Letter 261

261. To the People of Sozopolis

I have read your letter, most honoured brethren, which you sent concerning your affairs. And that you have taken us as partners in care, for the attention to matters necessary and worthy of zeal among you, we gave thanks to the Lord. But we groaned on hearing that, in addition to the disturbance brought upon the Churches by the Arians, and to the confusion which they have made concerning the doctrine of the faith, yet another novel utterance has appeared among you, casting the brotherhood into great distress — men, as you wrote to us, introducing things new and strange to the ears of the faithful, as though from the teaching of the Scriptures. For you wrote that there are certain ones among you who, as far as in them lies, dissolve the saving dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and set aside the grace of the great mystery, which was kept silent from the ages but made manifest in its own times, when the Lord, having gone through all that pertains to the care of the human race, at the last bestowed upon us His own coming. For He benefited His own creature, first through the patriarchs, whose lives were set forth as examples and rules for those who wish to follow in the footsteps of the saints and, by a zeal like theirs, to attain the perfection of good works. Then He gave the law as a help, ordaining it through angels by the hand of Moses; then prophets, foretelling the salvation that was to be; judges, kings, righteous men, working mighty deeds by a hidden hand. After all these, in the last of the days, He Himself was made manifest in the flesh, born of a woman, born under the law, that He might redeem those under the law, that we might receive the adoption.

If, then, the coming of the Lord in the flesh did not take place, the Redeemer did not give the price for us to death, nor did He break through the kingdom of death by Himself. For if what was ruled by death was one thing, and what was assumed by the Lord another, then death would not have ceased working its own works, nor would the sufferings of the God-bearing flesh have become our gain; He did not slay sin in the flesh; we who died in Adam were not made alive in Christ; what had fallen was not refashioned, what had been broken down was not set upright, what had been estranged through the deceit of the serpent was not made akin to God again. For all these things are done away with by those who say that the Lord came having a heavenly body. And what need was there of the holy Virgin, if the God-bearing flesh was not to be assumed from the lump of Adam? But who is so reckless as now to renew, through sophistical phrases and a supposed witness from the Scriptures, the doctrine of Valentinus, long ago silenced? For this impiety is no newer than the docetic heresy, but began long ago from the vain-minded Valentinus, who, having torn away a few phrases of the apostle, contrived for himself an impious fabrication — saying that the Lord took the form of a servant, and not the servant himself, and saying that the Lord came to be in fashion, but not that He Himself assumed the man. To these men these others seem to utter kindred things — men whom one should bewail, as they bring upon you these newfangled disturbances.

But to say that the sufferings of the man pass over to the Godhead itself is the work of those who in no way preserve consistency in their reasonings, and who do not know that the sufferings of flesh are one thing, of ensouled flesh another, and of a soul making use of a body another. For proper to flesh is to be cut and diminished and dissolved; and again, proper to ensouled flesh is to be wearied and to feel pain, to hunger and thirst and be overcome by sleep; while of a soul making use of a body are griefs and distresses and cares and the like. Of these, some are natural and necessary to the living being, while others, brought in through an ill-disposed will, arise from a life ill-trained and unexercised toward virtue. Hence the Lord is seen to have accepted the natural sufferings, for the confirmation of His true and not merely apparent incarnation, but to have put away the sufferings that come from vice — all that befoul the purity of our life — as unworthy of the undefiled Godhead. For this reason it is said that He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh — not in the likeness of flesh, as these men suppose, but in the likeness of sinful flesh — so that He took our flesh with its natural sufferings, but committed no sin. But as death, which is in the flesh, transmitted to us through Adam, was swallowed up by the Godhead, so also sin was utterly consumed by the righteousness that is in Christ Jesus; so that in the resurrection we recover the flesh, neither liable to death nor subject to sin.

These, brethren, are the mysteries of the Church; these are the traditions of the fathers. We solemnly charge every man who fears the Lord and awaits the judgment of God not to be carried away by various teachings. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to the sound words of the faith, but, thrusting aside the oracles of the Spirit, makes his own teaching more authoritative than the evangelical doctrines, beware of such a one.

And may the Lord grant that we may one day come together with one another, so that all that has escaped our discourse we may supply through meeting face to face. For we have written to you few things out of many, not wishing to go beyond the measure of a letter, and at the same time being persuaded that for those who fear the Lord even a reminder in few words suffices.