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# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XVI/Chapter 18

Chapter 18.—Of the Repeated Address of God to Abraham, in Which He Promised the Land of Canaan to Him and to His Seed.
Abraham, then, having departed out of Haran in the seventy-fifth year of his own age, and in the hundred and forty-fifth of his father’s, went with Lot, his brother’s son, and Sarah his wife, into the land of Canaan, and came even to Sichem, where again he received the divine oracle, of which it is thus written: “And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said unto him, Unto thy seed will I give this land.” Nothing is promised here about that seed in which he is made the
father of all nations, but only about that by which he is the father of the one Israelite nation; for by this seed that land was possessed.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Gen. xii. 7.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IX/John of Damascus/An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith/Book III/Chapter 22

Chapter XXII.—Concerning His growth.
He is, moreover, said to grow in wisdom and age and grace, increasing in age indeed and through the increase in age manifesting the wisdom that is in Him; yea, further, making men’s progress in wisdom and grace, and the fulfilment of the Father’s goodwill, that is to say, men’s knowledge of God and men’s salvation, His own increase, and everywhere taking as His own that which is ours. But those who hold that He progressed in wisdom and grace in the sense of receiving some addition to these attributes, do not say that the union took place at the first origin of the flesh, nor yet do they give precedence to the union in subsistence, but giving heed to the foolish Nestorius they imagine some strange relative union and mere indwelling, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. For if in truth the flesh was united with God the Word from its first origin, or rather if it existed in Him and was identical in subsistence with Him, how was it that it was not endowed completely with all wisdom and grace? not that it might itself participate in the grace, nor share by grace in what belonged to the Word, but rather by reason of the union in subsistence, since both what is human and what is divine belong to the one Christ, and that He Who was Himself at once God and man should pour forth like a fountain over the universe His grace and wisdom and plenitude of every blessing.

## Footnotes

* ↑ St. Luke ii. 52.
* ↑ Athanas., Contr. Arian., bk. iv.; Greg. Naz., Ep. I. ad Cled., and Orat. 20; Cyril, Contr. Nest., bk. iii.; Greg. Nyss., Contr. Apoll., II. 28, &c.
* ↑ Text has πείθομαι: surely it should be πειθόμενοι.
* ↑ 1 Tim. i. 1.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IX/John of Damascus/An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith/Book III/Chapter 25

Chapter XXV.—Concerning the Appropriation.
It is to be observed that there are two appropriations: one that is natural and essential, and one that is personal and relative. The natural and essential one is that by which our Lord in His love for man took on Himself our nature and all our natural attributes, becoming in nature and truth man, and making trial of that which is natural: but the personal and relative appropriation is when any one assumes the person of another relatively, for instance, out of pity or love, and in his place utters words concerning him that have no connection with himself. And it was in this way that our Lord appropriated both our curse and our desertion, and such other things as are not natural: not that He Himself was or became such, but that He took upon Himself our personality and ranked Himself as one of us. Such is the meaning in which this phrase is to be taken: Being made a curse for our sakes.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Max. ad Marin. in solut. 1 dubit. Theod.
* ↑ Greg. Naz., Orat. 36; Athanas., De Salut. adv. Christi.
* ↑ Gal. iii. 15.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IX/John of Damascus/An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith/Book III/Chapter 26

Chapter XXVI.—Concerning the Passion of our Lord’s body, and the Impassibility of His divinity.
The Word of God then itself endured all in the flesh, while His divine nature which alone was passionless remained void of passion. For since the one Christ, Who is a compound of divinity and humanity, and exists in divinity and humanity, truly suffered, that part which is capable of passion suffered as it was natural it should, but that part which was void of passion did not share in the suffering. For the soul, indeed, since it is capable of passion shares in the pain and suffering of a bodily cut, though it is not cut itself but only the body: but the divine part which is void of passion does not share in the suffering of the body.
Observe, further, that we say that God suffered in the flesh, but never that His divinity suffered in the flesh, or that God suffered through the flesh. For if, when the sun is shining upon a tree, the axe should cleave the tree, and, nevertheless, the sun remains uncleft and void of passion, much more will the passionless divinity of the Word, united in subsistence to the flesh, remain void of passion when the body undergoes passion. And should any one pour water over flaming steel, it is that which naturally suffers by the water, I mean, the fire, that is quenched, but the steel remains untouched (for it is not the nature of steel to be destroyed by water): much more, then, when the flesh suffered did His only passionless divinity escape all passion although abiding inseparable from it. For one must not take the examples too absolutely and strictly: indeed, in the examples, one must consider both what is like and what is unlike, otherwise it would not be an example. For, if they were like in all respects they would be identities, and not examples, and all the more so in dealing with divine matters. For one cannot find an example that is like in all respects whether we are dealing with theology or the dispensation.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Photius, Cod. 46.
* ↑ Athan., De salut. adv. Christi.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IX/John of Damascus/An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith/Book III/Chapter 23

