Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

174 TEXTS
1056A
D
B
shows that what we can naturally move by our intention is
moved by himself. This the teacher makes plain in what follows
when he says, ‘And who could go through all the rest? One who
looks through them divinely in a way that transcends the
intellect will know that the affirmations concerning Jesus’ love
for humankind have the power of transcendent negations.’ For
when the Word beyond being, in accordance with his ineffable
conception, put on with the [human] nature everything that
belongs to [human] nature, he possessed no human affirmation
in accordance with natural reason, which was not also divine,
negated in a mode beyond nature. The knowledge of these
things exists beyond the intellect as indemonstrable, its only
conviction being the faith of those who sincerely worship the
mystery of Christ. And giving, as it were, the comprehensive
meaning of this, he says, ‘For, to speak briefly, he was not
human’, because he was free by nature of every natural
necessity, since he did not owe his existence to the ordinance
of generation that holds with us; ‘nor was he non-human’,
because he was in the whole of his being truly human, not
lacking by nature anything that is natural to us; ‘but coming
from humanity’, since he was consubstantial with us, being
human by nature as we are; ‘transcending the human’,
circumscribing our nature by fresh ways of being, which are
not ours; ‘in a way beyond the human he truly became
human’, possessing unimpaired ways of being beyond nature
and logoi of being in accordance with nature, he united them
one with another. Their coming together would have been
inconceivable, had not he, to whom nothing is inconceivable,
become the true union, not acting through either of the
natures of which he was the hypostasis separately from the
other, but rather confirming each through the other. Since in
truth he was both, he existed as God moving his own
humanity, and as man revealing his own Godhead. Divinely, if
I may so speak, he experienced suffering, for he suffered
willingly, since he was not a mere man, and humanly he
performed wonders, for he did them through the flesh, since he
was not naked God. As his sufferings were wonderful, since
they had become new through the natural divine power of the
One who suffered, so were his wonders suffered, since they
were fulfilled through the natural suffering power of the flesh
of the One who worked these wonders. Knowing this, the
teacher said, ‘Furthermore, the divine things did not take
place divinely’, because they did not take place in a solely
divine way, as if separated from the flesh, for he was not