CPG 3652
Author Apollinaris
Greek Text Lietzmann, Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen, 208-232.
Notes Italicized fragments are those Lietzmann was unsure of the degree to which this was a direct quote or a paraphrase.

Fragment 13: The godly faith must only be considered good, for the unexamined faith did not sit even with Eve. Therefore it is also allowed for the faith of Christians to be investigated so that it does not somehow secretly concur with the teachings of the Greeks or the Jews.

Fragment 14: Among the unbelievers and the heretics it echoes forth that it is impossible for God to become man and come into contact with sufferings. This is also, because of the schism of the faith, introduced among the heretics, for they because of his birth from a woman and because of his sufferings say that Christ was a God-filled man.

Fragment 15: Calling Christ a God-filled man is contrary to the apostolic teachings and foreign to the synods. Paul and Photinus and Marcellus began such perversion.

Fragment 16: How will you say that the man who is testified to have come down from heaven (Jn 3:13) is a man from the earth? Or that the one proclaimed to be God and the Son of God is son of man?

Fragment 17: The man who came down from heaven is not a man from the earth. He is a man, to be sure, even if he came down from heaven. For the Lord does not deny this kind of designation in the Gospels.

Fragment 18: If both the Son of Man is from heaven and the Son of God is from a woman, how will the same one not be God and man?

Fragment 19: But he is God according to the incarnate spirit and man according to the flesh taken on by God.

Fragment 20: The mystery appeared in the flesh.

Fragment 21: “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14) according to the union.

Fragment 22: But the flesh is not soul-less. For it would be said that militates against the spirit and “fights against the law of the mind” (Rom 7:23). We say that the body was with a soul and without rationalities.

Fragment 25: Certainly Christ, having God as his spirit, that is, his mind, along with a soul and body, is suitably said to be a “man from heaven” (1 Co 15:47).

Fragment 26: And Paul calls the first Adam a soul (1 Co 15:45), being along with a body.

Fragment 27: “The second man from heaven” is said to be spiritual (1 Co 15:47).

Fragment 28: As Paul also calls the first Adam a soul (1 Co 15:45), being along with a body and not without a body but giving its name to the whole, also of itself and according to the association of the spirit he may be called a soul.

Fragment 29: But Paul calls the last a life-giving spirit (1 Co 15:45).

Fragment 30: That one is of the dust from the earth. Therefore the body formed from the dust is given a soul.

Fragment 31: This one is said to be from heaven because of this. Therefore the heavenly spirit became incarnate.

Fragment 32: And the man Christ preexisted not because the spirit, that is, God, is someone other than him, but because the divine spirit is the Lord in the nature of the God man.

Fragment 34: The divine incarnation did not have its beginning from the Virgin but also was before Abraham and before all creation.

Fragment 36: The flesh did not become an addition to the deity on the basis of kindness, but was associated with and grafted into it.

Fragment 37: The sword raises against the Lord because of the designation “shepherd.”

Fragment 38: It is very clear in these things that the very man who has spoken to you the things of the Father is God, maker of the ages, “radiance of glory, representation of his hypostasis” (Heb 1:3). Since he certainly is God by his own spirit and does not have another god in himself than him, it is he who cleansed the world of sins through himself, that is, through the flesh.

Fragment 40: From the person of the father, co-tribal, that is congenital and consubstantial, is said about the Son.

Fragment 41: By these things the prophetic word make it clear that he is not consubstantial with God according to the flesh but according to the spirit united to the flesh.

Fragment 42: Look, of the same Jesus Christ there is the preexistent equality with the Father and the afterward arriving likeness with men. And what is there clearer than these that he is not one with another, a whole God with a whole man?

Fragment 43: He is God, having the glory of God in spirit, and man, bearing the inglorious form of men in body.

Fragment 44: The Lord appeared in a servant’s form.

Fragment 45: He is not a man but as a man. Therefore he is not consubstantial to man according to what is most lordly.

