But they make a mockery of our nature and continually harp on the manner of generation, thinking that in this way they make the mystery ridiculous, as though it were unfitting for God to enter into fellowship with human life through such an entrance. Yet this too has already been discussed: only evil is shameful by its own nature, together with whatever has an affinity with evil.
But the order of nature, arranged by divine will and law, is far removed from any accusation on the ground of evil. Otherwise the accusation against nature would rise back to the Creator, if anything belonging to nature were denounced as shameful and unfitting.
If, then, the divine is separated only from evil, while nature is not evil, and the mystery says that God came to be in a human being, not in evil, and if there is one entrance by which a human being comes into life—the way by which what is begotten is brought into life—what other way of entering life would they prescribe for God? They judge it reasonable that nature, weakened by evil, should be visited by divine power, yet they take offense at the manner of the visitation. They do not realize that the whole structure of the body has equal honor in relation to itself, and that nothing in it which contributes to the constitution of life is denounced as dishonorable or wicked. For the entire arrangement of the bodily organs has been ordered toward one purpose.
That purpose is for humanity to continue in life. The other organs sustain the present life of human beings, each assigned to a different function; through them the powers of perception and action are administered. The generative organs, however, provide for the future, introducing through themselves the succession by which nature continues.
If, then, you consider usefulness, to which of the parts regarded as honorable would those organs be inferior? Indeed, than which would they not reasonably be judged more worthy of honor? For our race is not carried on continuously by the eye, the ear, the tongue, or any other organ of sense; these, as has been said, serve our present enjoyment. But through those other organs the immortality of humanity is preserved, so that death, though always at work against us, becomes in a certain sense ineffective and unable to accomplish its purpose, since nature continually brings itself forward again through those who are born in succession to replace what is lost.
What, then, is unfitting in our mystery if God was blended with human life through those very means by which nature struggles against death?