[ Theandrike energeia ]

 Operatio Deivirilis, "the Man-God's action." By the word [ energeia ] meant in theology the action or operation, the family of acts, which naturally belongs to and discriminates the substance or nature of a thing from that of other things; and not only the mere operation, but also inclusively the faculty of such operation; as certain nutritive or medicinal qualities adhere, and serve as definitions, to certain plants and minerals, or as the [ energeia ] and the [ ergon ] of a seraph may be viewed as being the adoration of the Holy Trinity.

 This being laid down, it would seem to follow that our Lord, having two natures, has two attendant [ erga ] and two [ energeiai ], and this in fact is the Catholic doctrine; whereas the Monothelites maintained He had but one, as if, with the Monophysites, they held but one nature of Christ, the divine and human energies making up one single third energy, neither divine nor human, for, in the Monophysite creed, God and man made one third and compound being, who would necessarily have one compound energy, and, as will is one kind of energy, one only will.

 This one and only energy of our Lord, as proceeding from what they considered His one composite nature, they denoted by the orthodox phrase, "[ energeia theandrike ]," diverting it from its true sense. Catholic theologians, holding two energies, one for each nature, speak of them in three ways, viz. as a divine energy, a human, and a union or concurrence of the two; this last they call [ theandrike ], but in a sense quite distinct from the use of the word by the Monothelites. Sometimes our Lord exerts His divine energia, as when He protects His people; sometimes His human, as when He underwent hunger and thirst; sometimes both at once, as in making clay and restoring sight, or in His suffering for His people; but in this last instance, there is no intermingling of the divine and the human, and, though it may be spoken of as a double energy, still there are in fact two, not one.

 It is this [ theandrike energeia ] that is spoken of in the following passages:

 "And thus when there was need to raise Peter's wife's mother who was sick of a fever, He stretched forth His hand humanly, but He stopped the illness divinely. And in the case of the man blind from the birth, human was the spittle which he gave forth from the flesh, but divinely did He open the eyes through the clay. And in the case of Lazarus, He gave forth a human voice, as man; but divinely, as God, did He raise Lazarus from the dead." Orat. iii. 32.

 "When He is said to hunger and thirst, and to toil, and not to know, and to sleep, and to weep, and to ask, and to flee, and to be born, and to deprecate the chalice, and in a word to undergo all that belongs to the flesh, let it be said, as is congruous, in each case, Christ's then hungering or thirsting for us in the flesh, and saying He did not know, and being buffeted and toiling for us in the flesh, and being exalted too, and born and growing in the flesh, and fearing and hiding in the flesh, and saying, If it be possible let this chalice pass from Me, and being beaten and receiving gifts for us in the flesh ; and in a word, all such things for us in the flesh,'" etc. Orat. iii. § 34.

 "When He touched the leper, it was the man that was seen; but something beyond man, when He cleansed him," etc. Ambros. Epist. i. 46, n. 7. Hil. Trin. x. 23 fin. vid. Incarnation and Two Natures, and S. Leo's extracts in his Ep. 165. Chrysol. Serm. 34 and 35. Paul. ap Conc. Eph. t. iii. (p. 1620, Labbe.)