But since the testimonies to the sacred Nativity are abundantly at hand—inasmuch as all things were written for this very purpose, that they might be witnesses of it—let us examine, from some small portion, even the proclamation concerning God in the Old Testament, so that you may understand that the birth of God from a Virgin was foretold not only at the time it was announced when it came to pass, but was predicted even from the very beginning of the world. For truly, since an unspeakable work was to be accomplished, the announcement of things to come, always sent beforehand, would remove any incredulity toward present realities. And so the prophet Isaiah says: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us." What room is here, O unbeliever, for ambiguity?
The prophet said 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 that name which by nature He is; whence, since the Spirit of God said He was to be called God, he proves himself empty of the Spirit of God who has rendered himself a stranger to the fellowship of this divine designation. Behold then, he says, a virgin shall conceive, and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us. But perhaps this is the evasion to which the unbeliever may turn: to say that when the prophet said He was to be called God, this pertained not so much to the majesty of the Godhead as to the mere designation of a name.
But what shall we make of the fact that in the Gospels Christ is nowhere at all called by this name, and yet the Spirit of God cannot be said to have lied through the prophet? What then does this mean? That you may understand, surely, 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, of necessity this designation was of the man, that one of the Godhead. But let us proceed further and summon other testimonies of 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 therefore says elsewhere: "A son is born to us, a little one is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder":
"and his name shall be called Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace." Just as above the prophet had said He was to be called Emmanuel, so here he says He is to be called Messenger of great counsel, and Mighty God, and Father of the world to come, and Prince of peace—although nowhere in the Gospels do we read that He was called by these names:
so that we may understand, of course, that these are not names of the flesh but of the Godhead; and that that name in the Gospels is of the assumed man, while this is of the unbegotten power; and because God was to be born in a man, the very names were so divided by the sacred dispensation that He gave to the flesh the name of the man and to the Godhead that of God. He shall be called, therefore, he says, Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace. Not here, whoever you are, O heretic—not here did that prophet, full of the divine Spirit, compare Him who was born to a molten statue and a senseless image, after the example of your assertion. For "a son," he says, "is born to us, a little one is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder":
"and his name shall be called Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God." Lest you should understand this One whom he proclaimed to be God to be any other than Him who was born in the flesh, he added the name of the Nativity, saying: A son is born to us, a little one is given to us. You see with how many appellations the prophet made use to demonstrate the property of the bodily birth. For he called Him both born and a little one, so that by the word "littleness" he might more clearly express the meaning of offspring brought forth.
Foreseeing beyond doubt this perversity of the blaspheming heretics, the divine Spirit demonstrated to the whole world by the very words of the things themselves that He who was being born was God, so that even if the heretic should seek to blaspheme, he could nevertheless find no room whatsoever for blasphemy. "A son," therefore, he says, "is born to us, a little one is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Messenger of great counsel, Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace." This little one who was born, he taught to be both Prince of peace, and Father of the world to come, and Mighty God. What room is there for evasion? This little one who was born cannot be separated from the God who was born in Him:
for this One whom he called born, he named Father of the world to come; this One whom he named a little one, he foretold to be Mighty God. What is there, heretic, to which you may betake yourself? All things are hedged in and closed off; there is nowhere at all a place to escape. It remains that the error which your will refused to understand, necessity should at last begin at least to confess. But not content with these things which suffice, let us inquire what the Holy Spirit has also said through another prophet: "If a man," he says, "shall crucify his God, because you crucify me?" That the things prophesied might become still more evident, what the prophet sang concerning the passion of our Lord, he foretold as though from the very mouth of Him of whom he spoke: If a man shall crucify his God, because you crucify me?
Does it not seem to you, I ask, that our Lord God said this, as though being led to the cross: Why, I ask, do you not acknowledge me your Redeemer? Why do you not know God clothed in flesh for us? Do you prepare death for your Savior? Do you lead the Author of life to death? I am your God whom you hang up, your God whom you crucify. What error, I ask, is this, or what madness is it? "If a man shall crucify his God, because you crucify me?" You see how this utterance is, in a manner, the very utterance of the things that were done. Do you seek anything more express or more manifest?
