Three Treatises on the Trinity and the Incarnation

fused, nor divided from it and vice versa; but [was] united to humanity in the same way that a rational soul is united to a body: and just as one human nature is forged from a rational soul and a body, so from the humanity of Christ and his divinity one nature arises, not indeed simple, but composite, or, as the more recent Jacobites say: one double nature. He produces many examples, but especially the union of the soul with the body. Hence Xenaias departs from the Eutychians and the Catholics alike: from the former, because he affirms that the flesh of Christ is true, taken from the Virgin, and united to the divinity without confusion, mutation, or division; from the Catholics, however, because he does not assert that two natures remained after the union, but that from two one composite [nature] was formed: which he attempts in vain to show by the example of the rational soul and the body, as I said above." And this is enough regarding the doctrine of this work.

However, the conjecture of Assemani, namely that the work was perhaps addressed to Nestorian monks, seems to us little probable. For the conjecture rests on too weak a foundation. In the second treatise, these words are read: "And he who is called Doctor among you, whom they call the Interpreter of the Books before any other, Theodore, I say, the father and cause of this heresy, shamelessly demonstrated two sons." In truth, the codex has among you, ܒܝܢܝܟܘܢ, and not ܒܝܢܝܗܘܢ, among them, as we erroneously published on page 176, line 25. But it seems from the context that this is a mistake to be ascribed to the copyist, and no passage can be found in the whole work by which this opinion could be confirmed. On the contrary, from what he has at the beginning of the same second treatise (cf. below, p. 31), there can hardly be any doubt that Philoxenus wrote the work at the request of Monophysite men.

A. V.