On the Incarnation of the Lord, against Nestorius 6.19–7.5

For his coming in the flesh and from the flesh was his rising, not a lessening; he was only born, not changed. For though, remaining in the form of God, he took the form of a servant, the weakness of the human condition did not weaken the nature of God; but with the power of the Godhead safe and whole, all that was done in the flesh of man was the advancement of the man, not a failing of the majesty. For since God was brought forth in human flesh, he was not born in the flesh so as not to remain God in himself, but so that, God remaining in himself, the man might be God. And therefore Martha, though she saw a man with fleshly eyes, still confessed God with spiritual ones, saying: “Yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, who have come into this world.” Therefore Peter, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit, though outwardly he looked on the Son of Man, still proclaimed the Son of God, saying: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Therefore Thomas, when he touched the flesh, believed he had touched God, saying: “My Lord and my God.” For all confessed one Christ, so as not to make two. Believe him, then, and believe so the Lord of all, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten and firstborn: the same creator of things as preserver of men, the same first founder of the whole world as afterwards redeemer of the human race; who, remaining with the Father and in the Father, homoousios with the Father, and, according to the apostle, taking the form of a servant, humbled himself to death, even the death of the cross; and according to the creed was born of the virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried, and on the third day rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. For this is the true faith, this the true salvation: to believe the same God and Lord Jesus Christ both before all things and after all things; because, as it is written, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever.” For in “yesterday” he shows all past time, in which before the beginning he was born of the Father; in “today” the span of this age, in which he was born again of the virgin, suffered and rose; and in his being called the same “forever” the immensity of all future eternity is meant.

But perhaps you say that, if I say that the same one was born of the virgin at the end of the ages who was born of God the Father before all things, I am calling God fleshly even before the beginnings of the world, since I say that the same one was afterwards man who was always God, and so that the man who was afterwards born always existed. I do not want you to be confused by this blindness of ignorance and this night of errors, so as to think that I assert that the man who was born of Mary existed before the beginnings of things, and that I proclaim God to have been always bodily even before the beginnings of the world. Not so, I say, I do not say so: not that the man was in God before he was born, but that God was afterwards born in the man. For that flesh which was born of the flesh of the virgin did not always exist; but God, who always existed, came from the flesh of the virgin in the flesh of a man. For “the Word was made flesh”: he did not bring flesh with him, but by the condescension of his Godhead united himself to the flesh of a man. For tell me: when or where was the Word made flesh, or where did he empty himself, taking the form of a servant, or where did he become poor, though he was rich, except in that holy womb of the virgin, where, as the Word of God is incarnate, it is said to be made flesh; as he is brought forth, he takes the form of a servant in reality; as he is fastened to the gibbet in the human condition, he becomes poor and is made needy by fleshly suffering, though he was rich in divine majesty? Otherwise, if, as you say, the Godhead came upon him after this, as upon one of the prophets and saints, then the Word was made flesh in those too in whom he deigned to dwell, then through each of them he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; and so nothing new or special was done in Christ, nothing unique, nothing wonderful was in his conception or birth or death.

And yet, to return to what was said above, since all these things are as we have said, how is Jesus Christ, whom you assert to be only a man, read to have always existed even before he was born of the virgin, and proclaimed God even before the ages by prophets and apostles, as Paul says, “One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” and also elsewhere, “For in Christ,” he says, “all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible”? The creed too, woven by human and divine authority alike, says: “I believe in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ his Son,” and after other things, “true God of true God, through whom the ages were framed and all things made,” and again, “who for our sake came and was born of the virgin Mary, and was crucified, and was buried.”

