θεοῦ βοήσας '; these things cannot belong to the eternal Godhead: ἀλλὰ κατ' ανάγκην τὰς ἐμπαθεῖς ταύτας καὶ ταπεινοτέρας φωνάς τε καὶ διαθέσεις τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ προσμαρτυρήσει 2, ἄτρεπτόν τε καὶ ἀπαθῆ τοῦ θεοῦ τὴν φύσιν, καὶ ἐν τῇ κοινωνίᾳ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων παθημάτων διαμεμενηκέναι συνθήσεται (i. e. these utterances of humiliation are the real expression of properly human experiences undergone by the eternal Word, who yet remained unchanged in His own essence).

That our Lord's miracles might have been done in the power of a God-inspired humanity-adv. Apoll. 28, Apollinarius had asked, 'Who but God is it who works with power the things of God?' To this Gregory replies that such a question derogates from the power of God and is childish: τὸ γὰρ ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ ποιεῖν καὶ ἀνθρώπων ἐστὶν ἠξιωμένων θείας δυνάμεως οἷος ἦν ὁ Ἠλείας ὥστε οὐδὲν ὑπὲρ ἄνθρωπον τὸ ἐν ἐξουσίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ ποιεῖν τι τῶν θαυμάτων ἐκ θείας δυνάμεως· ἀλλὰ τὸ αὐτὸν εἶναι τὴν ὑπερέχουσαν δύναμιν 3. But cf. adv. Eunom. v. 5 (p. 705), where the miracles of our Lord are ascribed to His Godhead in the more usual way.

That the special marvel of divine power lies in the self-accommodation of the Son of God to the conditions alien to His own nature-adv. Eunom. v. 3 (p. 693) οὐδὲν κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ φύσιν κινούμενον ὡς ἐπὶ παραδόξῳ θαυμάζεται· ἀλλὰ ὅσα τοὺς ὅρους ἐκβαίνει τῆς φύσεως, ταῦτα μάλιστα πάντων ἐν θαύματι γίνεται, διὸ καὶ πάντες οἱ τὸν λόγον κηρύσσοντες, ἐν τούτῳ τὸ θαῦμα τοῦ μυστηρίου 1 St. Mark xiii. 32, xi. 13, XV. 13.

2 i.e. he must ascribe.'

i. e. what is superhuman is not the working of the miracles, but the being Himself the supreme power.

...

καταμηνύουσιν ὅτι θεὸς ἐφανερώθη ἐν σαρκί . . ὅτι ἡ ζωὴ θανάτου ἐγεύσατο· καὶ πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα βοῶσιν οἱ κήρυκες, δι ̓ ὧν πλεονάζεται τὸ θαῦμα τοῦ διὰ τῶν ἔξω τῆς φύσεως τὸ περιὸν τῆς δυνάμεως ἑαυτοῦ φανερώσαντος. And v. 5 (p. 705) κενοῦται γὰρ ἡ θεότης ἵνα χωρητὴ τῇ ἀνθρωπίνῃ φύσει γένηται. Cf. Orat. Cat. Mag. 24 πρῶτον μὲν οὖν τὸ τὴν παντοδύναμον φύσιν πρὸς τὸ ταπεινὸν τῆς ἀνθρωπότητος καταβῆναι ἰσχῦσαι πλείονα τὴν ἀπόδειξιν τῆς δυνάμεως ἔχει ἢ τὰ μεγάλα τε καὶ ὑπερφυῆ τῶν θαυμάτων. τὸ μὲν γὰρ μέγα τι καὶ ὑψηλὸν ἐξεργασθῆναι παρὰ τῆς θείας δυνάμεως κατὰ φύσιν πώς ἐστι καὶ ἀκόλουθον . . . ἡ δὲ πρὸς ταπεινὸν κάθοδος περιουσία τίς ἐστι τῆς δυνάμεως, οὐδὲν ἐν τοῖς παρὰ φύσιν κωλυομένης.

Cf. adv. Apoll. 20: In His divine nature Christ was inaccessible to weak humanity and incomprehensible by it, but He became such that our perishable humanity could possess and endure Him then, ὅτε ἐκένωσε, καθώς φησιν ὁ ἀπόστολος, τὴν ἄφραστον αὐτοῦ τῆς θεότητος δόξαν καὶ τῇ βραχύτητι ἡμῶν συγκατεσμίκρυνεν (i.e. He narrowed His Godhead by accepting human limitation).

