Letter 262

262. To Urbicius, a Monk

You did well in writing to us, for you showed no small fruit of love; and do this continually. But do not suppose that you have any need of excuse when you write to us. For we know ourselves, and we know that for every man there is by nature an equality of like honour toward all, and that the points of superiority among us are not according to family, nor according to abundance of money, nor according to the frame of the body, but according to the superiority of the fear of God. So what hinders you, who fear the Master more, from being in this very respect greater than we? Write to us continually, then, and let us know how the brotherhood about you fares, and which members of the Church among you are in health — that we may know to whom we should write, and on whom we may rest. And since I hear that there are certain men who, with distorted suppositions, falsify the right doctrine concerning the incarnation of the Lord, I beseech them, through your love, to refrain from that absurd notion which some are reported to us to hold: that God Himself was turned into flesh, and did not assume the lump of Adam through holy Mary, but that He Himself, in His own Godhead, was changed into the material nature.

Now to refute this absurdity is altogether easy. But since the blasphemy carries its plainness in itself, I think that for one who fears the Lord even the bare reminder suffices. For if He was turned, then He was also altered. But far be it from us either to say or to think this, since God said, "I am, and I am not altered." Again, how did the benefit of the incarnation pass over to us, if our body, joined to the Godhead, did not become superior to the dominion of death? For He did not, by being turned, take to Himself His own body, which He would have taken on by His divine nature being thickened. And how was the incomprehensible Godhead circumscribed within the small bulk of a body, if the whole nature of the Only-begotten was turned?

But I think that no one who has a mind and possesses the fear of God suffers from this sickness. Yet since report came to me that some of those with your love are in this weakness of reasoning, I thought it necessary not to make my greeting bare, but to have in our letter something of such a kind as can build up the souls of those who fear the Lord. These things, then, we exhort: that you obtain correction in the manner of the Church, and that you keep yourselves from communion with the heretics, knowing that to be indifferent in these matters takes away our boldness before Christ.