The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

8
EVAGRIUS
contrived a variation even of a letter, which on the one hand tends
towards the same meaning, but still in such a way that he might separate
the thought from the utterance so that both might not harmoniously
o¡er to God the same confession and praise. 13 How each of these things
was done and where each has ended up, I shall set out at the appropriate
times, interweaving in addition anything else which I may have been
able to discover which is incidental but worthy of narration, and laying
aside the narrative at the point where it may please our benevolent God.
[7] 2 Nestorius, then, the tongue that fought God, the second sanhedrin
of Caiaphas, 14 the factory of blasphemy, in whom Christ is again a
subject of contract and sale, by having His natures divided and torn
apart ^ He who, according to Scripture, 15 even on the Cross itself did
not have any of His bones broken, nor His continuously woven tunic
One di⁄culty for Festugie' re’s proposal is that Evagrius has not mentioned the term
homoousios, or indeed anything so doctrinally speci¢c; in his translation Festugie' re had to
supply ‘Le mot . . .’, but this solution threatens to introduce an ambiguity between this word
and the one which the Devil manages to counterfeit. I would prefer to identify the adversary
as the Jews, who were the Devil’s sole enemy before the coming of Christ but whom the
Devil now cherishes and embraces to the extent of attempting to seduce Christians
towards Judaism; Nestorius, widely regarded as an advocate of Judaism (see n. 11 above),
was therefore the Devil’s ambassador. Judaism is mentioned immediately before the introduction
of the ‘only adversary’, so the connection is easy.
As Festugie' re recognized, the counterfeited word has to be interpreted in the light of the
next sentence, as an anticipation of the Chalcedonian^Monophysite dispute between e ’n
(‘in’) and e ’k (‘out of’), for which cf. Evagrius ii.5, pp. 52:27^53:20, and the next note. The
Devil was no longer able to dislodge Christians from the entirety of their faith (cf. Theodoret,
EH i.2), in that both sides in the Christological dispute acknowledged the same God and
Christ. Although the attempt introduced dissension into the Christian community, the
overall result was a failure for the Devil since Nestorius was ousted and his followers
exiled, while the competing communities of Chalcedonians and Monophysites both acknowledged
the same God. For the use of the terminology of counterfeiting and forgery
with reference to heresy, cf., for example, Socrates ii.45.2; ACO I.i.3, pp. 14:23, 69:17, etc.
13 Cf. Evagrius ii.5, pp. 52:27^53:20, where Evagrius argues for the identity of meaning
of the Chalcedonian and Monophysite formulae, but laments the fact that the adversaries
prefer to die rather than agree about the glori¢cation of God.
14 Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest responsible for the condemnation of Christ, was an
apposite parallel for Nestorius as patriarch (428^31). According to Severus (Letters 39, p.
300) Anastasius had used the analogy to describe the neo-Arian Council of Constantinople
in 360.
15 John 19.24, 36.