Chapter XXIII.—Concerning His Fear.
The word fear has a double meaning. For fear is natural when the soul is unwilling to be separated from the body, on account of the natural sympathy and close relationship planted in it in the beginning by the Creator, which makes it fear and struggle against death and pray for an escape from it. It may be defined thus: natural fear is the force whereby we cling to being with shrinking. For if all things were brought by the Creator out of nothing into being, they all have by nature a longing after being and not after non-being. Moreover the inclination towards those things that support existence is a natural property of them. Hence God the Word when He became man had this longing, manifesting, on the one hand, in those things that support existence, the inclination of His nature in desiring food and drink and sleep, and having in a natural manner made proof of these things, while on the other hand displaying in those things that bring corruption His natural disinclination in voluntarily shrinking in the hour of His passion before the face of death. For although what happened did so according to the laws of nature, yet it was not, as in our case, a matter of necessity. For He willingly and spontaneously accepted that which was natural. So that fear itself and terror and agony belong to the natural and innocent passions and are not under the dominion of sin.
Again, there is a fear which arises from treachery of reasoning and want of faith, and ignorance of the hour of death, as when we are at night affected by fear at some chance noise. This is unnatural fear, and may be thus defined: unnatural fear is an unexpected shrinking. This our Lord did not assume. Hence He never felt fear except in the hour of His passion, although He often experienced a feeling of shrinking in accordance with the dispensation. For He was not ignorant of the appointed time.
But the holy Athanasius in his discourse against Apollinarius says that He did actually feel fear. “Wherefore the Lord said: Now is My soul troubled. The ‘now’ indeed means just ‘when He willed,’ but yet points to what actually was. For He did not speak of what was not, as though it were present, as if the things that were said only apparently happened. For all things happened naturally and actually.” And again, after some other matters, he says, “In nowise does His divinity admit passion apart from a suffering body, nor yet does it manifest trouble and pain apart from a pained and troubled soul, nor does it suffer anguish and offer up prayer apart from a mind that suffered anguish and offered up prayer. For, although these occurrences were not due to any overthrow of nature, yet they took place to shew forth His real being.” The words “these occurrences were not due to any overthrow of His nature,” prove that it was not involuntarily that He endured these things.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Max., Dial. cum Pyrrh.
* ↑ St. John xii. 27.
* ↑ S. Athanas., De salutari adventu Christi, contra Apollinarem towards the end.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IX/John of Damascus/An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith/Book III/Chapter 27

Chapter XXVII.—Concerning the fact that the divinity of the Word remained inseparable from the soul and the body, even at our Lord’s death, and that His subsistence continued one.
Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin (for He committed no sin, He Who took away the sin of the world, nor was there any deceit found in His mouth) He was not subject to death, since death came into the world through sin. He dies, therefore, because He took on Himself death on our behalf, and He makes Himself an offering to the Father for our sakes. For we had sinned against Him, and it was meet that He should receive the ransom for us, and that we should thus be delivered from the condemnation. God forbid that the blood of the Lord should have been offered to the tyrant. Wherefore death approaches, and swallowing up the body as a bait is transfixed on the hook of divinity, and after tasting of a sinless and life-giving body, perishes, and brings up again all whom of old he swallowed up. For just as darkness disappears on the introduction of light, so is death repulsed before the assault of life, and brings life to all, but death to the destroyer.
Wherefore, although He died as man and His Holy Spirit was severed from His immaculate body, yet His divinity remained inseparable from both, I mean, from His soul and His body, and so even thus His one hypostasis was not divided into two hypostases. For body and soul received simultaneously in the beginning their being in the subsistence of the Word, and although they were severed from one another by death, yet they continued, each of them, having the one subsistence of the Word. So that the one subsistence of the Word is alike the subsistence of the Word, and of soul and body. For at no time had either soul or body a separate subsistence of their own, different from that of the Word, and the subsistence of the Word is for ever one, and at no time two. So that the subsistence of Christ is always one. For, although the soul was separated from the body topically, yet hypostatically they were united through the Word.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Is. liii. 9; St. John i. 29.
* ↑ Rom. v. 12.
* ↑ Greg., Orat. 42.
* ↑ Cf. Epiph., Hæres. 69; Greg. Nyss., Contr. Eunom., II. p. 55.
* ↑ ὑπόστασις, hypostasis.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IX/John of Damascus/An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith/Book III/Chapter 28

