Dialogues — Source paragraphs and footnotes

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

4. The nature of men is compounded of body and soul. But it sinned and stood in need of a sacrifice free from every spot. So the Creator took a body and a soul, and keeping them clean from the stains of sin for men’s bodies gave His body and for their souls His soul. If this is true, and true it is, for these are words of truth itself, then wild and blasphemous are they who ascribe passion to the divine nature.

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 5 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

5. The blessed Paul called the Christ “the first born of the dead;” and I suppose the first born has the same nature as they of whom He is called first born. As man then He is first born of the dead, for He first destroyed the pangs of death and gave to all the sweet hope of another life. As He rose so He suffered. As man then He suffered but as awful God He remained impassible.

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 6 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

7. When the Master Christ wished to persuade the doubting Apostles that He had destroyed death and risen, He shewed them parts of His body, His side, His hands, His feet and the marks of the passion preserved therein. This body then rose, and this, I ween, was shown to the disbelievers. What rose is what was buried, and what was buried is what had died, and what had died is of course what was nailed to the cross. So the divine nature united to the body remained impassible.

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 8 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

8. They who describe the flesh of the Lord as giver of life make life itself mortal by their words. They ought to have seen that it was giver of life through the life united to it. But if according to their argument the life is mortal, how could the flesh being itself by nature mortal, and made life-giving through the life, remain life-giving?

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 9 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

9. God the Word is by nature immortal, and the flesh by nature mortal, but after the passion by union with the Word the flesh itself became immortal. How then is it not absurd to say that the giver of such immortality shared death?

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 10 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

10. They who maintain that God the Word suffered in the flesh should be asked the meaning of what they say, and should they have the hardihood to reply that when the body was pierced with nails the divine nature was sensible of pain, let them learn that the divine nature did not fill the part of a soul. God the Word had assumed a soul with the body. Should they reject this argument as blasphemous, and should they assert that the flesh suffered by nature, and that God the Word made the passion His own as of His own flesh, let them not propound puzzling and murky phrases, but let them clearly propound the meaning of the ill sounding phrase. They will have all those who wish to follow the divine Scripture as their supporters in this interpretation.

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 11 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

13. If Christ is both God and man, as the divine Scripture teaches, and the illustrious Fathers persistently preached, then He suffered as man, but as God remained impassible.

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 14 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

14. If they acknowledge the assumption of the flesh, and declare it to be passible before the resurrection, and preach that the nature of the Godhead is impassible, why, leaving the passible nature, do they attribute the passion to the impassible?

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 15 · Original source

Date uncertain | Theodoret of Cyrus

16. When we say that the body or the flesh or the manhood suffered, we do not separate the divine nature, for as it was united to one hungering, thirsting, aweary, even asleep, and undergoing the passion, itself affected by none of these but permitting the human nature to be affected in its own way, so it was conjoined to it even when crucified, and permitted the completion of the passion, that by the passion it might destroy death; not indeed receiving pain from the passion, but making the passion its own, as of its own temple, and of the flesh united to it, on account of which flesh also the faithful are called members of Christ, and He Himself is styled the head of them that believed.

Complete source paragraph · Dialogues, Chapter uncertain; original source section: III, source paragraph 17 · Original source