ON THE TREATISES

ON THE TRINITY AND THE INCARNATION

The three treatises of Philoxenus on the Trinity and the Incarnation, which we now publish, have reached us in a single manuscript, Vatican Syriac 137, as we have already stated in the preface to the text. Regarding how this work should be assessed, Assemani explained it quite well, and it is a pleasure to transcribe his words here:

"In the treatise on the Trinity," he says original: "inquit", "nothing worthy of note occurs, if you except the error he admits regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit, which Xenaias Another name for Philoxenus holds."

"In the treatise on the Incarnation, he acts neither as an orthodox [believer] nor as a Eutychian, but takes a certain middle path, which the Jacobites Syriac Orthodox Christians held after him, and still hold to this day: namely, that there is one nature in Christ composed of divinity and humanity, yet entirely free from conversion, confusion, and commixture. For thus he writes of the mystery of the Incarnation. The Son, he says, who is one from the Trinity, united to Himself personally a body, endowed with a rational soul and mind, in the womb of the Mother of God Deipara/Theotokos. The body was not formed before it was united to the Word, but at the point of time it was both formed and united. In this [state] Christ was born, in this he was nourished, in this he suffered, in this he died. The divinity of the Son neither suffered nor died. All these things, however, took place not apparently or phantastically, but truly and naturally. Finally, the Word was not converted into flesh, or commixed with it, or con-

¹ Bibl. orient., II, pp. 25-26.