Fragment 46: He humbles himself in flesh and is exalted by God with a divine exaltation. . . .The flesh has been humbled but the deity is exalted.

Fragment 47: He is glorified as a man ascending from ingloriousness, but he has the glory before the world as God preexisting the ages (Jn 17:5).

Fragment 48: The Son, being an enfleshed mind, was born of a woman, not becoming flesh in the Virgin, but passing through her briefly, as he was before the ages. Then the same thing which appeared was revealed as being an enfleshed mind. Therefore “the Lord of glory,” is recognized as the crucified, and the “Lord of powers” is spoken about in prophecy and those authoritative and lordly sayings are made: “I say to you,” and “I command you,” and “I am working” and other such things of lofty appearance.

Fragment 49: For Greeks and Jews plainly do not believe, not allowing themselves to hear that the one born of a woman is God.

Fragment 50: But God, being enfleshed before the ages, was been born after these things through a woman and came for the trial of sufferings according to the necessity of the nature.

Fragment 51: But the Greeks and Jews would have accepted it if we were saying that the one born was a God-filled man like Elijah.

Fragment 52: Those who, with the appearance of faith, do not believe in the God who was born of a woman and crucified at the hands of the Jews are likewise ashamed of those things. Therefore also he will be ashamed of them (Mk 8:38).

Fragment 56: For who is the holy one from the begetter?

Fragment 57: Who is untaught yet wise?

Fragment 58: Who works the things of God with authority?

Fragment 59: Raising the energy according to the flesh, making it equal according to the spirit.

Fragment 60: Accordingly he has the equality in power again and the raising of the energy according to the flesh. By this raising he made all things alive, but some were not willing (Jn 5:21, Mt 23:37).

Fragment 61: No one died and rose by their own authority.

Fragment 63: But they are stirring up the disorder of the unbelievers and not reminding them that this will is said to belong not to a man from the earth, as they think, but to the God who came down from heaven, taken on for his union.

Fragment 66: Those who claim that a union of the flesh and the addition of a man are the same thing are wrong.

Fragment 67: He is not different than the bodiless one but the same according to our likeness in living flesh.

Fragment 68: Each of us is from spirit and soul and body.

Fragment 69: For he would not have come to in the likeness of man unless it happened that, just like a man, he were an enfleshed mind.

Fragment 70: Unless the Lord is an enfleshed mind, Wisdom would be illuminating the mind of a man. And this is the case in all men. And if this were so, Christ’s coming would not be the visitation of God but the birth of a man.

Fragment 71: If the Word did not become an enfleshed mind but was wisdom in the mind, then the Lord did not come down or empty himself.

Fragment 72: Because of this he was also a man. For a mind in flesh is a man according to Paul.

Fragment 73: Since he was a man, this one of dust was also of heaven.

Fragment 74: Since the mind is with God, if the mind in Christ was human, then the work of the incarnation is not completed in him. If the work of the incarnation is not completed in the self-moving and unforced mind, the work, which is the forgiveness of sins, is finished in flesh moved by another and activated by the divine mind. The self-moving mind in us, according to which it appropriates itself for Christ, shares this forgiveness.

Fragment 75: If one achieves something more than another, this happens through training. But there is no training at all in Christ. Therefore the mind is not human.

Fragment 76: Therefore the human race is not saved through the assumption of a mind and an entire man but through the taking on of flesh. In this the physical is governed and it needs an unchangeable mind which does not fall beneath it because of a weakness of skill but irresistibly fits it together to itself.

Fragment 77: The body concerning the Word is viewed to be something divine and above the heavens.

Fragment 78: The flesh is divine. . . The mindless is taken on by God.

Fragment 79: Flesh which shares the pure excellence fits to God irresistibly.

Fragment 80: . . . sharing the pure excellence with every subject mind and all those who are made like Christ in mind and not made like him in flesh.

Fragment 81: And if God was joined to a man, a whole one to a whole one, they would be two, one the Son of God by nature and one adopted. Therefore when the incomplete is added to the complete it is not viewed as a pair.

