A. But if the Word from God the Father is not Himself the One who according to the flesh is from a woman, but one is alongside another, how can the Word be called Christ when He was not anointed, as we already explained?
B. Then if the one from the seed of David is not someone other than the Word from God the Father, let him also be called pre-eternal. But then how does the all-wise Paul, rejecting this conclusion as though by a question, say: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever’? Or, as they would put it another way: ‘Jesus, who belongs to yesterday and today, will also be the same forever’—as though He were recent, belonging only to yesterday and today, even though God the Word coexists eternally with His own Father.
A. They do great wrong by diverting the truth toward what suits their own ignorance and corrupting the exact meaning of holy Scripture. If someone calls Christ Jesus pre-eternal, he does not depart from the truth, provided there is one Son and Lord: the pre-eternal Word who in the last times underwent birth according to the flesh from a woman. The Spirit-bearing writer shows that the Word was not changed when He became man like us by saying, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, and forever.’ ‘Yesterday’ signifies past time, ‘today’ the present, and ‘forever’ what is future and to come. If they think they have devised something clever by taking ‘yesterday and today’ to mean merely ‘recent’ and saying, ‘How can one who belongs to yesterday and today also be forever?’ then we shall turn the force of the question in the opposite direction: how can the Word who exists forever take ‘yesterday and today’ upon Himself if Christ is one and has not been divided, as the divine Paul says? You can also see from the following that He wishes to be known by us in exactly this way. Although seen in flesh and having entered the measures of humanity, He bore witness to His own pre-eternal existence when He said, ‘Amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am.’ And again: ‘If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?’ And: ‘No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.’ Because He is the Word who always exists and is before the ages, who descended from heaven and then appeared as the same One, a man like us, He speaks these things as the one Christ and Lord even after He became flesh.
B. They have devised yet another argument. It is this: they say that the one from the seed of David should be understood as Son of God in the same way that the Word from God the Father is said to be a son of David, since neither relationship, they claim, is by nature.
A. Then let the true manner of union be admitted, so that we may believe that the Word became flesh—that is, man—and therefore is not falsely called son of David, but truly came from David according to the flesh while remaining what He was, namely God from God. The ministers of the Gospel proclamation, knowing that the same One is both God and man, speak to us of Him in this way. It is written of the blessed Baptist: ‘The next day he sees Jesus coming toward him and says, Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is the One of whom I said, After me comes a man who has come to be before me, because He was before me. I did not know Him, but so that He might be manifested to Israel, for this reason I came baptizing in water.’ Notice that while calling Him a man and naming Him the Lamb, John does not say that someone else takes away the sin of the world, but assigns this great, extraordinary, and truly divine dignity to the same One. He also says that He came to be before him and was prior to him, even though according to the time of His birth in the flesh He came afterward. For although Emmanuel was born late insofar as He is man, He existed before every age insofar as He is God. Therefore both belong to Him: what is recent according to humanity and what is eternal according to the Godhead. In the same way the excellent Peter, contemplating the Word not naked or without flesh but appearing in flesh and blood, gave a clear and unerring confession of faith in Him: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ He then heard: ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.’ If the mystery were not deep and if this were not God in flesh, but merely a man who, according to them, possessed sonship by grace, why would Peter need so great an instructor that no one on earth revealed it to him, but the Father Himself had to be his teacher? And when the divine disciples saw Him walking across the surface of the sea, they were amazed at the divine sign and confessed the faith, saying, ‘Truly You are the Son of God.’ If He is a spurious and falsely named son whose sonship is merely introduced from outside, let our opponents accuse the disciples of speaking falsely—and doing so with the greatest emphasis. For they added ‘truly,’ affirming that He is Son of God the Father.
B. You have spoken excellently.
A. And how does the Son of Man have angels of His own and shine in the glory of His Father? For Scripture says: ‘The Son of Man is about to come in the glory of His Father with His angels,’ and again, ‘The Son of Man will send His angels.’ If they still refuse to believe even when they see Him crowned with divine glory and with such splendid and supreme dignities, they will hear Him say, ‘If you do not believe Me, believe My works.’ And again: ‘If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me. But if I do them, even if you do not believe Me, believe the works.’ To see in a man the excellence of ineffable glory—not supplied to Him as something alien or acquired by grace, but as His own—how could this fail to persuade us that He was God in a form like ours and truly Son of the God who is over all?
B. He claimed the angels as His own, they say, and became the worker of these signs because the Word dwelt in Him and granted Him His own glory and power of action. For it is written: ‘Jesus of Nazareth—how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power; He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil.’ So, being anointed with power and with the Spirit, He became a worker of wonders.
A. Then, since the Word is God, holy by nature, and possesses all power essentially, needing no power from another and no holiness introduced from outside, who exactly is the One anointed with power and the Holy Spirit?
