One Christ, not two; fullness dwells bodily in the Word’s flesh

But when the blessed Paul says that all the fullness dwelt in him, some might perhaps say: See — he clearly knows another Christ particularly, the human from a woman, in whom the Son of God dwelt as another beside him — that is, all the fullness of the deity bodily.

To such things we say that the Spirit-bearing apostle does not know two Christs, but proclaims one, just as also one Father: “for for us,” he says, “there is one God the Father, from whom are all things and we for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him.” Come then, let us examine by setting the force of what has been said to the test. He says that the image of the invisible God — the one through whom and in whom are all things, the Son before the ages, the constitution of all — has been given to the church as head, and also that he has become firstborn from the dead. And since he is immortal by nature, there is somehow every necessity to say that the Word from God the Father has been brought together with the humanity according to us into an economic and true union, and that in this way one Christ is shown to us, the same one being God and human together. In whom then did all the fullness of the deity dwell bodily? To think this was done particularly and alone in the Word’s nature is altogether silly — for that is equal to saying that the Only-begotten dwelt in himself. But believing that the Word became flesh — not by change or alteration, but rather that he tabernacled among us and made his own temple the body truly united to him, having a rational soul — it is right to say that the divine Paul, signifying to us the dwelling — that is, the true union — in the Word’s holy flesh, says that all the fullness of the deity dwelt in him, not by participation or relatively or as in a gift of grace, but bodily, that is, essentially…