You see how the sacred testimonies accompanied the Lord Jesus Christ, born in the flesh, from His very cradle, as it were, all the way to the cross which He endured; since indeed Him whom you read elsewhere to be God born in the flesh, you here behold to be God crucified upon the cross. And therefore the prophet
both there, where He was born, is called God, and there, where He was crucified, is most evidently named God—lest, that is, the assumption of the flesh should in any way prejudice the dignity of the Godhead, or either the lowliness of the body or the reproach of the passion should impair the honor of His majesty; since indeed both the condescension of so humble a nativity and the piety of one so kindly suffering ought to increase in us affection and worship for Him. For it is surely the greatest and most monstrous crime that He should on this account have less of honor among us, because He has expended more of love.
But leaving aside these things, which for this reason can in no way be fully unfolded—because, as the immensity of His benefits, so also their recounting has no measure—it is time that we consult concerning Him the strongest and most manifest witness of Him, Paul the apostle. For he can most faithfully tell us all things concerning God, from whose breast God ever spoke. He testifies, then, in this manner concerning the grace and coming of the Lord our God, being sent to destroy the error of Gentile superstition, the chosen teacher of the nations:
"The grace of God our Savior," he says, "has appeared to all men, instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this world, looking for 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." Rightly did he use a fitting word to show the coming of the new grace and generation. For in saying "has appeared," he expressed the rising of the new grace and nativity, because from thence the gift of the new grace began to appear, from the time when God, born in the world, appeared. Worthily and fittingly, then, did he point out this light of the new grace by the very property of the word, as though indicating it with a finger.
For that is most rightly said to have "appeared" which is shown as if by the sudden light of an appearing, just as in the Gospels we read that the star "appeared" to the Magi of the East, and in Exodus "there appeared," he says, "to Moses an angel in the fire of the flame of the bush." For in all these and other sacred visions, Scripture judged that this word above all should be used, that it should say those things "appeared" which shone with unwonted brightness. And so likewise the apostle too, knowing the coming of the heavenly grace which appeared at the rising of the sacred Nativity, expressed it by the word of shining apparition, so that he should say that had "appeared" which radiated with the splendor of a new light. "The grace of God our Savior," therefore, "has appeared."
Can you here plead anything, as though from an ambiguity of names, so as to say that Christ is one thing and God another, so that you may pull the Savior away from the majesty of His own name and sever the Lord from the Godhead? Behold, here the vessel of God speaks from God, and testifies by most evident proclamation that the grace of God appeared from Mary. And lest perhaps you should say that it was not God who appeared from Mary, he at once added the name of Savior—namely, that you might believe Him born of Mary to be God, whom you cannot deny to be the Savior born, according to that saying: "For unto you is born this day a Savior."
O admirable teacher, and one truly given by God to the nations, who, knowing this madness of heretical depravity that was to come—which would turn the names of God into contention and would not fear to slander God concerning His own names—lest the heretic should sever the name of Savior from the Godhead, set the name of God before it; namely, that the name of God placed first might claim for itself all the names that followed, and that no one, in what followed, might believe Christ to be a mere solitary man, whom in the very first appellation he had learned to be God. "Looking," says the same apostle, "for the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ."
That teacher of divine wisdom saw full well that against the insidious snares of diabolical cunning simple doctrine alone does not suffice, unless he had armed the holy preaching of the faith with the safeguard of caution. And therefore, when he had above set down the name of God and of the Savior, here he added "Jesus Christ"—namely, lest perhaps you should not believe the name of Savior alone to suffice for signifying the Lord Jesus Christ, and should not understand that same Jesus Christ to be God whom you had come to know to be God as Savior. What then does he say? "Looking," he says, "for the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." Nothing here of the names of our Lord is lacking:
here you see both God, and Savior, and Jesus, and Christ. But seeing all these, you perceive all to be in God. For you heard "God," yet "Savior"; you heard "God," yet "Jesus"; you heard that He is "God," yet "Christ." That cannot be separated by diversity of appellation which the Godhead has joined in unity. Whichever of these 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 designation, but is one in power, because, since both the Savior is God and Jesus is God and Christ is God, it is plain to understand that all these are distinguished by appellation, but are joined in majesty.
