On the Incarnation of the Lord, against Nestorius 2.1–2.7

Since in the first book we set out beforehand certain things by which to prove that the new heretic sprouts from the roots of an ancient heresy, the just condemnation of the earlier heretics ought indeed to be enough for him to receive the sentence of just condemnation. For since he has the same roots and springs up out of the same trenches, he has already been sufficiently condemned in his authors; especially since those who most recently before these men wrongly followed this very thing that they assert have rightly condemned it, so that the examples of their own people, either of those who were corrected or of those who were condemned, ought to suffice them abundantly. For if they can be corrected, they have a cure in the corrections of their own people; if they cannot be corrected, they have a sentence in the condemnation of their own people. Yet lest we be thought to want to use a prejudgment rather than a judgment against them, let us bring their pestilent proposition, or rather blaspheming madness, into the open, taking in all things the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: so that the same sword of the divine word which earlier cut off the head of the ancient dragon in the old serpents may cut it off now too, as it rises again, in the new snakes. For since their error is the same as that of the others, the cutting off of the others ought to count as the cutting off of these. And because the snakes, born again, are breathing pestilent breath in the church of the Lord and making some waste away by their hissing, a fresh medicine must be joined to the ancient cures because of the new sicknesses, so that, even if what was done earlier does not avail to cure the illness, what we are doing now may avail for the health of the sick.

You say, then, heretic, whoever you are, who deny that God was born of the virgin, that Mary the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be called Theotokos, that is, Mother of God, but Christotokos, that is, mother only of Christ, not of God. “For no one,” you say, “gives birth to one older than herself.” About this so foolish argument, since you think the birth of God must be judged by fleshly understanding and believe the mystery of majesty must be assessed by human reasonings, we will argue later, if God grants. Meanwhile let us now prove by divine witnesses both that Christ is God and that Mary is Mother of God. Hear, then, the angel of God speaking to the shepherds of the birth of God: “To you is born today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.” So that you would not understand only a man in Christ, he added for you the names Lord and Savior, so that you would in no way doubt that one whom you recognized to be Savior is God, and, since the power of saving belongs only to divine might, you would not hesitate that one in whom you had learned the power of saving is of divine power. But this may perhaps seem too little to your unbelief, because the angel called him Lord and Savior rather than God or Son of God, although of course you most impiously deny to be God the one you confess to be Savior. Hear also the archangel Gabriel announcing to the virgin Mary: “The Holy Spirit,” he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also what will be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” You see how, about to announce the birth of God, he first set out the works of the Godhead. For “the Holy Spirit,” he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Speaking most beautifully, the angel unfolded the majesty of the divine work by the divinity of his words. For the Holy Spirit, sanctifying the inward parts of the virgin and breathing into them the power of his Godhead, inserted himself into and mingled himself with human nature, and made his own what had been foreign to him, taking it, that is, by his own power and majesty. And lest human weakness perhaps not hold firm at the entry of the Godhead, the power of the Most High strengthened the virgin, venerable to all, so as to make firm her bodily weakness by the protection of his shadow poured around her, so that human frailty, upheld by the divine overshadowing, would not fail in accomplishing the unspeakable sacrament of the holy conception. “The Holy Spirit,” then, he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” If, then, the one to be born of the holy virgin was only a mere man, why was there so great a message of a holy coming? Why so great a preparation of the Godhead itself? If a man was simply being born of a man and flesh of flesh, a command or the divine will alone could surely have sufficed for that. For if, to make the heavens, to found the earth, to create the sea, and finally the seats and thrones and angels and archangels and principalities and powers, if, finally, to create the whole heavenly host and those innumerable thousands of thousands of the divine armies, the will and command of God alone sufficed for him, since “he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created,” why did what was enough for the creation of all divine things seem too little for the conception, as you say, of one man, and why did the power and majesty of God think too little for the birth of one little infant what sufficed for the founding of all earthly and heavenly things? But this of course is the point: all those works had been done by God’s command, but the birth was not to be done except by his coming, because God could not be conceived by a human being unless he gave himself, nor be born unless he slipped in himself. And therefore the archangel announced that the holy majesty would come upon the virgin, so that, since so great a thing could not be done through human agency, he might say that the majesty of the one who would be in the birth would be present in the conception. And therefore the Word, the Son, comes down; the majesty of the Holy Spirit is present; the power of the Father overshadows: so that in the sacrament of the holy conception there might be the cooperation of the whole Trinity. “Therefore,” he says, “also what will be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” He did well to add “therefore,” to show that these things would follow because those had been set before them, and that because God had come upon her in the conception, therefore God would be in the birth. So he gave the reason for so great a thing to the girl who did not know it, saying in effect: because the Holy Spirit will come upon you and because the power of the Most High will overshadow you, therefore also what will be born will be called holy, the Son of God. That is to say: lest you be ignorant of this preparation for so great a thing, this sacrament of so great a mystery, the whole majesty of God will come into you because the Son of God will be born of you. What more can be doubted here, or what more can be said? He said that God would come upon her and that the Son of God would be born. Ask now, if you please, either how the Son of God is not God, or how she who brought forth God cannot be Theotokos, that is, Mother of God. These things alone, then, ought to suffice you; indeed, these things ought to suffice you to the full.