How, then, since by our own confession the Lord’s man did not exist at all before the virgin’s childbearing and conception, is Christ, who is called by you a mere man, proclaimed by the holy writings to be God without beginning, and how is so great a unity of man and God read that the man seems both to have been co-eternal with God before, and God afterwards to have suffered with the man, although neither is the man to be believed without beginning nor God passible? It is surely what we have already testified in the earlier writings: that God, united to the man, that is, to his own body, does not allow any distance to be made between the man and God by human opinion, and did not wish it to be admitted at all that the son of man should be believed by anyone to be one and the Son of God another; but in all the holy writings he so connects and incorporates the Lord’s man with God that no one can separate the man from God in time or God from the man in the passion. For if you look at time, you will always find the son of man with the Son of God; if at the passion, you will always find the Son of God with the son of man: Christ, the son of man and Son of God, being so united and undivided in himself that, as far as the voice of Scripture is concerned, neither can the man be separated from God in time nor God from the man in the passion. Hence that word: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven”: where, though the Son of God was speaking on earth, he testified that the son of man was in heaven, and testified that the same son of man, whom he said would ascend into heaven, had first come down from heaven. Or that: “If you see the Son of Man ascending where he was before”: though he names the one born of man, he still testifies that he was always in the regions above. And the apostle too, if one looks at time, proclaims that all things were made through Christ: for “one,” he says, “is the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”; if at the passion, he indicates that the Lord of majesty was crucified: “For if they had known,” he says, “they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty.” And therefore the creed too, teaching that the only-begotten and firstborn Lord Jesus Christ is true God of true God, homoousios with the Father and creator of all, testifies that he was born of the virgin Mary and afterwards crucified and buried; so incorporating the Son of God and son of man, and uniting man and God, that no division can be made either in time or in the passion, since the same Lord Jesus Christ is taught to be both God through eternity of time and man through enduring the passion; and so, though neither should the man be called without beginning nor God passible, yet in the one Lord Jesus Christ the man is proclaimed eternal before and God dead. You see, then, that Christ is all, and his name signifies both natures, because, born both man and God, he so embraces all things in himself that nothing is known to be lacking in his name. Not, then, that before the virgin’s childbearing there was in the past the same eternity of the man as of God; but because God was united with the man in the virgin’s womb, it came about that in Christ the one cannot be named at all without the other.

Whatever, then, you say of the Lord Jesus, you say of the whole. For in the Son of God you will name the son of man, and in the son of man the Son of God, by the figure of synecdoche, by which the whole is understood from a part and a portion is named from the whole; as the holy Scriptures teach, in which the Lord, often using this figure while teaching about others, wished it to be understood so of himself too. For in the divine volumes days, or things, or men, or times are sometimes indicated in no other way: as when God foretells to Abraham that Israel would serve in Egypt for four hundred years, saying: “Know for certain that your seed will be a stranger in a land not its own, and they will subject them to slavery and afflict them for four hundred years”; whereas, if all the time from when God spoke is considered, there are more than four hundred years, but if only that during which they were slaves, less. Unless this time is understood by this figure, the word of God perhaps lies, which be far from Christian minds; but since from the time of the divine word the whole time of their life has more than four hundred years and the slavery much less than four hundred, it comes about that either a part can be understood from the whole or the whole from a part. Not unlike, too, is the meaning sometimes concerning days and nights, where, since one day is understood in both times, both times are shown in a part of one time. In this way, indeed, that which seems obscure about the time of the Lord’s passion is also opened up. For when the Lord foretold, after the example of the prophet Jonah, that the Son of Man would be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights, and after the sixth day of the week on which he was crucified he was among the dead only one day and two nights, how is the truth of the divine word found? By the figure of synecdoche, that is, so that the preceding night is referred to the day on which he was crucified, and the following day to the night on which he rose; and so, by adding the night that preceded to its day and the day that followed to its night, nothing is known to be lacking to the whole time, which is filled out from its part. The holy Scriptures teem with such examples of reasoning, but it would be long to mention them all. Thus when the psalm says, “What is man, that you are mindful of him?” the whole is understood from a part, since by naming one man the fullness of the human race is shown; thus also where Achab sinned the people is said to have sinned, a portion being indicated from the whole by naming all. John too, the Lord’s forerunner, says: “After me comes a man who was made before me, because he was before me.” How, then, does he indicate that one will come after him whom he shows to have been before him? For if this is understood of the man who was born afterwards, how was he before him? If of the Word, how does a man come after me, unless in the one Lord Jesus Christ both the later time of the man and the antiquity of the Word are shown? And so it comes about that one and the same Lord both was before him and came after him, because according to the flesh he is later than John and according to the Godhead before all; and therefore John, naming only a man, showed both the man and the Word, because, since the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was made complete both by man and by Word, in saying one thing of him he showed all. And why say more? The day will fail me, I think, if I try to collect or relate all that could be said of this; and what we have now said is enough, at least for this part of the matter, for the exposition of the creed, for the duty of the case, and for the measure of the book.

