49. It is clearly shewn why the Word, though
He was made Flesh, was nevertheless not transformed into Flesh.
Though these kinds of suffering affect the infirmity of the flesh, yet
God the Word when made Flesh could not change under suffering.
Suffering and change are not identical. Suffering of every kind
causes all flesh to change through sensitiveness and endurance of
pain. But the Word that was made Flesh, although He made Himself
subject to suffering, was nevertheless unchanged by the liability to
suffer. For He was able to suffer, and yet the Word was not
possible. Possibility denotes a nature that is weak; but
suffering in itself is the endurance of pains inflicted, and since the
Godhead is immutable and yet the Word was made Flesh, such pains found
in Him a material which they could affect though the Person of the Word
had no infirmity or possibility. And so when He suffered His
Nature remained immutable because like His Father, His Person is of an
impassible essence, though it is born Passibility
may not be affirmed of the divine nature of Christ which is incapable
of any change or limitation within itself. At the same time the
Word may be said to have suffered inasmuch as the suffering affected
the flesh which He assumed. This subject was afterwards,
carefully developed by St. John of Damascus περὶ
ὀρθοδόξου
πίστεως, III. 4. In c.
79, Hilary criticises the Arian statement that the Son “jointly
suffered,” a word which meant that the divine nature of the Son
shared in the sufferings which were endured by His humanity. This
phrase, like the statement of Arius that the Logos was “capable
of change” implied that the Son only possessed a secondary
divinity..