On the other hand, for the transubstantiation of the manhood into God, see adv. Apoll. 25, and 42 ad finem. The human is swallowed up in the divine as a drop of vinegar in the ocean and changed into the divine substance; there remains no physical property of body. It is to this latter passage that Hooker refers (E. P. v. 53. 2) as consisting of 'words so plain and direct for Eutyches that I stand in doubt they are not his whose name they carry.' So in adv. Eunom. v. 4, 5 (pp. 697, 705-6) it is affirmed that Christ was always God, but

was not man either before His virgin birth or after His ascension.

For quasi-Nestorian language see especially adv. Eunom. v. 5 (p. 700 d, 705-commenting on Acts ii. 36), adv. Apoll. 54 ad fin., and Orat. Cat. Mag. He continually uses the word σvvápeia, which subsequently became typical of Nestorianism to express the relation of the humanity to the divinity in Christ. But this quasiNestorian language does not express the main tendency of Gregory's thought.

§ 6.

The Nestorian controversy.

There was indeed one school of theology in which opposition to Apollinarianism was hearty enough, and associated with a literal interpretation of the New Testament-the school of Antioch, of which the most prominent representative is Theodore of Mopsuestia. He himself had nothing more at heart than the assertion of the real moral freedom and spiritual humanity of Christ-His real temptation, His real struggles. Naturally therefore he was also ready to recognize the reality of His limited knowledge as man. He seems, if we may believe Leontius of Byzantium, to have gone to a length which there is nothing in the Gospels to justify, and to have asserted that our Lord in His temptation did not know who was tempting Him1. But unhappily, in

1 Leont. Byz. adv. Incorrupticolas et Nestor. iii. 32 (P. G. lxxxvi. p. 1373) καὶ πειραζόμενος οὐκ ἐγίνωσκεν ὅστις εἴη ὁ πειράζων αὐτόν.

spite of the great theological reputation in the enjoyment of which he lived and died, he was working, as afterwards appeared more plainly, on a false line. He was-not by a mere careless use of language but deliberately— placing a centre of independent personality in the humanity of Jesus and distinguishing the man Jesus from the eternal Word who in a unique manner indwelt him. Nestorius was only following out this line of thought when he openly declared that the infant born of Mary was not, personally, the Son of God1.

The Church repudiated, with all haste and emphasis, this disastrous, and also intensely unpopular, heresy. Christ was personally God. In Him very God, remaining very God, had taken a human nature in its completeness; and He operated in the human nature, appropriating and making His own the acts and sufferings of the manhood from birth to death and through death to glory. So had rung out the theology of Athanasius, especially in his later period as represented by his letter to Epictetus of Corinth; the note had been sounded simultaneously by Hilary in the west, and was taken up as by others so with pre-eminent power by Cyril of Alexandria, the great opponent of Nestorianism. Here is the verity of the Incarnation at its very heart. God, the very God, condescends to take a human nature to live and to suffer in it. In Christ

1 The real Nestorianism of Theodore appears nowhere more clearly than in the extracts given by Justinian from his work against Apollinarius. He there distinctly denies that the Word was made man, and affirms that He assumed the man Jesus. He describes the man Jesus as declaring that the Word, as well as the Father, indwells him—Oeòs dè λóyos év éμoì ô Toû Beοû μovoyevýs. See Justin. Epist. adv. Theod. in P. G. lxxxvi. pp. 1050-1.

L

Jesus then God is manifesting Himself under human conditions. Does this involve a real self-limitation on God's part? Yes, is in some sense the repeated answer of both Hilary and Cyril1. Hilary has striking passages about the divine 'self-emptying' involved in the Incarnation; and Cyril also has strong statements as that the very God, in being made man, 'let Himself down to the limit of the self-emptying' and 'suffered the measures of the humanity to prevail in His own case 2.'

But both Hilary and Cyril refuse to apply the idea of the self-emptying so as to admit the reality of intellectual growth or limitation of knowledge in the incarnate Lord. This is certainly the case with Hilary, as has already appeared, and on the whole must be allowed in regard to Cyril. He too falls back upon a merely 'economic' ignorance. This particular tendency was facilitated by a general tendency, which must be admitted to exist in much of Cyril's writing, to allow the apprehension of the real manhood of our Lord to be weakened by the emphasis on His Godhead. 'Under his treatment [of St. John's Gospel],' says Dr. Westcott3, 'the divine history seems to be dissolved into a docetic drama.' This is a somewhat startling expression of opinion from one who is apt to measure his words. But it can hardly be said to exceed the truth. The following citations will be found to justify the remarks just made:

1 So also of Gregory of Nyssa, see above, § 5.

' See passages quoted below. One may notice also how Cyril, like most fathers, habitually recognizes that ignorance, as much as hunger and thirst, belongs to human nature: cf. Thesaur. 22 (P. G. lxxv. p. 373).