Chapter XXVIII.—Concerning Corruption and Destruction.
The word corruption has two meanings. For it signifies all the human sufferings, such as hunger, thirst, weariness, the piercing with nails, death, that is, the separation of soul and body, and so forth. In this sense we say that our Lord’s body was subject to corruption. For He voluntarily accepted all these things. But corruption means also the complete resolution of the body into its constituent elements, and its utter disappearance, which is spoken of by many preferably as destruction. The body of our Lord did not experience this form of corruption, as the prophet David says, For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption.
Wherefore to say, with that foolish Julianus and Gaïanus, that our Lord’s body was incorruptible, in the first sense of the word, before His resurrection is impious. For if it were incorruptible it was not really, but only apparently, of the same essence as ours, and what the Gospel tells us happened, viz. the hunger, the thirst, the nails, the wound in His side, the death, did not actually occur. But if they only apparently happened, then the mystery of the dispensation is an imposture and a sham, and He became man only in appearance, and not in actual fact, and we are saved only in appearance, and not in actual fact. But God forbid, and may those who so say have no part in the salvation. But we have obtained and shall obtain the true salvation. But in the second meaning of the word “corruption,” we confess that our Lord’s body is incorruptible, that is, indestructible, for such is the tradition of the inspired Fathers. Indeed, after the resurrection of our Saviour from the dead, we say that our Lord’s body is incorruptible even in the first sense of the word. For our Lord by His own body bestowed the gifts both of resurrection and of subsequent incorruption even on our own body, He Himself having become to us the firstfruits both of resurrection and incorruption, and of passionlessness. For as the divine Apostle says, This corruptible must put on incorruption.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Leont. De sect., Act. 10, and Dial. cont. Aphthartodoc.
* ↑ Anast. Sinait., Hodegus, p. 295.
* ↑ Ps. xvi. 10.
* ↑ Anast. Sinait., Hodegus, p. 293.
* ↑ 1 Cor. xv. 20.
* ↑ Ibid. 53.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume IX/John of Damascus/An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith/Book III/Chapter 29

Chapter XXIX.—Concerning the Descent to Hades.
The soul when it was deified descended into Hades, in order that, just as the Sun of Righteousness rose for those upon the earth, so likewise He might bring light to those who sit under the earth in darkness and shadow of death: in order that just as He brought the message of peace to those upon the earth, and of release to the prisoners, and of sight to the blind, and became to those who believed the Author of everlasting salvation and to those who did not believe a reproach of their unbelief, so He might become the same to those in Hades: That every knee should bow to Him, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under the earth. And thus after He had freed those who had been bound for ages, straightway He rose again from the dead, shewing us the way of resurrection.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Cf. Ruf., Expos. Symbol. Apost.; Cassian, Contr. Nestor., bk. vi.; Cyril, Catech. 14.
* ↑ Mal. iv. 2.
* ↑ Is. ix. 2.
* ↑ Is. lxi. 1; St. Luke iv. 19.
* ↑ 1 Pet. iii. 19.
* ↑ Iren., iv. 45; Greg. Naz., Orat. 42.
* ↑ Phil. ii. 10.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XXII/Chapter 3

Chapter 3.—Of the Promise of Eternal Blessedness to the Saints, and Everlasting Punishment to the Wicked.
Wherefore, not to mention many other instances besides, as we now see in Christ the fulfillment of that which God promised to Abraham when He said, “In thy seed shall all nations be blessed,” so this also shall be fulfilled which He promised to the same race, when He said by the prophet, “They that are in their sepulchres shall rise again,” and also, “There shall be a new heaven and a new earth: and the former shall not be mentioned, nor come into mind; but they shall find joy and rejoicing in it: for I will make Jerusalem a rejoicing, and my people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in
my people, and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her.” And by another prophet He uttered the same prediction: “At that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust” (or, as some interpret it, “in the mound”) “of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” And in another place by the same prophet: “The saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and shall possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.” And a little after he says, “His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.” Other prophecies referring to the same subject I have advanced in the twentieth book, and others still which I have not advanced are found written in the same Scriptures; and these predictions shall be fulfilled, as those also have been which unbelieving men supposed would be frustrate. For it is the same God who promised both, and predicted that both would come to pass,—the God whom the pagan deities tremble before, as even Porphyry, the noblest of pagan philosophers, testifies.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Gen. xxii. 18.
* ↑ Isa. xxvi. 19.
* ↑ Isa. lxv. 17–19.
* ↑ Dan. xii. 1, 2.
* ↑ Dan. vii. 18.
* ↑ Dan. vii. 27.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XXII/Chapter 4

