A. What astonishing folly and derangement of mind in those who somehow imagine that these things are so! This is unbelief and nothing else: a novelty of impious inventions and an overthrow of the divine and holy proclamation that cries out that there is one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God—the Word from God the Father who became man and was incarnate—so that the same One is both God and man, and all things, both those proper to God and those that are human, belong to the one and same One. For the One who always is and subsists as God underwent birth according to the flesh from a woman. It therefore belongs to one and the same One both to exist and subsist eternally and to be born according to the flesh in the last times. Although He is holy by nature as God, He was sanctified together with us insofar as He appeared as man, to whom sanctification properly belongs. Although He possesses lordly dignity and has the form of a servant as His own, He called the Father His God. Although He is Life and life-giving as God, He is said to be given life by the Father insofar as He appeared as man. All things, then, belong to Him, and He does not dishonor the dispensation, which the Father Himself also approved, if what Paul says is true. In one place he says, ‘He made the One who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’; and in another, ‘He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?’ Does not our argument, then, follow directly the purpose of the holy Scriptures?
B. How could it not?
A. But if, as our opponents have chosen to believe, the Only-Begotten Word of God took a man from the seed of the divine David and Abraham, caused him to be formed in the holy Virgin, joined that man to Himself, caused him to experience death, then raised him from the dead, took him up into heaven, and seated him at God’s right hand, then it seems entirely unnecessary for the holy Fathers, for us, and for all God-inspired Scripture to say that the Word became man. For I think this, and nothing else, is what the all-wise John means when he writes, ‘The Word became flesh.’ Their account turns the whole mystery of the dispensation in the flesh into its exact opposite. We no longer see the Word, who is God by nature and comes forth from God, lowering Himself into self-emptying, taking the form of a servant, and humbling Himself. Instead, the opposite occurs: a man is raised into the glory of the Godhead and into supremacy over all things; he receives the form of God and is exalted, becoming enthroned with the Father. Is what I am saying not true?
B. Entirely true.
A. If this is true, as they say, and the Only-Begotten refused the dispensation, what shame did He ever despise? Where did He become obedient to the Father ‘to the point of death, even death on a cross’? And if He merely took a man, led him to experience death, then brought him up into heaven and made him sit with the Father, where will the Only-Begotten’s own throne be found? They do not say there are two sons, but only one who sits with the Father—namely, the man from the seed of David and Abraham. How, then, could the Word Himself be called Savior of the world? Would He not instead be merely the patron or guide of a man through whom we were saved? And then a man other than the Word would have become the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. For the Law speaks of the mystery of Christ, and Moses wrote about Him and became our tutor leading us to Him. Our faith would thus come to nothing; indeed, our august mystery would vanish completely. The excellent Paul makes this plain when he says: ‘Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven?—that is, to bring Christ down—or, Who will descend into the abyss?—that is, to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does Scripture say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart—that is, the word of faith which we preach: that if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.’ How, then, can the mystery of godliness still be great, glorious, and supremely marvelous if we must believe, as these perverse men say, that a man was assumed and joined to God the Word by a mere relational conjunction, died, came to life again, and was taken up into heaven? Yet perhaps some would find it unbelievable that a man who is not God by nature and in truth should delight in the very seats of the Godhead, while the Son by nature is somehow displaced. Angels and archangels, and even the Seraphim above them, would stand in the rank of ministers not before the One who is truly Son and God, but before a man who possesses the title of sonship only by participation and introduction, in a manner like ours, and who has been granted such a thoroughly divine honor. Our opponents are not even ashamed to say this. Is their doctrine not filled with the utmost impiety and irreverence? What is given and introduced from outside can also be taken away, and what is acquired from without always carries the possibility of loss. I say nothing yet of the further blasphemy and absurdity of their words. Why, then, do they drag the excellence of the dispensation down into something shameful and turn our divine and most holy worship into nothing but the worship of a man? They remove worship from the One who is truly Son and persuade us to worship someone merely joined to Him by a relational conjunction. They say this man has been raised above every rule, authority, and dominion, thereby laying the charge of error not only upon those on earth but even upon the rational powers above, if they worship together with us—not the One who is Son by nature and in truth, the Word who shines forth from the essence of God the Father and has become man—but someone else besides Him, a man from the seed of David, fashioned into a ‘god’ perhaps only by the Word’s will and by external adornments, though not truly God.
B. But even if he is understood as a distinct man, they say, he receives worship from all creation with reference to God and with God in mind.
A. Then tell me: how should we understand and describe this ‘reference’ they keep talking about? Come, let us examine the divine and holy Scripture and seek there what we are looking for. At one time the people of Israel, neglecting reverence for God, bitterly attacked Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron then said to them, ‘Who are we, that you murmur against us? Your murmuring is not against us but against God.’ They were sinning against Moses and Aaron, but what they did touched the divine glory, because the intention of those who insulted them was referred to God. Yet Moses and Aaron were not gods, nor did creation worship them with reference to God. God also ruled Israel according to the flesh through the prophets. Then the people came to the divine Samuel and said, ‘Make us a king like the other nations.’ The Spirit-bearing prophet was grieved, and very rightly, but he heard God say, ‘They have not rejected you, but Me, from reigning over them.’ See again: the rejection clearly has reference to God. And the Savior and Lord of all Himself says of those in need, ‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to Me.’ Is it in this same way, then, that if someone honors the man from the seed of David he has done it to the Son? And if someone does not believe in that man, has he thereby offended the Son by nature, who perhaps wishes that man also to be honored and believed in by us in an equal and identical way? How then has the servant not been made equal in honor to the Master, the creature placed in the excellences of the Godhead, and a newly made god, as Scripture says? Something unlike the holy and consubstantial Trinity in nature would then have been added to It, worshiped together with It and sharing equal glory with It.
