A. I will ask our opponents something else as well.
B. What is that?
A. Do they not believe that the Only-Begotten God the Word has His existence from God the Father, while maintaining that the man supposedly assumed by conjunction came from the seed of the divine David?
B. That is what they say.
A. Then the Word, being God, will necessarily surpass the one from the seed of David both in nature and in glory, by as much as the difference between their natures separates them. Or, if what I say is not true, why do they divide them, assigning to one authority over glory and presenting the other as its recipient, as though he gains what he is in the manner of an honor or gift? The receiver is necessarily less than and secondary to the giver, and the one who receives a share in another’s glory is less than the one who bestows that glory.
B. I suppose they themselves would admit that the difference between God and human beings is immense.
A. Then how does the all-wise Paul, minister of the divine mysteries, who has within him the very One he proclaims and speaks in the Spirit, call the One who according to the flesh is from the Jews ‘God’ and say that He is ‘blessed forever, amen’? What can be higher than ‘God over all’? What greater thing could anyone find in the Word born from the Father than in the One who according to the flesh is from the Jews, if the latter is someone other than Him, a separate son, and not truly Son?
B. But, they say, the one from the seed of David was admitted through conjunction, and because the Word, who is God, dwelt in him, he shares the Word’s dignity and honor. The most holy Paul teaches this, they claim, when he writes that he ‘became obedient to the Father to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name’—and that name, they say, is ‘God.’
A. Then do they say that God gave the name above every name specifically and separately to the man from the seed of David, as to another son?
B. Yes, they say. For how could the Only-Begotten, who is God and from God by nature, be given what He already possesses?
A. Then, if they refuse to apply the receiving of the name to the Only-Begotten Himself, let the matter be examined carefully from what the divine Paul actually wrote: ‘Let each of you have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of human beings; and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted Him and gave Him the name above every name.’ If, according to them, it is the man from the seed of David considered separately and on his own who received the name above every name, then let them show that this man pre-existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, and then took the form of a servant because he did not previously possess it and was not already a servant. Yet according to what they themselves say and choose to believe, this man is the very form of the servant. How, then, could he take it as though he did not already have it? And how could a man be said to become ‘in the likeness of human beings’ or be ‘found in appearance as a man’? The force of Paul’s meaning will therefore turn them, even against their will, toward the truth.
B. What truth?
A. God the Word, who exists in the form of God the Father, the exact imprint of His hypostasis and equal in every respect to the One who begot Him, emptied Himself.
B. And what is this self-emptying?
A. It is His assumption of flesh and His coming to be in the form of a servant: the One who in His own nature is not like us, but is above all creation, became like us. In this way He humbled Himself, descending according to the dispensation into the measures of humanity. Yet even so He remained God, possessing by nature and not by gift what belongs to Him. For this reason He also said to the Father and God in heaven, ‘Father, glorify Me with the glory I had with You before the world existed.’ Surely they will not say that the man born from the seed of David in the last times of the age was asking as his own for glory that existed before the world, if he is a separate son other than the One who is Son by nature and in truth. Rather, such words are thoroughly proper to God. It was necessary for Him to be shaped together with the measures of humanity while still possessing unimpaired, essentially within Himself, the excellence of the dignity proper to God, just as the Father does. Otherwise how could the saying be true, ‘There shall be no new god among you,’ if, according to them, a man is made a god through conjunction with the Word and is declared to share the Father’s throne and dignity?
B. You have spoken well.
A. And how should we understand what Paul wisely says: ‘Even if there are many gods in heaven and on earth, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we from Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him’? Since there is one Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul plainly says that through Him all things were brought into existence, what shall we do, my good friends, when you distinguish the Word from God the Father from the man you say was assumed? Which of the two are we to call the Creator of all things?
B. The Son who is by nature from God the Father—that is, the Only-Begotten.
A. Yet the minister of the divine mysteries tells us that all things were brought into existence through Jesus Christ, and that He is one and only. Remember also that when we examined the name ‘Christ,’ we said that it signifies anointing, since someone is called ‘Christ’ because he has been anointed. Therefore they must either say that the Word from God the Father was anointed according to His own nature and stood in need of sanctification through the Spirit and participation in Him, or else teach us how someone who was never anointed can be understood as Christ. And how could the Only-Begotten Word of God, considered separately, be called Jesus, when blessed Gabriel says to the holy Virgin: ‘Do not be afraid, Mary. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins’?
B. Then do we say that all things were made through a man? Is the one who in the last times of the age was born from a woman the Creator of heaven and earth and, in short, of everything in them?
