Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Gregory Thaumaturgus/Dubious or Spurious Writings/Twelve Topics on the Faith/Topic I

by Gregory Thaumaturgus

Twelve Topics on the Faith.

Wherein is Given Also the Formula of Excommunication, and an Explication is Subjoined to Each.^[1]

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Topic I.

If any one says that the body of Christ is uncreated, and refuses to acknowledge that He, being the uncreated Word (God) of God, took the flesh of created humanity and appeared incarnate, even as it is written, let him be anathema.

Explication.

How could the body be said to be uncreated? For the uncreated is the passionless, invulnerable, intangible. But Christ, on rising from the dead, showed His disciples the print of the nails and the wound made by the spear, and a body that could be handled, although He also had entered among them when the doors were shut, with the view of showing them at once the energy of the divinity and the reality of the body.

Yet, while being God, He was recognised as man in a natural manner; and while subsisting truly as man, He was also manifested as God by His works.^[2]

Footnotes

1. Works of Grester, vol. xv. p. 434, Ratisbon, 1741, in fol., from a manuscript codex.
2. This paragraph is wanting in a very ancient copy.