Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

196 OPUSCULE 3
56A
B
C
D
the manifestation of wonders will clearly be shown to be
something monstrous. Perhaps it is common by nature to
them both: but how can the will be common by nature to
natures that are different? Perhaps it is a composite whole (to
introduce a new myth and a new substance)? But what is a
composite will? Again you have alienated him from the
Father, characterizing by a composite will a sole composite
hypostasis. Thus will the Word, when it comes, uproot every
plant that the Father has not planted, 18 since he is not
disposed to acquire a strange field.
But it appears that Severus destroys the natural will of
Christ’s humanity, not seeing that this movement of desire is
constituted as the most proper and primary property of every
rational nature. The Fathers seeing this, openly confessed the
difference between two natural, but not gnomic, wills in
Christ. They did not however say that there was any difference
of gnomic wills in Christ, lest they proclaim him doubleminded
and double-willed, and fighting against himself, so to
speak, in the discord of his thoughts, and therefore doublepersoned.
For they knew that it was only this difference of
gnomic wills that introduced into our lives sin and our
separation from God. For evil consists in nothing else than this
difference of our gnomic will from the divine will, which occurs
by the introduction of an opposing quantity, thus making them
numerically different, and shows the opposition of our gnomic
will to God.
Nestorius and Severus, therefore, have one aim in their
ungodliness, even if the mode is different. For the one, afraid of
confusion, flees from the hypostatic union and makes the
essential difference a personal division. The other, afraid of
division, denies the essential difference and turns the
hypostatic union into a natural confusion. It is necessary to
confess neither confusion in Christ, nor division, but the union
of those that are essentially different, and the difference of
those that are hypostatically united, in order that the principle
of the essences and the mode of the union might be reverently
proclaimed. But they break asunder both of these: Nestorius
only confirms a union of gnomic qualities, Severus only
confirms the difference of natural qualities after the union, 19
and both of them have missed the truth of things. The one
recklessly ascribes division to the mystery, the other confusion.