What usually happens to those who, having already escaped the open sea, dread either the sandbanks stretched before the harbors or the rocks near the shores, has happened to me: having kept certain cavils of the heretics for the end, now that I have come to the goal of the labor undertaken, I begin to fear the very end I longed to reach. But, as the prophet says, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear what man may do to me.” Let us not fear the pits of the heretics laid in our way to ensnare us, nor the roads fenced here and there with bristling thorns; since these roughen the way more than they close it, we have labor in clearing them rather than fear of impossibility; for since they put themselves weakly in the way of us who keep a straight course, and bristle against travelers more than they hinder them, our duty and work has more to do in clearing than to fear from difficulty. So, putting our hand to that monstrous head of the deadly serpent, and wishing to handle all the limbs of its twisting body bound up in huge coils, we pray you again and again, Lord Jesus, to whom we have always prayed, that you would give us a word in the opening of our mouth for the destruction of strongholds, destroying reasonings and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, so that we may take captive every understanding in obedience to you; for he truly becomes free who has begun to be your captive. Be present, then, to your own duty, your own work, to those who strive for you beyond the measure of their strength. Grant us to crush the gaping mouths of the new serpent and its necks swollen with deadly poisons, you who make the feet of believers tread unharmed upon serpents and scorpions, and walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and trample the lion and the dragon; and you grant, through the fearless boldness of steadfast innocence, that the infant at the breast should delight over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child put his hand into the den of the basilisk. Grant us too, then, to put harmless hands into the dens of this most monstrous and most wicked basilisk; and if in some holes already, that is, in the hiding places of human minds, it has had its lair, or laid its eggs, or left the track of its scaly trail, take away from all the filthy and deadly contagion of this most ruinous snake, draw out the uncleanness of faithlessness brought in, and cleanse with the winnowing fan of holy purification the souls besieged by stinking mire, so that dens of robbers may become houses of prayer, and that in those lodgings where now, as it is written, hedgehogs and onocentaurs and hairy creatures and monsters of various portents dwell, there may shine the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that is, the beauties of faith and religion. And as once, when the worship of idols was cast out and the images destroyed, you made temples of the virtues out of the shrines of demons, sending the shining rays of your light into the dens of serpents and scorpions, and turned lairs of errors and shamefulness into houses of ornament and beauty, so in all whose eyes the fog of heretical perversity has besieged pour in the light of your mercy and truth, so that, beholding at last with unbarred and pure light the great and saving sacrament of your incarnation, they may understand that you, brought forth into the world from that most holy womb of the spotless virgin, are true man, yet so as to recognize that you were always true God.

And before I begin to speak of the things I have not yet touched on in the earlier books, I think it right to try to discharge what I promised before, so that, the promise wholly fulfilled, I may begin to speak more freely of untouched matters when I have made good what I pledged. The new snake, then, hissing in the church of God to destroy faith in the holy birth, says: “No one gives birth to one older than herself.” First, then, I think you know neither what you are saying nor from what source you are saying it. For if you knew or understood from what source you were speaking, you would never judge the birth of the Only-begotten of God by the reasoning of a mortal’s petty opinion, nor try to prejudge one born outside the conception of human origin by human little definitions, nor object earthly impossibilities to the omnipotence of the Godhead, if you knew that nothing is impossible to God. “No one,” then, you say, “gives birth to one older than herself.” Tell me, I ask, about what cases you are speaking, about the natures of what living things you think you are defining? Do you think you are laying down a law for men or beasts, birds or cattle? For these and others of this kind are the ones of which this can be said. For none of these can beget one older than itself, because what has already arisen cannot return to be begotten by a new creation; and therefore no one gives birth to one older than herself, because neither can one beget an older; for the cause of giving birth comes only from the possibility of begetting. Do you, then, think that what must be considered in the arising of earthly animals must be considered in the birth of almighty God, and do you object the nature of the human condition to him who is himself the author of nature? You see, then, as I said above, that you do not know from what or of whom you speak, since you compare the thing made to the maker and, to judge the omnipotence of God, use the example of those things which would surely not exist themselves unless they had from God the very fact that they are. God, then, came as he willed, when he willed, and from whom he willed. Neither time nor person nor human custom nor the examples of things prejudiced him, because the law of creatures could not stand against him who is himself the creator of all, and to be able to do what he willed was ready to him, because power was at hand to his will. Do you want to know to some extent how great is the omnipotence of God? I believe God can do even with his creatures what you do not believe he could do with himself. For all living things that give birth to those later than themselves could much more easily give birth to those earlier, if only God commanded it. For even food and drink themselves, if that were the will of the Godhead, could be turned into certain conceptions and offspring. Waters, finally, which have flowed from the beginning of things and which all living things use alike, could be embodied in the womb and begotten, if God commanded it. For who has set a limit to the holy works or circumscribed divine power, or who, as it is written, will say to him, “What have you done?” If you deny that God can do all things, deny that one older could be born of Mary when God was born. But if nothing is impossible to God, why do you object impossibility in his own coming to him for whom you know nothing at all is impossible?

