NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

To the Monk Urbicius.Letter CCLXII. 3183To the Monk Urbicius. 31841. 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 recognisemy own position, and I know that by nature every man is of equal honour with therest. Whatever excellence there is in me is not of family, nor of superfluous wealth, nor ofphysical condition; it comes only of superiority in the fear of God. What, then, hinders youfrom fearing the Lord yet more, and so, in this respect, being greater than I am? Write oftento me, and acquaint me with the condition of the brotherhood with you. Tell me whatmembers 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 depravethe right doctrine of the Lord’s incarnation by perverse opinions, and I therefore call uponthem through you to hold off from those unreasonable views, which some are reported tome to hold. I mean that God Himself was turned into flesh; that He did not assume, throughthe Holy Mary, the nature 3185 of Adam, but, in His own proper Godhead, was changed intoa material nature. 31862. 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 Hewas turned, then He was changed. But far be it from me to say or think such a thing, whenGod has declared, “I am the Lord, I change not.” 3187 Moreover, how could the benefit ofthe incarnation be conveyed to us, unless our body, joined to the Godhead, was made superiorto 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 thenature of the Only-begotten was changed, could the incomprehensible Godhead be circumscribedwithin the limit of the mass of a little body? I am sure that no one who is in his3183 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. TheBen. 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 Greekas it stands, though παχυνθείσης more naturally refers to the unorthodox change than to the orthodox conjunction.The original is οὐ γὰρ τραπεὶς οἰκεῖον ὑπεστήσατο σῶμα, ὅπερ, παχυνθείσης αὐτῷ τῆς θεϊκῆς φύσεως,ὑπέστη.822