Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

To the Monk Urbicius. 3184
Letter CCLXII. 3183
1. You have done well to write to me. You have shewn how great is the fruit of charity.
Continue so to do. Do not think that, when you write to me, you need offer excuses. I recognise
my own position, and I know that by nature every man is of equal honour with the
rest. Whatever excellence there is in me is not of family, nor of superfluous wealth, nor of
physical condition; it comes only of superiority in the fear of God. What, then, hinders you
from fearing the Lord yet more, and so, in this respect, being greater than I am? Write often
to me, and acquaint me with the condition of the brotherhood with you. Tell me what
members of the Church in your parts are sound, that I may know to whom I ought to write,
and in whom I may confide. I am told that there are some who are endeavouring to deprave
the right doctrine of the Lord’s incarnation by perverse opinions, and I therefore call upon
them through you to hold off from those unreasonable views, which some are reported to
me to hold. I mean that God Himself was turned into flesh; that He did not assume, through
the Holy Mary, the nature 3185 of Adam, but, in His own proper Godhead, was changed into
a material nature. 3186
2. This absurd position can be easily confuted. The blasphemy is its own conviction,
and I therefore think that, for one who fears the Lord, the mere reminder is enough. If He
was turned, then He was changed. But far be it from me to say or think such a thing, when
God has declared, “I am the Lord, I change not.” 3187 Moreover, how could the benefit of
the incarnation be conveyed to us, unless our body, joined to the Godhead, was made superior
to the dominion of death? If He was changed, He no longer constituted a proper body,
such as subsisted after the combination with it of the divine body. 3188 But how, if all the
nature of the Only-begotten was changed, could the incomprehensible Godhead be circumscribed
within the limit of the mass of a little body? I am sure that no one who is in his
3183 Placed in 377.
3184 cf. Letters cxxiii. and ccclxvi.
3185 φύραμα.
3186 φύσις.
3187 Mal. iii. 6.
3188 The sentence in all the mss. (except the Codex Coislin. II., which has ὁ τραπεὶς) begins οὐ τραπείς. The
Ben. Ed. propose simply to substitute εἰ for οὐ, and render “Si enim conversus est, proprium constituit corpus,
quod videlicet densata in ipsa deitate, substitit.” I have endeavoured to force a possible meaning on the Greek
as it stands, though παχυνθείσης more naturally refers to the unorthodox change than to the orthodox conjunc-
tion. The original is οὐ γὰρ τραπεὶς οἰκεῖον ὑπεστήσατο σῶμα, ὅπερ, παχυνθείσης αὐτῷ τῆς θεϊκῆς φύσεως,
ὑπέστη.
To the Monk Urbicius.
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