And since you most evidently hear that in each single title one God is named, you can surely understand plainly that there is one God in them all. And thus it is no longer permitted you, from the dissimilarity of the Lord's titles, to seek a discrepancy of power, and to make, for the variety of appellation, a diversity of person. It is not permitted to say: Christ was born of Mary, and not God—for the apostle proclaims: God. It is not permitted to say: Jesus was born of Mary, and not God—for the apostle testifies: God. It is not permitted to say: the Savior was born, and not God—for the apostle affirms: God. There is nothing to which you may betake yourself: whatever you take from the Lord's titles, God is what you name.
There is nothing you may say, nothing you may bring forward, nothing you may touch upon with dishonest falsehood. You may have, in impious unbelief, that which you do not believe; you have not, in the occasion for slander, that which you may deny. Although we began a little above to speak of the divine and saving grace of our Lord, I wish that we should say some further things about this same matter from the sacred readings. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the apostle James thus refuted those who, while receiving the Gospel, nevertheless judged that the yoke of the old law must be borne: "Why," he says, "do you tempt God, to place a yoke upon the necks of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?"
"But we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the same manner as they." The gift of this grace, the apostle says, was certainly given through Jesus. Answer me now, if you please: do you consider this grace, which was given for the salvation of all, to have been given by a man or by God? If by a man, the vessel of God, Paul, cries out against you, saying: "The grace of God our Savior has appeared." For he teaches this to be the grace of a gift, not of human weakness. And indeed, even if the sacred testimony were not at hand, the very truth of the matter was itself a testimony, because things frail and earthly cannot bestow a good that is perpetual and immortal, nor can anyone give to another that which he himself lacks, or grant an abundance of that thing of which he confesses himself to endure a want.
You must therefore not deny that grace was given by God. It is God, then, who gave; but it was given through the Lord Jesus Christ: therefore the Lord Jesus Christ is God. But if He is indeed, as He is, God, then she who bore God is Theotokos, that is, the mother of God. Unless perhaps you wish to stretch to so ridiculous a contradiction of blasphemy as to deny that she, from whom God was born, is the mother of God—although you cannot deny that He who was born is God. But let us nonetheless see what the Gospel of God also thought concerning this same grace of our Lord. "Grace," it says, "and truth came through Jesus Christ." If Christ is a mere solitary man, how did these things come through Christ?
Whence in Him the divine power, if in Him is, as you say, only the human condition? Whence the heavenly bounty, if there is earthly poverty? For no one can bestow what he does not have. Christ, therefore, in giving divine grace, had what He gave. For no one can sustain the difference between these most opposite things, so as at once both to suffer the want of one in need and to have the munificence of one who bestows. 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."
He, of course, who had already often taught that the same One is God who is Christ, and that all the majesty of the Godhead is in Him, and that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, now rightly prays for the grace of Christ alone, without the addition of the name of God—[because, since he had often taught that the same grace of God is that of Christ, he now most fully prays for the grace of Christ alone]—because he knows that in the grace of Christ all the grace of God is contained. "The grace," therefore, "of our Lord Jesus Christ," he says, "be with you." I ask you, whoever you are, O heretic: writing these things to the churches, what did Paul pray for those to whom he wrote? For he says: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you."
If Jesus Christ is a mere solitary man, then he too, in 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 the flesh be with you, the grace of bodily weakness, the grace of human frailty.」 Or why should he name at all the name of that grace, if he wished for the grace of a man—since there was no ground for wishing where there was nothing to be wished for, nor was there any need to pray that his grace should come to those who did not, as you say, possess the very substance of that grace which was wished for? Therefore you see that these things are utterly foolish and ridiculous—nay rather, not ridiculous, but to be lamented.
