The Christian Faith is proclaimed by the authority of the New Testament
and of the Old; but although the Old scripture[44] contains within its
pages the name of Christ and constantly gives token that He will come
who we believe has already come by the birth of the Virgin, yet the
diffusion of that faith throughout the world dates from the actual
miraculous coming of our Saviour.
Now this our religion which is called Christian and Catholic is founded
chiefly on the following assertions. From all eternity, that is, before
the world was established, and so before all that is meant by time
began, there has existed one divine substance of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit in such wise that we confess the Father God, the Son God, and the
Holy Spirit God, and yet not three Gods but one God. Thus the Father
hath the Son, begotten of His substance and coeternal with Himself after
a manner that He alone knoweth. Him we confess to be Son in the sense
that He is not the same as the Father. Nor has the Father ever been Son,
for the human mind must not imagine a divine lineage stretching back
into infinity; nor can the Son, being of the same nature in virtue of
which He is coeternal with the Father, ever become Father, for the
divine lineage must not stretch forward into infinity. But the Holy
Spirit is neither Father nor Son, and therefore, albeit of the same
divine nature, neither begotten, nor begetting, but proceeding as well
from the Father as the Son.[45] Yet what the manner of that Procession
is we are no more able to state clearly than is the human mind able to
understand the generation of the Son from the substance of the Father.
But these articles are laid down for our belief by Old and New
Testament. Concerning which fortress and citadel[46] of our religion
many men have spoken otherwise and have even impugned it, being moved by
human, nay rather by carnal feeling. Arius, for instance, who, while
calling the Son God, declares Him to be vastly inferior to the Father
and of another substance. The Sabellians also have dared to affirm that
there are not three separate Persons but only One, saying that the
Father is the same as the Son and the Son the same as the Father and the
Holy Spirit the same as the Father and the Son; and so declaring that
there is but one divine Person expressed by different names.
The Manichaeans, too, who allow two coeternal and contrary principles,
do not believe in the Only-begotten Son of God. For they consider it a
thought unworthy of God that He should have a Son, since they entertain
the very carnal reflection that inasmuch as[47] human generation arises
from the mingling of two bodies, it is unworthy to hold a notion of this
sort in respect of the divine nature; whereas such a view finds no
sanction in the Old Testament and absolutely[48] none in the New. Yea,
their error which refuses this notion also refuses the Virgin birth of
the Son, because they would not have the God's nature defiled by the
man's body. But enough of this for the present; the points will be
presented in the proper place as the proper arrangement demands.
The divine nature then, abiding from all eternity and unto all eternity
without any change, by the exercise of a will known only to Himself,
determined of Himself to form the world, and brought it into being when
it was absolutely naught, nor did He produce it from His own substance,
lest it should be thought divine by nature, nor did He form it after any
model, lest it should be thought that anything had already come into
being which helped His will by the existence of an independent nature,
and that there should exist something that had not been made by Him and
yet existed; but by His Word He brought forth the heavens, and created
the earth[49] that so He might make natures worthy of a place in heaven,
and also fit earthly things to earth. But although in heaven all things
are beautiful and arranged in due order, yet one part of the heavenly
creation which is universally termed angelic,[50] seeking more than
nature and the Author of Nature had granted them, was cast forth from
its heavenly habitation; and because the Creator did not wish the roll
of the angels, that is of the heavenly city whose citizens the angels
are, to be diminished, He formed man out of the earth and breathed into
him the breath of life; He endowed him with reason, He adorned him with
freedom of choice and established him in the joys of Paradise, making
covenant aforehand that if he would remain without sin He would add him
and his offspring to the angelic hosts; so that as the higher nature had
fallen low through the curse of pride, the lower substance might ascend
on high through the blessing of humility. But the father of envy, loath
that man should climb to the place where he himself deserved not to
remain, put temptation before him and the consort whom the Creator had
brought forth out of his side for the continuance of the race, and laid
them open to punishment for disobedience, promising man also the gift of
Godhead, the arrogant attempt to seize which had caused his own fall.
All this was revealed by God to His servant Moses, whom He vouchsafed to
teach the creation and origin of man, as the books written by him
declare. For the divine authority is always conveyed in one of the
following ways--the historical, which simply announces facts; the
allegorical, whence historical matter is excluded; or else the two
combined, history and allegory conspiring to establish it. All this is
abundantly evident to pious hearers and steadfast believers.
But to return to the order of our discourse; the first man, before sin
came, dwelt with his consort in the Garden. But when he hearkened to the
voice of his wife and failed to keep the commandment of his Creator, he
was banished, bidden to till the ground, and being shut out from the
sheltering garden he carried abroad into unknown regions the children of
his loins; by begetting whom he transmitted to those that came after,
the punishment which he, the first man, had incurred by the sin of
disobedience. Hence it came to pass that corruption both of body and
soul ensued, and death; and this he was to taste first in his own son
Abel, in order that he might learn through his child the greatness of
the punishment that was laid upon him. For if he had died first he would
in some sense not have known, and if one may so say not have felt, his
punishment; but he tasted it in another in order that he might perceive
the due reward of his contempt, and, doomed to death himself, might be
the more sensibly touched by the apprehension of it. But this curse that
came of transgression which the first man had by natural propagation
transmitted to posterity, was denied by one Pelagius who so set up the
heresy which goes by his name and which the Catholic faith, as is known,
at once banished from its bosom. So the human race that sprang from the
first man and mightily increased and multiplied, broke into strife,
stirred up wars, and became the heir of earthly misery, because it had
lost the joys of Paradise in its first parent. Yet were there not a few
of mankind whom the Giver of Grace set apart for Himself and who were
obedient to His will; and though by desert of nature they were
condemned, yet God by making them partakers in the hidden mystery, long
afterwards to be revealed, vouchsafed to recover fallen nature. So the
earth was filled by the human race and man who by his own wanton
wilfulness had despised his Creator began to walk in his own ways. Hence
God willing rather to recover mankind through one just man than that it
should remain for ever contumacious, suffered all the guilty multitude
to perish by the wide waters of a flood, save only Noah, the just one,
with his children and all that he had brought with him into the ark. The
reason why He wished to save the just by an ark of wood is known to all
hearts learned in the Holy Scriptures. Thus what we may call the first
age of the world was ended by the avenging flood.
Thus the human race was restored, and yet it hastened to make its own
the vice of nature with which the first author of transgression had
infected it. And the wickedness increased which had once been punished
by the waters of the flood, and man who had been suffered to live for a
long series of years was reduced to the brief span of ordinary human
life. Yet would not God again visit the race by a flood, but rather,
letting it continue, He chose from it men of whose line a generation
should arise out of which He might in the last days grant us His own Son
to come to us, clothed in human form. Of these men Abraham is the first,
and although he was stricken in years and his wife past bearing, they
had in their old age the reward of a son in fulfilment of promise
unconditional. This son was named Isaac and he begat Jacob, who in his
turn begat the twelve Patriarchs, God not reckoning in their number
those whom nature in its ordinary course produced.[51] This Jacob, then,
together with his sons and his household determined to dwell in Egypt
for the purpose of trafficking; and the multitude of them increasing
there in the course of many years began to be a cause of suspicion to
the Egyptian rulers, and Pharaoh ordered them to be oppressed by
exceeding heavy tasks[52] and afflicted them with grievous burdens. At
length God, minded to set at naught the tyranny of the king of Egypt,
divided the Red Sea--a marvel such as nature had never known before--and
brought forth His host by the hands of Moses and Aaron. Thereafter on
account of their departure Egypt was vexed with sore plagues, because
they would not let the people go. So, after crossing the Red Sea, as I
have told, they passed through the desert of the wilderness and came to
the mount which is called Sinai, where God the Creator of all, wishing
to prepare the nations for the knowledge of the sacrament to come, laid
down by a law given through Moses how both the rites of sacrifices and
the national customs should be ordered. And after fighting down many
tribes in many years amidst their journeyings they came at last to the
river called Jordan, with Joshua the son of Nun now as their captain,
and, for their crossing, the streams of Jordan were dried up as the
waters of the Red Sea had been; so they finished their course to that
city which is now called Jerusalem. And while the people of God abode
there we read that there were set up first judges and prophets and then
kings, of whom we read that after Saul, David of the tribe of Judah
ascended the throne. So from him the royal race descended from father to
son and lasted till the days of Herod who, we read, was the first taken
out of the peoples called Gentile to bear sway. In whose days rose up
the blessed Virgin Mary, sprung from the stock of David, she who bore
the Maker of the human race. But it was just because the whole world lay
dead, stained with its many sins, that God chose out one race in which
His commands might shine clear; sending it prophets and other holy men,
to the end that by their warnings that people at least might be cured of
their swollen pride. But they slew these holy men and chose rather to
abide in their wanton wickedness.
And now at the last days of time, in place of prophets and other men
well-pleasing to Him, God willed that His only-begotten Son should be
born of a Virgin that so the salvation of mankind which had been lost
through the disobedience of the first man might be recovered by the God-
man, and that inasmuch as it was a woman who had first persuaded man to
that which wrought death there should be this second woman who should
bring forth from a human womb Him who gives Life. Nor let it be deemed a
thing unworthy that the Son of God was born of a Virgin, for it was out
of the course of nature that He was conceived and brought to birth.
Virgin then she conceived, by the Holy Spirit, the Son of God made
flesh, Virgin she bore Him, Virgin she continued after His birth; and He
became the Son of Man and likewise the Son of God that in Him the glory
of the divine nature might shine forth and at the same time the human
weakness be declared which He took upon Him. Yet against this article of
Faith so wholesome and altogether true there rose up many who babbled
other doctrine, and especially Nestorius and Eutyches, inventors of
heresy, of whom the one thought fit to say that He was man alone, the
other that He was God alone and that the human body put on by Christ had
not come by participation in human substance. But enough on this point.
So Christ grew after the flesh, and was baptized in order that He who
was to give the form of baptism to others should first Himself receive
what He taught. But after His baptism He chose twelve disciples, one of
whom betrayed Him. And because the people of the Jews would not bear
sound doctrine they laid hands upon Him and slew and crucified Him.
Christ, then, was slain; He lay three days and three nights in the tomb;
He rose again from the dead as He had predetermined with His Father
before the foundation of the world; He ascended into heaven whence we
know that He was never absent, because He is Son of God, in order that
as Son of God He might raise together with Him to the heavenly
habitation man whose flesh He had assumed, whom the devil had hindered
from ascending to the places on high. Therefore He bestowed on His
disciples the form of baptizing, the saving truth of the teaching, and
the mighty power of miracles, and bade them go throughout the whole
world to give it life, in order that the message of salvation might be
preached no longer in one nation only but among all the dwellers upon
earth. And because the human race was wounded by the weapon of eternal
punishment by reason of the nature which they had inherited from the
first transgressor and could not win a full meed of salvation because
they had lost it in its first parent, God instituted certain health-
giving sacraments to teach the difference between what grace bestowed
and human nature deserved, nature simply subjecting to punishment, but
grace, which is won by no merit, since it would not be grace if it were
due to merit, conferring all that belongs to salvation.
Therefore is that heavenly instruction spread throughout the world, the
peoples are knit together, churches are founded, and, filling the broad
earth, one body formed, whose head, even Christ, ascended into heaven in
order that the members might of necessity follow where the Head was
gone. Thus this teaching both inspires this present life unto good
works, and promises that in the end of the age our bodies shall rise
incorruptible to the kingdom of heaven, to the end that he who has lived
well on earth by God's gift should be altogether blessed in that
resurrection, but he who has lived amiss should, with the gift of
resurrection, enter upon misery. And this is a firm principle of our
religion, to believe not only that men's souls do not perish, but that
their very bodies, which the coming of death had destroyed, recover
their first state by the bliss that is to be. This Catholic church,
then, spread throughout the world, is known by three particular marks:
whatever is believed and taught in it has the authority of the
Scriptures, or of universal tradition, or at least of its own and proper
usage. And this authority is binding on the whole Church as is also the
universal tradition of the Fathers, while each separate church exists
and is governed by its private constitution and its proper rites
according to difference of locality and the good judgment of each. All,
therefore, that the faithful now expect is that the end of the world
will come, that all corruptible things shall pass away, that men shall
rise for future judgement, that each shall receive reward according to
his deserts and abide in the lot assigned to him for ever and for aye;
and the sole reward of bliss will be the contemplation of the Almighty,
so far, that is, as the creature may look on the Creator, to the end
that the number of the angels may be made up from these and the heavenly
city filled where the Virgin's Son is King and where will be everlasting
joy, delight, food, labour, and unending praise of the Creator.
[43] The conclusions adverse to the genuineness of this tractate,
reached in the dissertation _Der dem Boethius zugeschriebene Traktat de
Fide Catholica (Jahrbücher für kl. Phil._ xxvi. (1901) Supplementband)
by one of the editors, now seem to both unsound. The writer of that
dissertation intends to return to the subject elsewhere. This fourth
tractate, though lacking, in the best MSS., either an ascription to
Boethius or a title, is firmly imbedded in two distinct recensions of
Boethius's theological works. There is no reason to disturb it. Indeed
the _capita dogmatica_ mentioned by Cassiodorus can hardly refer to any
of the tractates except the fourth.
[44] For _instrumentum_=Holy Scripture cf. Tertull. _Apol._ 18, 19,
_adv. Hermog._ 19, etc.; for _instrumentum_=any historical writing cf.
Tert. _De Spect._ 5.
[45] Boethius is no heretic. By the sixth century _uel_ had lost its
strong separative force. Cp. "Noe cum sua uel trium natorum coniugibus,"
Greg. Tur. _H.F._ i. 20. Other examples in Bonnet, _La Latinité de Grég.
de Tours_, p. 313, and in Brandt's edition of the _Isag._ Index, s.v.
_uel_.
[46] _Vide Cons._ i. pr. 3 (_infra_, p. 140), and cf. Dante, _De Mon._
iii. 16, 117.
[47] _Ut quia_. A very rare use. Cf. Baehrens, _Beiträge zur lat.
Syntaxis_ (_Philologus_, Supplementband xii. 1912). It
perhaps=Aristotle's [Greek: oion epei]. Cf. McKinlay, _Harvard Studies
in Cl. Philol._ xviii. 153.
[48] _In integro_=_prorsus_; cf. Brandt, _op. cit._ Index, s.v.
_integer_.
[49] The doctrine is orthodox, but note that Boethius does not say _ex
nihilo creauit_. _Vide infra_, p. 366 ll. 24 ff.
[50] _Vide infra, Cons._ iv. pr. 6, p. 342 l. 54.
[51] e.g. Ishmael also [Greek: kata sarka gegennaetai] Gal. iv. 23.
[52] Cf. "populus dei mirabiliter crescens ... quia ... erant
suspecta... laboribus premebatur," Aug. _De Ciu. Dei_, 18. 7. For other
coincidences see Rand, _op. cit._ pp. 423 ff.
ANICII MANLII SEVERINI BOETHII
V.C. ET INL. EXCONS. ORD. PATRICII
INCIPIT LIBER
CONTRA EVTYCHEN ET NESTORIVM
DOMINO SANCTO AC VENERABILI PATRI IOHANNI DIACONO
BOETHIVS FILIVS
Anxie te quidem diuque sustinui, ut de ea quae in conuentu mota est
quaestione loqueremur. Sed quoniam et tu quominus uenires occupatione
distractus es et ego in crastinum constitutis negotiis implicabor, mando
litteris quae coram loquenda seruaueram. Meministi enim, cum in concilio
legeretur epistola, recitatum Eutychianos ex duabus naturis Christum
consistere confiteri, in duabus negare: catholicos uero utrique dicto fidem
praebere, nam et ex duabus eum naturis consistere et in duabus apud uerae
fidei sectatores aequaliter credi. Cuius dicti nouitate percussus harum
coniunctionum quae ex duabus naturis uel in duabus consisterent
differentias inquirebam, multum scilicet referre ratus nec inerti
neglegentia praetereundum, quod episcopus scriptor epistolae tamquam ualde
necessarium praeterire noluisset. Hic omnes apertam esse differentiam nec
quicquam in eo esse caliginis inconditum confusumque strepere nec ullus in
tanto tumultu qui leuiter attingeret quaestionem, nedum qui expediret
inuentus est.
Adsederam ego ab eo quem maxime intueri cupiebam longius atque adeo, si
situm sedentium recorderis, auersus pluribusque oppositis, ne si aegerrime
quidem cuperem, uultum nutumque eius aspicere poteram ex quo mihi aliqua
eius darentur signa iudicii. Atqui ego quidem nihil ceteris amplius
afferebam, immo uero aliquid etiam minus. Nam de re proposita aeque nihil
ceteris sentiebam; minus uero quam ceteri ipse afferebam, falsae scilicet
scientiae praesumptionem. Tuli aegerrime, fateor, compressusque indoctorum
grege conticui metuens ne iure uiderer insanus, si sanus inter furiosos
haberi contenderem. Meditabar igitur dehinc omnes animo quaestiones nec
deglutiebam quod acceperam, sed frequentis consilii iteratione ruminabam.
Tandem igitur patuere pulsanti animo fores et ueritas inuenta quaerenti
omnes nebulas Eutychiani reclusit erroris. Vnde mihi maxime subiit
admirari, quaenam haec indoctorum hominum esset audacia qui inscientiae
uitium praesumptionis atque inpudentiae nube conentur obducere, cum non
modo saepe id quod proponatur ignorent, uerum in huiusmodi contentionibus
ne id quidem quod ipsi loquantur intellegant, quasi non deterior fiat
inscientiae causa, dum tegitur.
Sed ab illis ad te transeo, cui hoc quantulumcumque est examinandum prius
perpendendumque transmitto. Quod si recte se habere pronuntiaueris, peto ut
mei nominis hoc quoque inseras chartis; sin uero uel minuendum aliquid uel
addendum uel aliqua mutatione uariandum est, id quoque postulo remitti,
meis exemplaribus ita ut a te reuertitur transcribendum. Quae ubi ad calcem
ducta constiterint, tum demum eius cuius soleo iudicio censenda
transmittam. Sed quoniam semel res a conlocutione transfertur ad stilum,
prius extremi sibique contrarii Nestorii atque Eutychis summoueantur
errores; post uero adiuuante deo, Christianae medietatem fidei temperabo.
Quoniam uero in tota quaestione contrariarum sibimet [Greek: haireseon] de
personis dubitatur atque naturis, haec primitus definienda sunt et propriis
differentiis segreganda.