Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

77A
D
B
TEXTS 183
quite other than our nature and completely foreign to it,
indeed, utterly unknown: it existed with him from the
beginning, and descending from above it came down with him,
which is clearly what they think happened. 12 But why then did
the descent to us take place? For we do not come close to him
through his assumption of the holy flesh and hypostatic union
with it, if it is not taken from us. The whole thing is an unreal
delusion, a mere form deceiving the senses, and not the
substance of flesh, nor the first-fruits of our race, unifying by
grace the whole lump, 13 and dissolving all the divisions
introduced by the transgression of the old Adam, through
which nature has been condemned to death.
Why do they begrudge us a perfect salvation and a perfect
confession? Why do they direct against us syllogisms from
which there is no escape, and assert that wills follow from
energies, and that with this there follows contradiction, from
which they introduce wills that conflict. Why should I omit to
refute these charges? From where, and how, do they get these
arguments? Why do they want to learn and enquire about only
one thing, as if this were the only thing that mattered, and
bring in the new Ecthesis, 14 imposing it involuntarily, and
introducing force? Then, if they introduce the will after the
action, since there was certainly no will before, where does it
come from? And who is forced to have the will of the one who
performed the action, so that what is done is done against his
will, and acquiesced in contrary to his purpose? How again, if
the Word made flesh does not himself will naturally as a
human being and perform things in accordance with nature,
how can he willingly undergo hunger and thirst, labour and
weariness, sleep and all the rest? For the Word does not
simply will and perform these things in accordance with the
infinite nature beyond being that he has together with the
Father and the Son, for as the divine teacher of Nyssa, the
great Gregory, says, ‘with divine authority, he gives the nature
time, when it wishes, to perform what belongs to itself.’ 15 For
if it is only as God that he wills these things, and not as
himself being a human being, then either the body has become
divine by nature, or the Word has changed its nature and
become flesh by loss of its own Godhead, or the flesh is not at
all in itself endowed with a rational soul, but is in itself
completely lifeless and irrational.
If, then, [his humanity] has a rational soul, then it possesses
the natural will. For everything that is rational by nature,
certainly also possesses a will by nature. If then, as man, he