A. Then answer for yourself, because I will ask: did the Word not become flesh? Was He not called Son of Man? Did He not take the form of a servant? Did He not empty Himself, becoming in the likeness of human beings and being found in appearance as a man? If they deny the dispensation, the divine disciples will rise against them and say: ‘We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.’ And again: ‘By this the Spirit of God is known: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.’ What sense would it make to say of an ordinary man that he ‘came in flesh’? That expression properly belongs to the One who originally existed outside flesh and whose nature was not ours: He came in flesh and entered this world with flesh while remaining what He was. Therefore, even though He became man, nothing prevents us from understanding that all things were brought into being through Him, insofar as He is God and coeternal with the Father. The Word did not cease to be God when He assumed flesh endowed with a rational soul. He did not join a man to Himself, as those who innovate the faith say; rather, He Himself became flesh, as I have said—that is, man. In this way His being anointed properly belongs to Him and is free from objection. He is also called Jesus because He Himself is truly the One who underwent birth according to the flesh from a woman. In this way He saved His own people: not as a man joined to God, but as God who came to be in the likeness of those in danger, so that in Him as the first the human race might be refashioned toward its original state. For all things were new in Him.
B. Then we must reject the idea that a man was joined to God the Word, became a sharer in His dignity, and possesses sonship merely as a gift of grace.
A. Absolutely. Holy Scripture knows nothing of such a teaching. It is instead the invention of a mind fond of empty things, feeble and disordered, and unable to see the depth of the mystery. Where has holy Scripture ever said anything like this? The divine Paul makes the mystery of the Only-Begotten’s Incarnation very clear when he says: ‘Since the children share in blood and flesh, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.’ And elsewhere: ‘What the Law could not do, because it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.’ When we say that He partook of blood and flesh, according to the meaning intended by the inspired writers, we do not mean someone who was already by his own nature in flesh and blood and could not be otherwise. We mean the One who was not such before and whose nature is other than ours. For our sake He became as we are while also remaining above us insofar as He is understood as God. He was born from a woman and came ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh.’ The Word became flesh, but not sinful flesh. He lived among those on earth as a man and came into likeness with us, yet He was not, together with us, under sin, but remained beyond all experience of transgression. For the same One was at once God and man. But those who, I do not know how, remove this august and marvelous dispensation from the Only-Begotten join to Him a man by a mere relational conjunction, adorned with honors from outside and made splendid by another’s glory: not truly God, but a partner and participant with God; a falsely named son; a savior who himself must be saved; a redeemer who himself is redeemed. Yet blessed Paul writes: ‘The saving grace of God has appeared to all people, so that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we may live soberly and righteously in the present age, awaiting the blessed hope and manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.’
B. Yes, they say. Because he was granted conjunction with God the Word, he too was called ‘great God,’ even though he came from the seed of David.
A. What madness! ‘Claiming to be wise, they became fools,’ as it is written. As I said, they turn the whole meaning of the mystery of Christ into its opposite. To say that he was merely ‘granted’ this dignity is nothing other than to declare him an ordinary man and, unwittingly, wall him off in complete otherness, so that we end up with a pair of sons who are worshiped: one Son by nature and in truth, the other an adopted and spurious son who possesses nothing that is his own. To him too, together with us, one could say, ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’ And then what becomes of the all-wise Paul’s words: ‘The Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not Yes and No; in Him it has always been Yes’? How is He not ‘Yes and No’ if He is called God but is not God, and if the names ‘Son’ and ‘Lord’ are falsely applied to Him? If matters stand as they claim, then it would suit him to say, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’ For what does not belong by nature but comes from outside, is introduced, and is given by another belongs not primarily to the receiver but to the one who gives and bestows it. And how could He say, ‘I am the truth,’ if there is nothing true about what is said of Him? If He lies, perhaps darkness has overcome Him after all. But ‘He committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth,’ as it is written.
B. Certainly not.
A. Then where is the self-emptying, and of whom could it be said to occur? On their account we see no one being emptied at all, but rather someone being filled, even though he does not possess fullness by his own nature. If he possessed completeness and perfect sufficiency in himself, he would not need anything from another, and receiving would be unnecessary for him. But ‘from Christ’s fullness we have all received,’ and the proclamation of the inspired writers cannot be false. Christ is full, and insofar as He is understood and truly is God, absolutely nothing is given to Him. Yet receiving also became His own because of the measure of His humanity and because He appeared as we are, to whom it may rightly be said, ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’
B. Yes, they say: there is one Christ, Son, and Lord, the Word from God the Father, with the man from the seed of David joined to Him.
A. But one might say to them: my good friends, how can someone who has another joined to him be understood as one? He is one together with another, and the two are necessarily two. There is truly one Son only if we say that the same One is God the Word, divinely begotten from God, and also, in a marvelous manner, man born according to the flesh from a woman. But if they set apart and distinguish the one from the seed of David, exclude him from truly being God and Son, and say instead that he only shares sonship and participates in another’s glory, then I think the accusation the Jews made against Christ turns out not to have been pointless. For they said, ‘We do not stone You for a good work, but for blasphemy, because You, being a man, make Yourself God.’
B. Yet they say that the one Christ is both true God and true Son—clearly meaning the Word from God who took the man from the seed of David by conjunction.