But since testimonies of the holy birth are abundantly at hand, as all these things were written precisely so as to be its witnesses, let us look, at least in some small portion, at the announcement of God in the Old Testament also, so that you may understand that the future birth of God from a virgin was not announced only when it was done, but was foretold from the very beginning of the world: truly so, that, since an ineffable work was to be done, the announcement of the future, always sent ahead, might in time remove unbelief in the present events. The prophet Isaiah says, then: “Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.” What room is there here, unbeliever, for doubt? The prophet said that a virgin would conceive: a virgin conceived. That a son would be born: a son was born. That he would be called God: he is called God, for he is called by the name that is his nature. So since the Spirit of God said that he would be called God, the one who has made himself a stranger to sharing in this divine name proves himself empty of the Spirit of God. “Behold,” then, he says, “a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.” But perhaps this is where the evasion of the unbeliever will turn, to say that what the prophet said, that he would be called God, pertains not so much to the majesty of the Godhead as to the giving of a name. But what are we to make of the fact that Christ is nowhere called by this name in the Gospels, and yet the Spirit of God cannot be said to have lied through the prophet? What then does this mean? That you should understand, of course, that that prophecy foretold the name of the Godhead, not of the flesh. For since in the Gospel the man united to God received another name, it necessarily follows that the one was the name of the man, the other of the Godhead. But let us go further and summon other testimonies of the truth to prove the truth; for where God is concerned, the Godhead is proved by nothing better than by its own witnesses. The same prophet, then, says elsewhere: “A son is born to us, a little one is given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulder; and his name will be called Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace.” As above the prophet said he would be called Emmanuel, so here he says he will be called Messenger of great counsel and Mighty God and Father of the world to come and Prince of peace, though we nowhere read in the Gospels that he was called by these names: so that we understand that these are names not of the flesh but of the Godhead, and that the name in the Gospels is that of the man assumed, this that of the unbegotten power, and that, because God was to be born in man, the names themselves were divided by the holy dispensation so as to give the flesh the name of a man and the Godhead the name of God. “His name,” then, he says, “will be called Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace.” Here, heretic, whoever you are, here that prophet full of the divine Spirit did not, after the pattern of your assertion, compare the one who was born to a cast statue and a lifeless image. For “a son,” he says, “is born to us, a little one is given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulder; and his name will be called Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God.” So that you would not understand the one he announced as God to be other than the one who was born in the flesh, he added the term for birth, saying: “A son is born to us, a little one is given to us.” You see how many words the prophet used to show the reality of a bodily birth. For he called him both born and a little one, so that the term of littleness might express more clearly the meaning of a child that is born. Foreseeing without doubt this perversity of blaspheming heretics, the divine Spirit here showed to the whole world, by the very names of things, the God who was being born, so that even if a heretic sought to blaspheme he could find no room at all for blasphemy. “A son,” then, he says, “is born to us, a little one is given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulder; and his name will be called Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace.” He taught that this little one who was born is both Prince of peace and Father of the world to come and Mighty God. Where is there room for evasion? This little one who was born cannot be separated from the God who was born in him: for the one he called born he named Father of the world to come; the one he called a little one he foretold to be Mighty God. Where can you turn, heretic? Everything is fenced in and shut; there is no way out anywhere. It remains that necessity at last begin to confess the error which the will refused to understand. But not content with these, which suffice, let us ask what the Holy Spirit said also through another prophet: “Will a man fasten his God,” he says, “that you fasten me?” So that the prophecies might be clearer, what the prophet sang of the Lord’s passion he foretold as if from the mouth of the very one of whom he spoke: “Will a man fasten his God, that you fasten me?” Does not the Lord our God seem to you, I ask, to have said this as if led to the cross: Why, I ask, do you not recognize me as your Redeemer? Why do you not know God clothed with flesh for us? Do you prepare death for your Savior? Do