean natural activity in a rational subject. Wherefore in pursuing
virtue it wins praise and happiness, and in pursuing vice it wins
punishment.
So that the soul s of the Lord being moved of its own free-will
willed, but willed of its free-will those things which His divine
will willed it to will. For the flesh was not moved at a sign from the
Word, as Moses and all the holy men were moved at a sign from
heaven. But He Himself, Who was one and yet both God and man,
willed according to both His divine and His human will. Wherefore it
was not in inclination but rather in natural power that the two wills of
the Lord differed from one another. For His divine will was without
beginning and all-effecting, as having power that kept pace with it,
and free from passion; while His human will had a beginning in time,
and itself endured the natural and innocent passions, and was not
naturally omnipotent. But yet it was omni-potent because it truly and
naturally had its origin in the God-Word.
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