For those things which to certain more careless persons are ridiculous, are to be wept over by the godly and faithful; because, in the folly of your unbelief, they pour out the tears of charity, and in the senselessness of another's impiety, they have the tears of their own piety. Let us, then, at some point come to our senses and breathe again, because this way of thinking lacks not only wisdom but even the Spirit, since it is both void 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 afterward infused into Him by the entering-in of the Godhead—because you also say that that man Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom you call solitary, was not born with God, but is said to have been afterward assumed by God, and through this the grace was given to that man at the time when the Godhead also was given. Nor do we say anything other than that the divine grace descended together with the Godhead, because the divine grace is both of God and is, in a manner, the bestowal of the Godhead itself and the gift of the munificence of graces. Perhaps, then, there might be thought to be between us a difference of time rather than of substance, because you would say that the Godhead—which we say was born with the Lord Jesus—was afterward infused.
But the point is this: that, in denying the Godhead to have been born with the Lord, you cannot afterward faithfully confess it either; because one and the same thing cannot be in part impious and in part be approved as pious, and the same thing be in a portion of faith and in a portion of faithlessness. First, then, I ask this of you: do you say that the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, is only the son of a man, or also the Son of God? For we—that is, the faith of all catholics—we, I say, all both believe and understand and know and confess both this, that He is the son of a man, because He was born of a man, and the Son of God, because He was conceived of the Godhead. Do you, then, assert both of these, that is, the Son of God and of man, or only that He is of a man?
If only of a man, the apostles cry out against you, the prophets cry out, and finally He Himself through whom the conception was accomplished, the Holy Spirit, cries out. Your most shameless mouth is overwhelmed by all the testimonies of the divine writings, overwhelmed by the holy witnesses of the sacred volume, overwhelmed finally by the very Gospel of God as though by a divine hand; and that great Gabriel, who by the power of his word restrained the unbelieving voice in Zechariah, much more condemned you, blasphemous and impious, by his own mouth, saying to the Virgin Mary the mother of God: "The Holy Spirit," he says, "shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you: therefore also that which shall be born of you holy shall be called the Son of God."
You see that, in order for Jesus Christ to become according to the flesh the son of a man, He was first proclaimed the Son of God; for the Virgin Mary, who was to bring forth the Lord, conceived by the Holy Spirit descending into her and the power of the Most High cooperating. And through this you understand that the origin of our Lord and Savior is from thence whence His conception was; and since He was born with the whole fullness of the Godhead descending into the Virgin, He could not have been the son of man unless He had first been the Son of God. And therefore the angel of God, sent to announce the nativity of the sacred birth, when he had first spoken of the sacrament of the conception, imposed a name upon the birth itself, saying: "Therefore also that which shall be born of you holy shall be called the Son of God."
Jesus Christ, therefore, is the Son of God, because He was both begotten of the Godhead and conceived of the Godhead. But if the Son of God, then undoubtedly God. And if God, then not lacking the grace of God: for He never lacked that grace which He Himself made—for "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." All grace, therefore, is in Him, all power, all might, all Godhead, and finally all the fullness of the Godhead and of His own majesty were ever with Him and in Him: whether in heaven, whether on earth, whether in the womb, whether at His birth, nothing of God was ever lacking to God. For the deity was ever with God, never separated from Him by place, never by time.
For God is everywhere whole, everywhere perfect, not divided, not changed, not diminished, because nothing can ever be added to God nor taken away from Him: for thus the deity has no diminution, just as neither increase. The same One, therefore, was on earth who was also in heaven, the same in lowly things who was in the highest, the same in the littleness of a man who was in the majesty of God. And therefore rightly the apostle, in naming the grace of Christ, was naming the grace of God, because Christ was wholly that which God is: all the power of God, all the Godhead, all the fullness of the Godhead had come in the very conception of the man. For thence was to Him all the perfection of the Godhead, whence also His origin.