The second slanderous blasphemy, or blasphemous slander, of your perversity is that in which you say: “The offspring must be homoousios with the one who bears it.” It is not unlike the former; for it differs in words rather than in substance and kind. For when the birth of God is in question, you say the same thing, that one more powerful could not be born of Mary, as above, that one older could not be begotten. And therefore either take what was said above as answered about this too, or consider what is now to be said as answered about that too. You say, then: “The offspring must be homoousios with the one who bears it.” If you look at earthly creations, that is generally so; but if at the rising of God, why do you consider examples from nature in his birth, since the laws are subject to the lawgiver, not the lawgiver to the laws? Do you want to know more fully how not only impious but also absurd these cavils of yours are, the singsong of one who does not see the omnipotence of God at all? Tell me, I ask, you who think that like is born only of like, from where that countless multitude of quails was suddenly born once in the desert to feed the people of Israel. For we do not read that they were first brought forth by their mothers in some place, but brought in by a sudden coming. And that heavenly food itself, from where did it flow down into the camp of the Hebrews for forty years? Did manna beget manna? But these concern ancient miracles. What of new ones? With a few loaves and small fishes the Lord Jesus Christ fed countless crowds of the peoples following him in the desert more than once. The reason for the filling was not in the food. What invisible and secret cause filled the hungry, especially since much more was left over after their filling than had been set before their hunger? By what reckoning was this whole thing done, by what cause, that, while those eating took their fill, the food itself grew richer with unspeakable increase? We read that wine was born of water in Galilee. Tell me: how did an unlike nature beget a substance unlike its own quality, especially since — what fits the Lord’s birth most of all — the rise of a much nobler thing came from an inferior one? Tell me, then, how the excellent and wonderful taste of wine was born from that plainness of water? How was one thing drawn and another poured out? Did that cistern or well have such a nature as to change the waters drawn from it into the best wines? Or did the quality of the vessels or the industry of the servants do this? Surely none of these. And how is it that the reason of the deed is not grasped by the thought of the heart, while yet the truth of the deed is kept by firm knowledge? In the gospel mud was put on a blind man’s eyes, and when it was washed off eyes were born. Did water have such a nature as to give birth to eyes, or mud to create light? Surely none of these; especially since water gives nothing to a blind man, while mud can even harm those who see. And how did a thing with the power of harming in itself perform the office of remedy and health, and what usually harms the healthy become then as it were the servant of health? You say, then, that the power of God bestowed this, that God supplied the medicine, and that divine omnipotence accomplished all these things we have mentioned, since he is surely able both to found new things from unwonted ones, and to establish wholesome things from contrary ones, and to change things that lie in impossibility and inefficacy into the possibilities and effects of things.

