st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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THE FONS SCIENTI/E." 77
most subtle and refined part of the soul. For as
an eye in the body, so is mind in the soul." The
chapters which follow treat of man s faculties, and in
of his freedom of will. The fall of man is
particular
the subject with which the third book begins (c. xlv.);
but it is treated in a brief, rhetorical kind of way.
Nothing is said as to the literal or figurative meaning
of the act of our first parents ;
but some reflections
on it, in an oratorical strain, are made to introduce
the subject of Christ s incarnation. The personality
and twofold nature of Christ are discussed at length,
and with great dialectic skill. This naturally leads
the author to one of his favourite topics, the monophysite
doctrines in ; handling which he relates the
addition to the "Trisagion,"
or "Ter Sanctus," made
by the monophysite patriarch of Alexandria, Peter the
Fuller 1 (c. liv.).
A fruitful source of error he declares
to have been the confusion of nature with personality
(hypostasis). A man consists of soul and body,
which, when compared with each other, are as un
like as possible. And yet we can truly say, of any
given man, that he has one common nature human
nature. Because, while there is an infinite number of
individual men, and no two of them exactly alike,
all these individual personalities (hypostases) are so
far after the same pattern, that they all consist of
soul and body. Hence it is allowable to speak of
man. But when the
one nature in any particular
1
The surname of Gnapheus, Fuller or Cloth-dresser, was
given him from the circumstance of his having worked at this
employment when a monk. He lived in the reign of Anastasius
(491-518).