For that man was never without God, since indeed the very thing that He was, He had received from God. This, therefore, first—whether you will or not—you cannot deny: that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, since the archangel indeed cries out in the Gospels: "That which shall be born of you holy shall be called the Son of God." And this being established, know that whatever you read of Christ, you read of the Son of God; whatever you read of the Lord or of Jesus, pertains to the Son of God. For all these names of His name the Son of God; all these titles of His cry out the Son of God.
And therefore, in all these things, whatever you hear, recognizing the name of the Godhead, since in all of them you see that you ought to understand the Son of God, argue, if you please, how you can separate God from the Son of God. Writing to the Romans, that divine teacher of the churches, when he was rebuking—nay rather, lamenting—the unbelief of the Jews, that is, of his own brethren, used these words: "I could wish," he says, "that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, whose is the adoption of sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever."
O the affection both of a most faithful apostle and of a most devoted kinsman, who out of inestimable charity wishes to die both for his kinsmen as a neighbor and for his disciples as a teacher! And what, in the end, was the cause of his wishing to die? Surely one only: that they might live. And in what was their life contained? In this, namely—as he himself says—that they should acknowledge Christ as God, born according to the flesh from their own flesh. And therefore the apostle grieved the more, because they did not understand Him to have been born of Israel, whom they, more than others, ought to have loved, as brought forth from their own. "Of whom is Christ," he says, "according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever": that is, he says that Christ was born of them according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever.
You do not deny that Christ was born of them according to the flesh: but that same One, who was born of them, is God. Why do you go about? Why do you evade? The apostle says that Christ, born of Israel according to the flesh, is God: do you show when He was not, of whom is Christ, he says, according to the flesh, who is over all, God. You see, because the apostle has joined this in unity, God can in no way be separated from Christ. For just as the apostle proclaims Christ to be of them, so he confirms God to be in Christ. Either you must deny both of these, or confess both. Christ is said to be born of them according to the flesh, but that same One in Christ is proclaimed by the apostle to be God. Whence also elsewhere:
For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. This can in no way be divided from one another. Either deny that Christ was brought forth from them, or confess that God was brought forth in Christ from the Virgin -- He 'who is,' says the Apostle, 'over all things, God blessed forever.' The name of God alone might indeed have sufficed abundantly for the faithful to indicate the majesty of the Godhead; but by adding 'over all things, God blessed,' he shut out the blasphemy of a treacherous assertion, lest, that is, any of the impious should take up the word 'God' -- which is sometimes granted even to men temporarily as a gift of the divine dispensation -- to the injury of the supreme Godhead, and should fit it to insulting comparisons with God; as, for instance, in that which God says to Moses: 'I have made thee a god to Pharaoh,' or in that other: 'I said:'
'You are gods' -- which surely has a most evident signification of a name that is merely conferred. For when He says 'I said: gods,' it is not so much a name of power as the speech of the one speaking. And likewise that saying, 'I have made thee a god to Pharaoh,' set forth not the divinity of the one receiving it, but the power of the one giving it. For when He said 'I have made,' there was signified in it surely the power of the God who gave, not a divine nature in the one who received. But concerning God our Lord Jesus Christ, when it is said 'who is over all things, God blessed forever,' the reality is at once proved in the word and the reality of the word is demonstrated in the name; because the name of God in the Son of God is not the signification of an adoption bestowed, but the truth and the property of His nature.
Therefore, says the same Apostle, 'from now on we know no one according to the flesh; and even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer.' All the writings of the sacred word agree well with one another, and in every part throughout, even where they do not chime together in the outward form of words, they yet accord in the force of their meaning; as in this which he says: 'and even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer.' For the testimony of the present saying is a confirmation of the earlier one which he had said: 'from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things God blessed forever.' For there he set down 'from whom is Christ according to the flesh,' but here 'and even if we have known Christ according to the flesh'; there 'who is over all things God,' but here: