Dialogues (Eranistes) · Part 21

Eran.--How do I support yours, while I refuse to acknowledge two sons?

Orth.--When did you ever hear of our affirming two sons?

Eran.--He who asserts two natures asserts two sons.

Orth.--Then you assert three sons, for you have spoken of three natures.

Eran.--In no other way was it possible to meet the argument of my opponents.

Orth.--Hear this same thing from us too; for both you and I confront the same antagonists.

Eran.--But I do not assert two natures after the union.

Orth.--And yet after many generations of the union a moment ago you used the same words. Explain to us however in what sense you assert one nature after the union. Do you mean one nature derived from both or that one nature remains after the destruction of the other?

Eran.--I maintain that the Godhead remains and that the manhood was swallowed up by it.

Orth.--Fables of the Gentiles, all this, and follies of the Manichees. I am ashamed so much as to mention such things. The Greeks had their gods' swallowings and the Manichees wrote of the daughter of light. But we reject such teaching as being as absurd as it is impious, for how could a nature absolute and uncompounded, comprehending the universe, unapproachable and infinite, have absorbed the nature which it assumed?

Eran.--Like the sea receiving a drop of honey, for straightway the drop, as it mingles with the ocean's water, disappears.

Orth.--The sea and the drop are different in quantity, though alike in quality; the one is greatest, the other is least; the one is sweet and the other is bitter; but in all other respects you will find a very close relationship. The nature of both is moist, liquid, and fluid. Both are created. Both are lifeless yet each alike is called a body. There is nothing then absurd in these cognate natures undergoing commixture, and in the one being made to disappear by the other. In the case before us on the contrary the difference is infinite, and so great that no figure of the reality can be found. I will however endeavour to point out to you several instances of substances which are mixed without being confounded, and remain unimpaired.

Eran.--Who in the world ever heard of an unmixed mixture?

Orth.--I shall endeavour to make you admit this.

Eran.--Should what you are about to advance prove true we will not oppose the truth.

Orth.--Answer then, dissenting or assenting as the argument may seem good to you.

Eran.--I will answer.

Orth.--Does the light at its rising seem to you to fill all the atmosphere except where men shut up in caverns might remain bereft of it?

Eran.--Yes.

Orth.--And does all the light seem to you to be diffused through all the atmosphere?

Eran.--I am with you so far.

Orth.--And is not the mixture diffused through all that is subject to it?

Eran.--Certainly.

Orth.--But, now, this illuminated atmosphere, do we not see it as light and call it light?

Eran.--Quite so.

Orth.--And yet when the light is present we sometimes are aware of moisture and aridity; frequently of heat and cold.

Eran.--Yes.

Orth.--And after the departure of the light the atmosphere afterwards remains alone by itself.

Eran.--True.

Orth.--Consider this example too. When iron is brought in contact with fire it is fired.

Eran.--Certainly.

Orth.--And the fire is diffused through its whole substance?

Eran.--Well?

Orth.--How, then, does not the complete union, and the mixture universally diffused, change the iron's nature?

Eran.--But it changes it altogether. It is now reckoned no longer as iron, but as fire, and indeed it has the active properties of fire.

Orth.--But does not the smith call it iron, and put it on the anvil and smite it with his hammer?

Eran.--Unquestionably.

Orth.--Then the nature of the iron was not damaged by contact with the fire. If then, in natural bodies, instances may be found of an unconfounded mixture, it is sheer folly in the case of the nature which knows neither corruption nor change to entertain the idea of confusion and destruction of the assumed nature, and all the more so when this nature was assumed to bring blessing on the race.

Eran.--What I assert is not the destruction of the assumed nature, but its change into the substance of Godhead.

Orth.--Then the human race is no longer limited as heretofore?