Translation – Adversus Apologiam Juliani – Chapter 27

Translation from the work of St Severus by Father Peter Farrington

You are still bearing this anathema against yourself! Indeed, in this libel introduced into the debate, you have said in your own words that the divine Scripture does not admit a distinction between corruption and corruption, and you impudently demonstrate by this that you call all the sufferings of Our Lord a corruption, which incurs the accusation of sin.

So that by this the distinction of Scripture is abolished, namely, that he has endured and taken the irreproachable passions, which are exempt from all sinful guilt, but that he has rejected those which defile the purity of our life as being unworthy of the divinity which is not affected – this distinction was clearly stated by the wise Basil – by those which the Apostle Paul calls “shameful passions”!

That is why you think on the extreme of what is right, and you confess that the flesh of our Saviour is impassable and immortal from the moment of union, insofar as the passible and the mortal is unclean and is not free from sin!

So you destroyed yourself with your own hands and were pierced by the sword of the anathema you had yourself sharpened!

Commentary

I will be translating passages from the writings of St Severus against the teachings of Julian of Halicarnassus. Julian’s error was in considering that when the Word became flesh he had taken a humanity that what impassible and immortal. This means that is could not suffer and die, and so St Severus wrote many texts against him, since it is necessary that the Word of God be able to suffer and die in a humanity like our own, without sin, so that our own humanity might experience the victory over death and the resurrection with him.

Julian considered that anything which indicated weakness in the humanity was corruption, and that all corruption was necessarily a matter of sin.

In this passage, Chapter 27 from his work Against the Apology of Julian, St Severus notes that Julian considers all corruption to be the same, and to be sinful. This is why it is said of Julian…

You have said in your own words that the divine Scripture does not admit a distinction between corruption and corruption, and you impudently demonstrate by this that you call all the sufferings of Our Lord a corruption, which incurs the accusation of sin.

We can understand this point of view. It is saying that all weakness and all suffering and all expression of mortality is corruption, and all corruption is the same ans is sinful. Therefore, Julian argues in his own works, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, has to be preserved from all such weakness and suffering and mortality, and must therefore be impassible – which means unable to suffer in any way, and immortal – which means not subject to mortality in any way.

But this is not compatible with the Gospel. If Christ could not suffer death as a man then he has not truly died in our own humanity, and our own humanity cannot be raised from death. He has only appeared to suffer death.

St Severus explains the Orthodox understanding of these things when he says…

So that by this the distinction of Scripture is abolished, namely, that he has endured and taken the irreproachable passions, which are exempt from all sinful guilt, but that he has rejected those which defile the purity of our life as being unworthy of the divinity which is not affected – this distinction was clearly stated by the wise Basil – by those which the Apostle Paul calls “shameful passions”!

In the first place, St Severus insists that it is Scripture itself which provides a distinction between different types of corruption. There are, in the first case, the irreproachable passions, which are not sinful at all. These are the natural expressions of our humanity – pain, tiredness, hunger, warmth, cold. These are not associated with sin in any way. They are, as St Severus says, exempt from sinful guilt. Therefore, to endure such things is not a matter of sin or guilt at all. This type of corruption has been accepted by the Word of God in becoming man in our own flesh.

But in the second place, St Severus insists that he has not experienced at all those passions which defile, and which are incompatible with purity. St Severus includes all of those passions which are included in the shameful passions of which St Paul speaks in Romans 1:26. He speaks there of…

God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves… being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful.

These are of a different character. The blameless passions are to do with the natural functioning of mortal man and are without sin or guilt. But these shameful or vile passions are all to do with the misuse of the will, with the interior choices we make in our mind and heart. There was nothing of this in Christ, but these are not essential to the human nature as God created us, and even as we find ourselves in our mortal state. If I place my hand in a flame I must, as a matter of natural corruption, feel the pain of the fire, and there is no sin or guilt associated with such a natural response. Our Lord Jesus truly felt the pain of the whip, and the thorns, and the nails. There is no sin or guilt in this.

But he was never moved in his heart by that other corruption, a moral corruption, which is not a necessary part of our nature, though it is our universal experience as those who chose to sin.

This is an important distinction. When the Fathers speak about the corruption of our nature, they very often intend this natural corruption, which our Lord Jesus shared, without sin or guilt. And they do not mean the moral corruption of sin, which is expressed in the shameful passions.