A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

731For as His most holy and immaculately animated flesh was notdestroyed because it was deified [θεωθεῖσα], but continued in itsown state and nature, so also His human will, although deified,was not taken away, but rather was preserved according to thesaying of Gregory the Theologian: 300 “His will, namely that ofthe Saviour, is not contrary to God, but altogether deified.”We glorify two natural operations, indivisibly, unchangeably,inseparably, unconfusedly, in the same our Lord Jesus Christ,our true God, that is to say, a divine operation and a human oper- [670]ation, according to the divine preacher Leo, who most distinctlysays as follows: “For each form does in communion with theother what pertains to it, namely the Word doing what pertainsto the Word, and the flesh what pertains to the flesh.” 301 For wewill not admit one natural operation of God and of the creature,that we may not exalt into the divine essence what is created, norwill we bring down the glory of the divine nature to the placesuited for those things which have been made. We recognize themiracles and the sufferings as of one and the same person, but ofone or of the other nature of which He is, and in which He has Hisexistence, as the admirable Cyril said. Preserving in all respects,therefore, the unconfusedness and indivisibility, we express allin brief phrase: Believing that our Lord Jesus Christ, one of theTrinity also after the incarnation, is our true God, we say thatHis two natures shone forth in His one subsistence [hypostasis],in which were both the miracles and the suffering throughout thewhole incarnate life, 302 not in appearance merely but in reality,the difference as to nature being recognized in one and the samesubsistence; for, although joined together, each nature wills and300 I.e., Gregory Nazianzus.301 Leo, Ep. ad Flavianum, ch. 4: Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius communionequod proprium est, Verbo scilicet operante quod Verbi est, et carneexsequente quod carnis est; unum horum coruscat miraculis, aliud succumbitiniuriis; v. supra, § 90, b.302 Greek: economic life.