you lead the author of life to death? It is your God whom you hang up, your God whom you crucify. What error, I ask, is this, or what madness? “Will a man fasten his God, that you fasten me?” You see how this voice is in a way the voice of the very things that were done. Do you seek anything more express or more plain? You see how the holy testimonies have followed the Lord Jesus Christ, born in the flesh, from his very cradle, so to speak, up to the cross which he endured, since the one whom you read elsewhere to be God born in the flesh you see here as God fastened on the cross. And therefore by the prophet he is called God both there where he was born and, most plainly, there where he was crucified, so that the taking of flesh might in no way prejudice the dignity of the Godhead, nor the lowliness of the body or the insult of the passion break down the honor of the majesty; whereas the condescension of so humble a birth and the goodness of one who suffered so kindly ought rather to increase in us our love and worship of him, since it is the greatest and most monstrous crime that he should have less honor among us because he spent more love.

But leaving these things, which can in no way be fully unfolded because, like the immensity of his benefits, the telling of them has no limit, it is time to consult about him his strongest and plainest witness, the apostle Paul; for he can tell us everything about God most faithfully, from whose breast God always spoke. Thus, then, the chosen teacher of the Gentiles, sent to destroy the error of pagan superstition, testifies of the grace and coming of the Lord our God: “The grace of God our Savior,” he says, “has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and godly and justly in this world, awaiting the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” “The grace of God our Savior,” he says, “has appeared.” He used a word well suited to show the coming of a new grace and a new birth. For by saying “has appeared” he expressed the rising of the new grace and the nativity, since the gift of the new grace began to appear from the moment God appeared born in the world. So with a worthy and fitting word, pointing as with a finger, he showed this light of the new grace. For that is most rightly said to have appeared which is shown by the sudden light, as it were, of an appearing; as we read in the Gospels that the star appeared to the Magi from the East, and in Exodus: “The angel,” it says, “appeared to Moses in the fire of the flame of the bush.” For in all these and other holy visions Scripture thought it right above all to use this word, saying that those things appeared which shone with unwonted brightness. So the apostle too, knowing the coming of the heavenly grace which appeared at the rising of the holy nativity, expressed it by the word for a shining appearance, so as to say that that appeared which beamed with the splendor of a new light. “The grace of God our Savior,” then, “has appeared.” Can you raise any objection here about an ambiguity of names, as if to say that Christ is one thing and God another, so as to pull the Savior away from the majesty of his name and separate the Lord from the Godhead? See, here the vessel of God speaks from God, and testifies by the plainest preaching that the grace of God appeared from Mary. And lest you perhaps say that it was not God who appeared from Mary, he at once added the name of Savior, so that you might believe to be God, born of Mary, the one whom you cannot deny was born Savior, according to that word: “For to you is born today a Savior.” O wonderful teacher, truly given to the Gentiles by God! Knowing that this madness of heretical depravity would come, which would turn the names of God into a quarrel and would not fear to cavil against God about his own names, he put the name of God first, lest the heretic separate the name of Savior from the Godhead: so that the name of God, set first, might claim for itself all the names that followed, and that no one, in the following words, might believe Christ to be a mere man whom he had learned from the very first word to be God. “Awaiting,” says the same apostle, “the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” That teacher of divine wisdom surely saw that, against the insidious snares of devilish cunning, simple teaching alone does not suffice unless he armed the holy preaching of the faith with the defense of caution. And therefore, having put the name of God and Savior above, he added here “Jesus Christ,” lest you perhaps think the name of Savior alone not enough to signify the Lord Jesus Christ, and not understand that the same Jesus Christ is God whom you had learned to be God the Savior. What then does he say? “Awaiting,” he says, “the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” Nothing of the names of our Lord is lacking here: you see here God and Savior and Jesus and Christ. But seeing all these, you perceive that all are in God. You have heard “God,” but “Savior”; you have heard “God,” but “Jesus”; you have heard that he is God, but “Christ.” What the Godhead has joined in unity cannot be separated by this difference of names. Whichever of them you inquire into, you find the same. The Savior is God, Jesus is God, Christ is God: all this that you hear is plural in naming but one in power; since the Savior is God