Chapter 4.—Against the Wise Men of the World, Who Fancy that the Earthly Bodies of Men Cannot Be Transferred to a Heavenly Habitation.
But men who use their learning and intellectual ability to resist the force of that great authority which, in fulfillment of what was so long before predicted, has converted all races of men to faith and hope in its promises, seem to themselves to argue acutely against the resurrection of the body while they cite what Cicero mentions in the third book De Republica. For when he was asserting the apotheosis of Hercules and Romulus, he says: “Whose bodies were not taken up into heaven; for nature would not permit a body of earth to exist anywhere except upon earth.” This, forsooth, is the profound reasoning of the wise men, whose thoughts God knows that they are vain. For if we were only souls, that is, spirits without any body, and if we dwelt in heaven and had no knowledge of earthly animals, and were told that we should be bound to earthly bodies by some wonderful bond of union, and should animate them, should we not much more vigorously refuse to believe this, and maintain that nature would not permit an incorporeal substance to be held by a corporeal bond? And yet the earth is full of living spirits, to which terrestrial bodies are bound, and with which they are in a wonderful way implicated. If, then, the same God who has created such beings wills this also, what is to hinder the earthly body from being raised to a heavenly body, since a spirit, which is more excellent than all bodies, and consequently than even a heavenly body, has been tied to an earthly body? If so small an earthly particle has been able to hold in union with itself something better than a heavenly body, so as to receive sensation and life, will heaven disdain to receive, or at least to retain, this sentient and living particle, which derives its life and sensation from a substance more excellent than any heavenly body? If this does not happen now, it is because the time is not yet come which has been determined by Him who has already done a much more marvellous thing than that which these men refuse to believe. For why do we not more intensely wonder that incorporeal souls, which are of higher rank than heavenly bodies, are bound to earthly bodies, rather than that bodies, although earthly, are exalted to an abode which, though heavenly, is yet corporeal, except because we have been accustomed to see this, and indeed are this, while we are not as yet that other marvel, nor have as yet ever seen it?  Certainly, if we consult sober reason, the more wonderful of the two divine works is found to be to attach somehow corporeal things to incorporeal, and not to connect earthly things with heavenly, which, though diverse, are yet both of them corporeal.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XXII/Chapter 7

Chapter 7.—That the World’s Belief in Christ is the Result of Divine Power, Not of Human Persuasion.
But it is thoroughly ridiculous to make mention of the false divinity of Romulus as any way comparable to that of Christ. Nevertheless, if Romulus lived about six hundred years before Cicero, in an age which already was so enlightened that it rejected all impossibilities, how much more, in an age which certainly was more enlightened, being six hundred years later, the age of Cicero himself, and of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius, would the human mind have refused to listen to or believe in the resurrection of Christ’s body and its ascension into heaven, and have scouted it as an impossibility, had not the divinity of the truth itself, or the truth of the divinity, and corroborating miraculous signs, proved that it could happen and had happened? Through virtue of these testimonies, and notwithstanding the opposition and terror of so many cruel persecutions, the resurrection and immortality of the flesh, first in Christ, and subsequently in all in the new world, was believed, was intrepidly proclaimed, and was sown over the whole world, to be fertilized richly with the blood of the martyrs. For the predictions of the prophets that had preceded the events were read, they were corroborated by powerful signs, and the truth was seen to be not contradictory to reason, but only different from customary ideas, so that at length the world embraced the faith it had furiously persecuted.
# Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XXII/Chapter 27

Chapter 27.—Of the Apparently Conflicting Opinions of Plato and Porphyry, Which Would Have Conducted Them Both to the Truth If They Could Have Yielded to One Another.
Statements were made by Plato and Porphyry singly, which if they could have seen their way to hold in common, they might possibly have became Christians. Plato said that souls could not exist eternally without bodies; for it was on this account, he said, that the souls even of wise men must some time or other return to their bodies. Porphyry, again, said that the purified soul, when it has returned to the Father, shall never return to the ills of this world. Consequently, if Plato had communicated to Porphyry that which he saw to be true, that souls, though perfectly purified, and belonging to the wise and righteous, must return to human bodies; and if Porphyry, again, had imparted to Plato the truth which he saw, that holy soul, shall never return to the miseries of a corruptible body, so that they should not have each held only his own opinion, but should both have held both truths, I think they would have seen that it follows that the souls return to their bodies, and also that these bodies shall be such as to afford them a blessed and immortal life. For, according to Plato, even holy souls shall return to the body; according to Porphyry, holy souls shall not return to the ills of this world.  Let Porphyry then say with Plato, they shall return to the body; let Plato say with Porphyry, they shall not return to their old misery: and they will agree that they return to bodies in which they shall suffer no more. And this is nothing else than what God has promised,—that He will give eternal felicity to souls joined to their own bodies. For this, I presume, both of them would readily concede, that if the souls of the saints are to be reunited to bodies, it shall be to their own bodies, in which they have endured the miseries of this life, and in which, to escape these miseries, they served God with piety and fidelity.