CPG 3668
Author Apollinaris
Greek Text Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen, 255-256.

To my most honorable lords, the bishops in Diocaesarea. Greetings in the Lord.

1. We expect, having sent letters of honor, to be met by your love, most honorable lords, similarly as we always have been by the blessed bishop Athanasius, as he knew that we were both in harmony with him in doctrine and obedient concerning all things. Since you did not write against us, we, concluding because of this that perhaps the length of the letter made our knowledge not clear to you, so clearly write what follows your and our shared teacher. I am talking about the divine incarnation, since there is much upheaval because of these things, stirred not by us but by others I won’t mention.

2. We confess not that the Word of God stayed in a holy man as it did in the prophets but that the Word himself became flesh without assuming a human mind—a mind which changes and is imprisoned by filthy thoughts—but being a divine mind, unchanging and heavenly. Therefore the Savior also did not have a body which was soulless, senseless, or mindless, for it could not be, since the Lord became man for our sake, that his body was mindless. Being truly the Son of God he also became the Son of Man. And being the only-begotten Son of God, the same one also became “the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom 8:29). Therefore the one who was the Son of God before Abraham was not one person and the one after Abraham another, but there is one complete only-begotten of God. It is complete with respect to a divine completeness and not a human one. We confess that we are in fellowship with those who think these things. But we are not in fellowship with those who think and write contrariwise.

Translated by AMJ

Last updated: 6-13-2013

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