and Jesus God and Christ God, it is plain to understand that all these are distinguished by name but joined in majesty. And when you hear most plainly that the one God is named in each, you can surely understand plainly that there is one God in all. And so you may no longer look for a difference of power from the unlikeness of the Lord’s names, nor make a difference of person from a variety of names. You may not say: “Christ was born of Mary, and not God,” for the apostle proclaims: “God.” You may not say: “Jesus was born of Mary, and not God,” for the apostle testifies: “God.” You may not say: “The Savior was born, and not God,” for the apostle affirms: “God.” There is nowhere for you to turn: whichever of the Lord’s names you take, what you name is God. There is nothing for you to say, nothing to bring forward, nothing to touch with wicked falsehood. In impious unbelief you can find something not to believe; in the opportunity for cavil you find nothing to deny.

Although we began a little above to speak of the divine and saving grace of our Lord, I want us to say something more on the same matter from the holy readings. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the apostle James rebuked in this way those who, while receiving the gospel, still held that the yoke of the old law must be borne: “Why,” he says, “do you tempt God, to put a yoke on the necks of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we are saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as they are.” The apostle certainly says that the gift of this grace was given through Jesus. Answer me now, if you please: do you think this grace, which was given for the salvation of all, was given by a man or by God? If by a man, Paul, the vessel of God, cries out against you: “The grace of God our Savior has appeared”; for he teaches that this grace belongs to a divine gift, not to human weakness. And indeed even if holy testimony were not at hand, the truth of the thing itself would be testimony, because frail and earthly things cannot provide the possession of an everlasting and immortal good, nor can anyone give another what he himself lacks, or bestow an abundance of something of which he admits he suffers want. So you must not deny that the grace was given by God. God, then, is the one who gave it; and it was given through the Lord Jesus Christ; therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is God. And if he is, as he is, God, then she who bore God is Theotokos, that is, Mother of God; unless perhaps you want to go on to so ridiculous a contradiction of blasphemy as to deny that she of whom God was born is the Mother of God, when you cannot deny that the one who was born is God. But let us see what the gospel of God also thought of this same grace of our Lord. “Grace and truth,” it says, “came through Jesus Christ.” If Christ was a mere man, how did these come through Christ? Whence divine power in him, if, as you say, there was only the human condition in him? Whence heavenly bounty, if earthly poverty? For no one can bestow what he does not have. Therefore Christ, giving divine grace, had what he gave. For no one can sustain the difference between these things, so utterly opposed to one another, as to suffer at the same time the want of the needy and to possess the munificence of the giver. And therefore the apostle Paul, knowing that all the treasures of heavenly riches are in Christ, rightly writes to the churches: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” Having often taught already that the same one is God who is Christ, and that the whole majesty of the Godhead is in him, and that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, he rightly now prays for the grace of Christ alone without adding the name of God, because he knows that all the grace of God is contained in the grace of Christ. “The grace,” then, he says, “of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” I ask you, heretic, whoever you are: when Paul wrote this to the churches, what was he praying for those to whom he wrote? For “the grace,” he says, “of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” If Jesus Christ was a mere man, then he too, wishing the grace of Christ to be given to the churches, was wishing the grace of a man to be given, and in saying “the grace of Christ be with you” he was saying this: the grace of a man be with you, the grace of flesh be with you, the grace of bodily weakness, the grace of human frailty. Or why would he name the grace of that person at all if he were wishing the grace of a man? For there was no reason for wishing where there was nothing to be wished for, nor should one pray that his grace come to them if he did not have, as you say, the substance of the very grace that was wished for. So you see that these things are utterly foolish and ridiculous; or rather not ridiculous, but to be wept over. For things that are ridiculous to some lighter people are to be wept over by the pious and faithful, because over the folly of your unbelief they shed tears of love, and over the senselessness of another’s impiety they have tears of their own piety. Let us then at last come to our senses and take breath, because this way of thinking lacks not only wisdom but also the Spirit, being plainly both empty of spiritual wisdom and a stranger to the Spirit of salvation.

