The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of PhilosophyBoethius
Religion
The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius
Happiness; Philosophy and religion; Theology -- Early works to 1800; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
What kind of union, then, between God and man has been effected? Is it
as when two bodies are laid the one against the other, so that they are
only joined locally, and no touch of the quality of the one reaches the
other--the kind of union which the Greeks term [Greek: kata parathesin]
"by juxtaposition"? But if humanity has been united to divinity in this
way no one thing has been formed out of the two, and hence Christ is
nothing. The very name of Christ, indeed, denotes by its singular number
a unity. But if the two persons continued and such a union of natures as
we have above described took place, there could be no unity formed from
two things, for nothing could ever possibly be formed out of two
persons. Therefore Christ is, according to Nestorius, in no respect one,
and therefore He is absolutely nothing. For what is not one cannot exist
either; because Being and unity are convertible terms, and whatever is
one is. Even things which are made up of many items, such as a heap or
chorus, are nevertheless a unity. Now we openly and honestly confess
that Christ is; therefore we say that Christ is a Unity. And if this is
so, then without controversy the Person of Christ is one also. For if
the Persons were two He could not be one; but to say that there are two
Christs is nothing else than the madness of a distraught brain. Could
Nestorius, I ask, dare to call the one man and the one God in Christ two
Christs? Or why does he call Him Christ who is God, if he is also going
to call Him Christ who is man, when his combination gives the two no
common factor, no coherence? Why does he wrongly use the same name for
two utterly different natures, when, if he is compelled to define
Christ, he cannot, as he himself admits, apply the substance of one
definition to both his Christs? For if the substance of God is different
from that of man, and the one name of Christ applies to both, and the
combination of different substances is not believed to have formed one
Person, the name of Christ is equivocal[66] and cannot be comprised in
one definition. But in what Scriptures is the name of Christ ever made
double? Or what new thing has been wrought by the coming of the Saviour?
For the truth of the faith and the unwontedness of the miracle alike
remain, for Catholics, unshaken. For how great and unprecedented a thing
it is--unique and incapable of repetition in any other age--that the
nature of Him who is God alone should come together with human nature
which was entirely different from God to form from different natures by
conjunction a single Person! But now, if we follow Nestorius, what
happens that is new? "Humanity and divinity," quoth he, "keep their
proper Persons." Well, when had not divinity and humanity each its
proper Person? And when, we answer, will this not be so? Or wherein is
the birth of Jesus more significant than that of any other child, if,
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