this philosophic basis, you cannot possibly admit one person having two natures. Nor does he. In this book, as before, to Nestorius "Christ" denotes a composite being, or rather two beings, two persons joined together in a merely moral union, working together, much as we conceive the Spirit of God working with a prophet. There are two persons in the strict sense, two prosopa: "I say two natures, and he who is clothed is one, he who clothes is another; and there are two prosopa, of him who clothes and of him who is clothed."[1] There then emerges an artificial (double) prosopon of union, as a servant who represents his king may be said to be the king's prosopon, to act in the king's person.[2] The union of God and man in Christ is only a moral union, a union of love and will (not a natural, inseparable, physical union); the prosopon of union is one of "economy" (presumably as members of a corporation form one artificial person, a "persona moralis" by "economy"): "The natures[3] joined by will receive their union, not in one nature, but to produce the union of will in a prosopon of economy."[4] The body and the human nature of Christ are the temple and garment only of the Word of God.[5] God and man in him are like the fire in the burning bush—fire and bush distinct.[6] "Christ" (the morally united being), not the Word of God, has two natures.[7] It cannot be admitted that the Word of God was born of a woman, died, was buried, rose again, and so on.[8] Lastly, Heraklides gives the same insufficient compromise about the θεοτόκος as we have already noted in his earlier writings.[9] "Show me," he says, "that God the Word was born in the flesh of a woman."[10] "The
- ↑ Ed. Nau, p. 193; cf. pp. 268, 274, 183, etc.
- ↑ Ib. p. 52.
- ↑ He always supposes nature and person as the same thing.
- ↑ Ib. p. 35; cf. 53, 63.
- ↑ Ib. pp. 139, 159.
- ↑ Ib. p. 141.
- ↑ Ib. p. 150.
- ↑ Ib. p. 148. This point (a favourite with Nestorius) should make the issue, and his heresy, clear. We say: the Word of God certainly was born of a woman and died, though not in his divine nature. We adore him who was born of Mary and died on the Cross. But we could not adore him unless he were God. The Word was made flesh (that is, was born of a woman), and dwelt amongst us till he died, was buried, rose again.
- ↑ Above, p. 69, n. 2.
- ↑ Heraklides, ed. cit. p. 131. An unaccountably rash challenge. We have only to show him the fourth Gospel, i. 14.