But perhaps you say that this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ of which the apostle writes was not born with him but poured into him afterwards by an inflowing of the Godhead, because the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the man whom you call “mere,” is said by you not to have been born with God but to have been taken up by God afterwards, and therefore that grace was given to that man at the same time as the Godhead. Nor do we say anything other than that the divine grace came down with the Godhead, since divine grace belongs to God and is in a way the bounty of the Godhead itself and the gift of its generous favors. So the difference between us might perhaps be thought to be one of time rather than of substance, since the Godhead which we say was born with the Lord Jesus, you say was poured in afterwards. But the point is this: denying that the Godhead was born with the Lord, you cannot faithfully confess it afterwards either, because one and the same thing cannot be impious in part and be proved pious in part, and the same thing cannot be partly of faith and partly of faithlessness. First, then, I ask you this: do you call the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the virgin Mary, the son of man only, or the Son of God as well? For we, that is, the faith of all catholics, we all, I say, both believe and understand and know and confess both: that he is the son of man, because he was born of a human being, and the Son of God, because he was conceived of the Godhead. Do you, then, assert both, that is, that he is Son of God and of man, or only of man? If only of man, the apostles cry out against you, the prophets cry out against you, finally the Holy Spirit himself, by whom the conception was made, cries out against you. Your most shameless mouth is overwhelmed by all the testimonies of the divine letters, overwhelmed by the holy witnesses of the sacred volume, overwhelmed finally by the very gospel of God as by a divine hand; and that great Gabriel, who by the power of his word restrained the unbelieving voice in Zechariah, much more condemned with his own mouth your blasphemous and impious voice when he said to the virgin Mary, the Mother of God: “The Holy Spirit,” he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also what will be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” You see that, before Jesus Christ became son of man according to the flesh, he was proclaimed Son of God; for the virgin Mary, who was to bear the Lord, conceived when the Holy Spirit came down into her and the power of the Most High worked with him. And by this you understand that the origin of our Lord and Savior is from the same source as his conception; and since he was born when the whole fullness of the Godhead came down upon the virgin, he could not have been son of man had he not first been Son of God. And therefore the angel of God, sent to announce the birth of the holy rising, after first telling the sacrament of the conception, gave a name to the very offspring, saying: “Therefore also what will be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” Jesus Christ, then, is the Son of God, because he was both begotten of the Godhead and conceived of the Godhead. And if the Son of God, then without doubt God. And if God, then not lacking the grace of God; for he never lacked that which he himself made: for “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

All grace, then, all virtue, all power, all Godhead, and finally the whole fullness of the Godhead and of his majesty were always with him and in him: whether in heaven or on earth, whether in the womb or at birth, nothing of God was ever lacking to God. For the Godhead was always with God, never separated from him by place or by time. For God is everywhere whole, everywhere perfect, not divided, not changed, not lessened, because nothing can ever be added to God or taken away; for as the Godhead has no increase, so it has no lessening. The same one, then, was on earth who was in heaven, the same in the lowly as in the highest, the same in the smallness of man as in the majesty of God. And therefore the apostle, naming the grace of Christ, rightly named the grace of God, because Christ was everything that God is: at the very conception of the man all the power of God, all the Godhead, all the fullness of the Godhead had come. For from the same source came the whole perfection of the Godhead in him as his origin. For that man was never without God, since he had received from God that very thing which he was. This first, then, like it or not, you cannot deny: that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, since the archangel cries out in the Gospels: “What will be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” And this once established, know that whatever you read of Christ you read of the Son of God; whatever you read of the Lord or of Jesus belongs to the Son of God. For all these names of his name the Son of God; all these titles of his proclaim the Son of God. And therefore, recognizing in all of these, whichever you hear, a name of the Godhead, since you see that in all of them you must understand the Son of God, argue, if you please, how you can separate God from the Son of God.