B. They say that ‘reference’ should be understood in this way: when we contemplate God the Word as inseparably joined to the man from the seed of David, we worship that man as God.
A. Is it enough, then, merely for him to be joined to God the Word in order to receive the glory proper to God and be raised above the limits of creation? Will this make someone who is not God worthy of worship? Yet I find someone saying to God through the Psalmist’s lyre, ‘My soul clung closely after You.’ And blessed Paul writes, ‘The one who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.’ Tell me, then: shall we worship these people too with reference to God because they are joined to Him? Indeed, the word ‘clung’ seems to carry an even stronger and more emphatic meaning than ‘joined,’ if it is true that what clings to something has an especially close conjunction with it.
B. It seems so.
A. Why, then, do they abandon the word ‘union,’ which is familiar among us and, more importantly, has come down to us from the holy Fathers, and instead speak of ‘conjunction’? Union does not confuse the things of which it is said; rather, it shows that the things understood as united come together into one. Nor is only what is simple and of one kind called one. Things composed of two or even more elements, including elements of different kinds, are also called one. Those skilled in such matters rightly understand it this way. Therefore, by most wickedly dividing into two the one Son who is Son by nature and in truth, who became man and was incarnate, they reject union and call it conjunction—a relationship that anyone else might also have with God, being as it were bound to Him through virtue and holiness. Thus one of the prophets rightly says to those who fall into carelessness, ‘Gather yourselves and be bound together, O undisciplined nation, before you become like a flower that passes away.’ A student may also be joined to a teacher through love of learning, and we are joined to one another in many different ways. Likewise, someone who serves in a particular task may rightly be understood as joined in willing service to the one who appointed him. This last example seems especially close to what the innovators mean by ‘conjunction.’ For you have heard them ignorantly maintain that God the Word took a man as a son other than Himself and made him, as it were, a minister of His own will, so that he should experience death, live again, ascend into heaven itself, and sit upon the seats of the ineffable Godhead. Do not these words show him to be entirely other than the One who is Son by nature and in truth?
B. I agree.
A. Since they have once fallen to such a depth of ignorance as to think and say that the Only-Begotten Word of God did not Himself become as we are, but instead ‘took a man,’ how do they want us to understand this taking? Was the man selected by the Word in order to carry out something He willed, just as one of the holy prophets says: ‘I was not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd and tended sycamore trees; and the Lord took me from the sheep and said to me, Go, prophesy to My people Israel’? He was a shepherd, and God made him a prophet and appointed him a minister of His will.
B. Perhaps they would say that the taking did not occur in exactly this way, but should be understood as we understand the words, ‘taking the form of a servant.’
A. Then what was taken should rightly be understood as having become the very own of the One who took it through an unbreakable union. Thus Jesus is God and truly the Son of God, one and only, because He is the Word from God the Father: divinely begotten before every age and all time, and in the last times of the age the same One born according to the flesh from a woman. For the form of a servant became no one else’s; it became His own.
B. What do you mean?
A. Tell me: is something that is already a servant by nature properly said to ‘take the form of a servant,’ or is this said of the One who is truly free and by essence stands above every condition of servitude?
B. Of the One who is free, I think. For how could something become what it already was by nature?
A. Consider, then, that although the Only-Begotten Word of God became as we are and entered the condition of servitude according to His humanity, He still bore witness to His natural freedom when the didrachma tax was discussed, saying, ‘Then the sons are free.’ He therefore takes the form of a servant, making His own the consequences of self-emptying and not disdaining likeness with us. There was no other way to honor the servant condition unless what belongs to servitude became His own, so that it in turn might be made glorious by the glory that comes from Him. What is superior always prevails, and the shame of our servitude was thereby erased for us. The One above us became as we are, and the One free by nature came to be within the condition of servants. For this reason the dignity has passed to us as well: we too have been called sons of God and have claimed as Father the One who is properly His Father, because our human things became His own. Therefore the whole mystery of the dispensation in the flesh is contained in the statement that He ‘took the form of a servant.’ But if, while confessing one Son and Lord—the Word from God the Father—they say that a mere man from the seed of David was joined to Him and made a sharer in His sonship and glory, then it is time for us, grieving in love over those who have chosen to think this way, to say: ‘Who will give water to my head and a fountain of tears to my eyes, that I may weep for this people day and night?’ For they have been handed over to a rejected mind, denying the Master who bought them. They present us with a pair of sons unequal in nature: the servant is crowned with divine glory, and a kind of spurious son is made radiant with honors equal to the One who is Son by nature and in truth, even though God says plainly, ‘My glory I will not give to another.’ For how is he not distinctly other than the One who is Son by nature and in truth, if he is honored only by a bare conjunction, taken in the rank of a minister, granted sonship just as we are, made a participant in another’s glory, and raised to it by gift and grace?