Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

182 OPUSCULE 7
D
76A
B
C
imperfect and as suffering the lack of what is naturally his.
For unless the Incarnate Word guards without loss the
properties of both natures (without sin [Heb. 4:15], according
to the teaching of the divine Fathers), out of which and in
which 10 he properly is, even after the union, 11 then he exists as
a defective God. His Godhead is then altogether imperfect. And
his humanity is also defective, since it is altogether diminished
in what is natural to it.
It is not then necessary, on the pretext of a union that
harms neither of the elements, but only binds them
hypostatically into one, to destroy their existence by the denial
of the natural will and the essential energy. For either, as
making a whole out of parts, we melt down the two essential
wills and the same number of natural energies and recast them
by composition as one will and one energy, as in the myths,
and there is manifest something completely strange and
foreign to communion with either the Father or with us, for he
does not have by nature a composite will or energy, nor do we.
For there is no composition of those things in the underlying
subject, because existence is not at all beheld in the things
themselves and outside the underlying substance. For it is
grotesque and utterly abominable to admit that what is above
and what is below, that are bound in natural kinship with both
natures, should be divided and cut in two by being torn
asunder— these natures that are bound together in the
inseparable hypostatic union. Or again we preserve
unblemished the natural will of the divine nature of the
Incarnate Word, and the energy that essentially goes with it,
and remove and reject them from the nature of its humanity.
And thus we damage the union that is beyond nature, which
no longer has anything to bind it to the one hypostasis, and the
flesh endowed with a rational soul and mind, that is of our
nature and substance, is not at all preserved sound and whole
in the Word. For what kind of a nature is that which has
suffered loss of what belongs to it by nature?
If then the Lord lacks these, or some of these, natural
properties that belong to the flesh, then the flesh and
humanity do not wholly exist. For how can those who say
these things show that he is truly a human being by nature
without these properties, or wholly human. Since he is no such
thing, it is clear that the Word made flesh has not, become a
human being, for he is deprived by nature of these, or some of
these, properties. How then and by what reason can there be a
nature that lacks such things? For what there is is something