The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: BOOK II 81
openly declares Him to be from two, in that by confessing Christ jointly
in Divinity and humanity he declares in confessing that He is composed
from Divinity and humanity. And he who says He is from two introduces
absolutely the confession that He is in two, in that by saying that Christ
comes from Divinity and humanity he confesses that He exists in Divinity
and humanity. Neither was the £esh transformed into Divinity, nor
again did the Divinity proceed into £esh. From these came the ine¡able
union, so that through the expression ‘from two’ the expression ‘in two’
is thereupon ¢ttingly understood, and through ‘in two’, ‘from two’, and
neither is absent from the other. As a result, in accordance with its superabundance,
not only is there recognized the whole from its parts but
also the whole in its parts. And nevertheless men consider these things
to be so distinct from one another, from some habit concerning their
glori¢cation of God or indeed from a prior decision to think thus, that
they scorn every form of death rather than move to approval of the
reality. 85 Hence the events I have described arose. So much for these
things.
6 During these times a dearth of rainwater occurred in Phrygia and
Galatia and Cappadocia and Cilicia, so that from shortage of necessities
men partook even of more harmful nourishment; consequently plague
too arose. They fell sick from the change of diet, and as their bodies
became bloated from excess of in£ammation they lost their sight,
coughing supervened, and on the third day they departed life. And for
the time being it was impossible to discover a remedy for the plague, but
the universal saviour Providence granted relief from the famine for the
survivors, by pouring down nourishment from the sky in the unproductive
year, as for the Israelites (that was called manna), [54] while in the
following year granting that crops be brought to fruition of their own
accord. These things were allocated also to the province of Palestine and
85 Habit and prejudgement of the issues highlight two factors that made the Chalcedonian
dispute intractable. For many Christians the attack on Dioscorus of Alexandria,
coupled with the restoration of supporters of Nestorius, such as Theodoret and Ibas,
branded the Council of Chalcedon as Nestorian, and no amount of explanation could shift
this perception. Another related problem, noted in a letter from Pope Leo to the rebel
monks in Palestine, was the language barrier (ACO II.iv, p. 159:3^8): concepts which it
was hard for Leo to express in his own language, Latin, or which he may have simpli¢ed in
the interests of clarity, could all too easily, through inexperience or malice, be altered signi¢cantly
when translated into Greek.