Fragment 82: They widen the Triad into a tetrad and subject the angels to the man. . . They bring down the things above by enslaving the God-bearing angels to the God-bearing man.

Fragment 83: If the one who received God is a true God, there would be many gods, for many receive God.

Fragment 84: Nothing is united to God like the flesh taken on. Things not united like it are not worshipped like it. Nothing is worshipped like the flesh of Christ.

Fragment 85: The flesh of the Lord is worshipped as it is one person and one living thing with him.

Fragment 86: If no product is worshipped with the Lord like his flesh, . . .

Fragment 87: If someone supposes a man to be united to God more than all people and angels, he will make the angels and the people not of their own power, as the flesh is not of its own power. Not being of one’s own power destroys life of one’s own power. The nature is not destroyed by the one who made it. Therefore the man is not united to God.

Fragment 88: Man is from three things: spirit and soul and body. . . . The flesh is not soulless. . . . The third thing, beside the soul and the body, is the spirit.

Fragment 89: So if man is from three things and the Lord also is a man, the Lord also is entirely from three things: spirit and soul and body. But he is also a heavenly man and a life-giving spirit.

Fragment 90: If the heavenly man is from all the things equal to us men of dust such that he also has the spirit equal to men of dust, he is not heavenly but a holder of a heavenly God.

Fragment 91: If we are from three things and he is from four, he is not a man but a God-man.

Fragment 92: If he is from two wholes, he is not a man in whom God is or a God in whom man is.

Fragment 93: The man is not able to save the world while remaining subject to the destruction common to men. But we are not saved by a God without him being mixed with us. He mixes by becoming flesh, that is, a man, as the Gospel says, when he became flesh, then he tented among us (Jn 1:14). But he does not get rid of the sin of men without becoming a sinless man and he does not destroy death’s reign over all men unless as a man he died and rose.

Fragment 94: We view the suffering concerning the man.

Fragment 95: A man’s death does not abolish death and the undying one does not rise. From all these things it is clear that God himself died, as “it was not possible for Christ to be mastered by death” (Ac 2:24).

Fragment 96: They say that Christ is not from the beginning such that the Word is God. . . . They say the man has suffered.

Fragment 97: How does God become man without being transformed from being God unless the mind were placed in a man?

Fragment 98: If after the resurrection he became God and no longer is man, how will the Son of Man “send out his angels” (Mt 24:31) and how will we “see the Son of Man coming on the clouds” (Mt 24:30)? How even before he was united and deified does he say, “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30)?

Fragment 100: If Christ is united to the Father before the resurrection, how isn’t he united to the God in him?

Fragment 101: The Savior has suffered hunger and thirst and trouble and anguish and grief.

Fragment 102: He suffers the unacceptable sufferings not by an involuntary necessity of his nature, as a man, but by conformity to a nature.

Fragment 103: The sufferings needed to be put into motion according to the likeness of men.

Fragment 104: And although the body is in heaven he is with us until the culmination of the age (Mt 28:20).

Fragment 106: But some have attempted to now again renew the clearly proven and universally heralded things and they speak the blasphemy that the second man from heaven, as passed down from the apostles, is a man from the earth like the first man, transforming the humanness of the Word into the energy which is in a man.

Fragment 107: The flesh, being entirely moved by another—by the one who moves and leads (whatever this may be)—and being not a complete living thing on its own but put together to become a complete living thing, came together with the commander for a unity and was put together for heavenly commanding, It was appropriated to him according to its passibility and received the divine which was appropriated to it according to what was at work within it. For one living thing is not so comprised of a moved and a mover, and he is not two or from two wholes and self-movers. Therefore a man is a living thing other than God and is not God but a servant of God. Even if he has some power of the heavens, such is the case. But flesh which became the flesh of God is a living thing by being placed into one nature after these things.

Translated by AMJ

Last updated: 8-16-2013

No Responses yet