Confess, then, about the rising of the Lord himself the same as about all things. Believe that God was born as he willed, whom you do not deny was able to do what he willed; unless perhaps you think that the power which was at hand to him for all other things failed him for himself, and that his omnipotence, which going forth from him penetrated all things, failed him for his own birth. Do you object to me in the Lord’s birth, “No one gives birth to one older than herself,” and say in the childbearing in which almighty God was born, “The offspring must be homoousios with the one who bears it”? As if you were dealing with some man by human laws, against whom you could object his own impossibility, whom you could shut in by earthly weakness. You say that the condition of being born is common to all, the law of begetting the same, and that what God forbade to happen to all could not happen at all to one man only in the whole human race. You do not understand of whom you speak, you do not see of whom you talk: because the author of all conditions is surely the law of all natures, through whom is whatever man can do and whatever he cannot, because he himself set the limit of both, both how far ability would reach and beyond what weakness would not go. How insanely, then, you object human impossibility to him to whom possibility itself is owed! If you judge the person of the Lord by earthly weaknesses and measure the omnipotence of God by human reasonings, you will surely find nothing in his bodily sufferings that seems fitting for God. For if it can seem likely that Mary could not give birth to God, who was older than she, how will it be likely that God was crucified by men? And yet the same God who was crucified foretold it himself: “Will a man fasten his God, that you fasten me?” If the Lord will not be thought to have been born of the virgin because the one being born was older than the one bearing him, how can God be believed to have had blood? And yet it is said to the elders of Ephesus: “Rule the church of God, which he acquired with his own blood.” Finally, how will the author of life be thought deprived of life? And yet Peter says: “You killed the author of life.” No one placed on earth can be in heaven. And how does the Lord himself say: “The Son of Man who is in heaven”? If, finally, you think that God was not born of the virgin because the offspring must be homoousios with the one who bears it, how will you believe that unlike things arose from unlike natures? Then, according to you, no wind suddenly brought the quails, no manna fell, no wine came from water, no many thousands of men were fed with little food, no light appeared to the blind man after the mud. But if all these things surely seem incredible and against reason unless they are believed to have been done by God, why do you deny in his birth what you confess in his works? Or could he not grant to his own rising and coming what he did not deny to human remedies and benefits?

It would be long and almost fabulous to say more on this matter. But still, to refute your folly and madness in saying that the offspring must be homoousios with the one who bears it, that is, that no creature can give birth to something unlike itself, I will bring forward examples from earthly things too, by which I may prove that many things are born of unlike ones: not that any comparison can or should be made in such a matter, but so that you may not doubt that in the holy birth that could happen which you see taking place even in these earthly and perishable things. We read that bees, as very small so most prudent and most skilful creatures, are produced and come forth from very different natures. For though they are creatures of wonderful ingenuity, abounding not only in sense but also in prudence, they are produced from certain flowers of plants that have been gathered. What greater example do you think should be brought in or taken? Living things are born from lifeless ones, sentient things from insentient ones. Who is the craftsman there, who the maker, who the former of bodies, who the breather of souls? Who, finally, gave the very sound by which they as it were speak to one another? Who fashioned and composed the neatness of their feet, the skill of their mouths, the elegance of their wings? Their ingenuity, anger, foresight, movement, calmness, concord, dissension, wars, peace, order, arrangement, duties, rule, all, finally, that they have as it were in common with the human race, by whose teaching or gift, by whose instruction and training did they receive? Did they obtain this from a father’s seed, or learn it in a mother’s womb and in maternal flesh? They know no womb and know no seed: only the flowers they have fed on are gathered into the hives, and from them, by an inestimable workmanship, bees come forth. There the wombs of mothers give nothing to offspring, nor are bees brought forth from bees: they are workers only, not begetters. Living creatures come forth from little flowers of plants: what likeness is there between plants and living creatures? Who the maker of these things is, I believe you understand. Go now and doubt whether the Lord could grant to his own birth what you see he has given even to the smallest things he has made. It may perhaps be superfluous to add anything after this and other things; yet let even unnecessary things be added as examples, to heap up the proof. We see the air suddenly covered with locusts and the lands filled. Bring out their seeds, bring out their births, bring out their mothers. For they come out, as you see, from where they are born. Lay down for all these things that their offspring must be homoousios with the one bearing it, and you will be found as ridiculous in these prescriptions as you are now mad in denying the Lord’s birth. And what after this? Do even you yourself think we should go further? Still we add something. It is beyond doubt that basilisk serpents are begotten from the eggs of the birds they call ibises in Egypt. What kinship and agreement is there between a bird and a serpent? Why is its offspring not homoousios with the one who bears it? And yet those that beget do not do all these things, nor do those born know them; they come about by hidden causes and by a certain inexplicable and manifold law of begetting nature. And will you object the petty prescriptions of earthly opinions to the birth of him, when you cannot even give the reason of those births which happen by his nod and command, whose choice does everything, whose command effects everything, against whom nothing could go, nothing stand, and for whom, in all that was to be done by power, to will was enough?