CPG 3657
Author Apollinaris
Greek Text Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen, 237-242.

Fragment 121: If someone takes something on he is not turned into it. Christ took on flesh. Therefore he was not turned into flesh.

Fragment 122: For also he gave himself to us as a relative through the body so that he might save. That which saves is much better than that which is saved. Therefore he is much better than us also in his embodiment. He would not be better if he were turned into flesh.

Fragment 123: That which is simple is one but that which is composed cannot be one. Therefore the one who says he has become flesh speaks of a turning of the one Word. But if that which is composed is one like a man, he who because of the unity with the flesh says, “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14) speaks of that which is one by composition.

Fragment 124: The incarnation is an emptying. The emptying showed not a man but a son of man who emptied himself according to a clothing, not according to a changing.

Fragment 125: Therefore the things of God and of the body are united. Worshipped Demiurge, being Wisdom and Power, eternal—these things are from deity. Son of Mary, born in the last time, worshipping God, advancing in wisdom, strengthened in power—these things are from the body. The suffering for sin and the curse arrived and he will not pass or be transformed into bodilessness.

Fragment 126: People are consubstantial with the irrational animals according to their irrational bodies but are not consubstantial as they are rational. So also God, although consubstantial with people according to the flesh, is not consubstantial as he is Word and God.

Fragment 127: The qualities of things which have been combined are mixed and not destroyed, such that something is also separated from the mixed things like wine from water. And the combining to a body is not of combining bodies to bodies but having also that which is unmixed such that also the energy of the deity is at all times either individual from or added to what is lacking. This is just what happened while the Lord was fasting. When the deity was mixed in, hunger was prevented by its sufficiency, but when it did not add its sufficiency to the lacking, hunger happened to destroy the devil. If the mixing of bodies did not alter them, how much more the mixing of the deity.

Fragment 128: If mixed with iron, fire, which shows itself as iron such that also the things of fire are at work, did not change its nature. Nor is the union of God with the body a change of the body even though the body provides the divine energies to those who can possess them.

Fragment 129: If man has both soul and body and remains these things while being in a unity. Much more so Christ in having deity with body has both persisting and not being mixed.

Fragment 130: For the human shares the divine energy in keeping with how far it reaches. The greatest is something different than the least. And the servant is a man of God but God is not the servant of man nor of himself. And the one is the product of God and the other is neither the product of man or of himself.

Fragment 131: If someone takes, “the things he sees the Father doing he also does” (Jn 5:19), according to the deity in Christ and not the flesh, according to which the incarnate one was independent of the not incarnate Father, he divides two energies. But it is not divided. Therefore he does not speak of deity.

Fragment 132: Just as man is not irrational because the rational attached to the irrational, so neither is the Savior a creature because the creature is attached to the uncreated God.

Fragment 133: He combined the invisible to a visible body and although seen through it he remains invisible. And he also remains uncompounded as he is not circumscribed by the body. And the body, which remains in its own measure, takes on the union with God in keeping with being made alive and it does not make alive that which is made alive.

Fragment 134: If the mixing of the soul with the body, although being from the beginning according to natural connection, neither makes it visible because of the body nor mutates it into the other attributes of the body such that it would be both cut and diminished, then how much more is the God who has no natural connection with a body united to the body without mutation. And if the body of a man remains in the case of its own nature, and this mean with a soul, then in the case of Christ the mixing neither mutated the body so that there was no body. . . .

Fragment 135: He who confesses soul and body as being presented to him by Scripture as one fights this kind of union of the Word with the body by claiming it is a mutation, which in the case of the soul has not been seen.

Fragment 136: If those who do not say the flesh of the Lord remains act ungodlessly, how much more those who do not confess that the beginning has become incarnate.

Fragment 137: John spoke of “the destroyed temple,” that is, the body of the one who raised it (Jn 2:19). The body is altogether one with it and there is no one else besides them. And if the body of the Lord has become one with the Lord, the properties of the body were made his properties because of the body.

Fragment 138: For this is true, that the joining with the body is not one which circumscribes the Word, in which case it would have nothing more than bodiness. Therefore even in death immortality remains for him. For if he is above this combining, he is also above dissolving, and death is a dissolving. For he was neither embraced by the combining (for then the world would have been emptied), nor did he in the dissolving have the lacking which comes from dissolving like the soul does.

Fragment 139: Just as the Savior says the dead will come forth from their tombs and yet the souls do not go forth from there, so he says that he is raised from the dead and yet the body is what is raised.

Fragment 140: The union of God with the flesh was something remarkable and marvelous and happening once and not a second time. Your soul by no means receives this nor do the souls of those who are leading you to this godlessness and anti-Christian unbelief. Yet you make sport of the highest union and say, “No longer do the things of God and the things of the flesh remain if there is a union, but the high union is broken if we confess the highest union according to the flesh from David.”

Fragment 141: So you are bothered that we do not allow that which is from the seed of David to take on immortality by the grace of God. And when we are asked the reason, we say, “He took it on because of the highest union.”

Fragment 142: And he is not ashamed to say that the nature is the same but the birth is different. It would be worthless and superfluous for the birth from the virgin to be introduced if the one born were not also deserving of this birth but the same as those born of a man and a woman. He mocks as highest godlessness the highest union which the divine Scriptures clearly introduce, neither making the human destructive to God nor turning the human divine.

Fragment 143: And since you encourage us answer, “How is the seed of David that which is from the divine essence?” Hear that it is according to the incarnation. “How is the created uncreated?” Since it was united to the uncreated. “How is the fruit of David’s loins the Demiurge of creation?” Since it was united to the Demiurge. “How is that which is from Abraham before Abraham?” Since it was united to what was before Abraham.

Fragment 144: But let the fool read these things: How was that which was joined with God according to the unity of person not God with him? How was that which was united to the uncreated according to the living unity not uncreated with him? For if the title is not shared then in this way there is nothing which is mixed. And it is the most irrational thing of all if we named the bodiless with the names of the body because we say that the Word has become flesh but we do not address the body with the name of the bodiless in keeping with the union with it surely. And if he wonders how the created is united so that it is addressed as uncreated, how much more will someone else rightly wonder how the uncreated is united so that it is addressed as created flesh.

Fragment 145: If the Word is named flesh because of the union (Jn 1:14), it follows also that the flesh is named Word because of the union. As it is the Word, so also it is uncreated, not because it was not created but because the Word is displayed from this union.

Fragment 146: People are consubstantial with the irrational animals according to their irrational bodies but are not consubstantial as they are rational. So also God, although consubstantial with people according to the flesh, is not consubstantial as he is Word and God.

Translated by AMJ

Last updated: 6-13-2013

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