B. Perhaps they would say: the man assumed by conjunction.
A. Then that man, individually and by himself, is Jesus Christ—the One of whom the all-wise Paul says, ‘For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we from Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him.’ Tell me, then: how can all things be through a man? Why is he placed immediately beside the Father as Son, with no one intervening? And where are we to put the Only-Begotten if we raise the man into His place, even though, as they say, the man is empowered by the Word and honored because of Him? Has their argument not passed beyond what is reasonable, wandered away from its proper aim, and utterly missed the truth so that it deserves ridicule?
B. They say that God the Word is called ‘man’ in this sort of way: just as the man whom He assumed was born in Bethlehem of Judea but was called a Nazarene because he lived in Nazareth, so God the Word is called man because He dwelt in a man.
A. What senile thinking, what a slackened mind capable only of stammering! Someone should cry to our opponents, ‘Wake up, you who are drunk, from their wine!’ Why do you do violence to the truth and distort the force of the divine doctrines, leaving the royal road? It seems the Word no longer ‘became flesh’ according to the Scriptures, but merely became a dweller in a man. By their logic He ought to be called ‘human-dwelling,’ not ‘man,’ just as someone who lived in Nazareth was called a Nazarene, not ‘Nazareth.’ Indeed, if their foolish invention were correct, nothing would prevent the Father and the Holy Spirit, together with the Son, from also being called man, since the fullness of the holy and consubstantial Trinity dwells in us through the Spirit. Paul says, ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?’ And Christ Himself says, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.’ Yet neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit has ever been called man merely because They dwell in us. These men make a mockery of the mystery of the Incarnation, twisting the sound and worthy doctrines of the Church into absurdity. But let our argument return to its course and bid farewell to their vomit. If the man became a worker of signs merely because the Word was in him, then they are effectively making him one of the holy prophets, for God worked divine signs through the hands of the saints as well. If they say that the Son belongs within this same class, they drag Him down into the measure of prophets or apostles.
B. But has He not been called a prophet and an apostle? they say.
A. You are not wrong. Moses said to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers like me.’ And the divine Paul writes, ‘Therefore, holy brothers, sharers in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession.’ Then let them answer this question: would the grace of prophecy be an honor for any human being? Or to be granted apostolic dignity and to be called a high priest?
B. Yes.
A. Yet they would say that, insofar as Christ is understood as God, these titles are small and beneath Him, even though in receiving them together with His humanity He is seen to have emptied Himself. Just as, although God by nature and truly Lord, He took the form of a servant by entering it and assuming what belongs to us, so too, although He gives the Spirit of prophecy, appoints apostles, and establishes priests, He was made like His brothers in all things. For this reason He was Himself called prophet, apostle, and high priest.
B. But even if they admit that He is a prophet, they say He did not become a prophet in the same way as one of the prophets, but stands far above their measure. The prophets received a measured grace according to God’s will and received it at a particular time, whereas He was full of the Godhead from the very moment of His birth because the Word, who is God, was with Him.
A. Then according to them Christ surpassed the holy prophets before Him merely in the quantity of grace and in how long He possessed it, and this would be His special distinction. But the question before us is whether He is a prophet at all, not whether He has more or less grace or surpasses the others. His lowliness lies precisely in being called a prophet and in not standing beyond the measure proper to us in that respect, even if He is understood to possess this grace from the beginning. The divine Baptist did as well, of whom the blessed angel says, ‘He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.’ How, then, is one a servant while the other shines in the dignity of the Lord? Blessed John says of himself, ‘The one who is from the earth is from the earth and speaks from the earth,’ but of Emmanuel, ‘The One who comes from above is above all.’
B. Perhaps they would say that the Word who came forth from God the Father is indeed from above and above all. But they are afraid to assign human things to Him, lest He somehow be dishonored by them and brought down into disgrace. For this reason they insist that He took a man and joined that man to Himself, so that the human things could happen to and be said of the man, while no harm at all would come to the nature of the Word Himself.
A. Then the one who was assumed would admittedly be understood and spoken of as someone other than Him. Yet we will not follow their folly, nor will we make them arbiters and innovators of our faith, abandoning sacred Scripture and dishonoring the tradition handed down from the holy Apostles and Evangelists. Nor, because an inert and utterly ignorant mind has taken up residence in them, unable to look into the depth of the mystery, will we therefore go astray with them, sharing their ignorance and refusing to walk straight along the path of truth. We know that the most holy Paul wrote that we must tear down arguments and every proud obstacle raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. So then, can you tell me what it is that scandalizes them and makes them stumble, in Jewish fashion, over the stone of stumbling?
B. I can indeed. How could I not? There are very many such objections, but we will take them one by one. They say, then, that Christ was sanctified by the Father. For it is written: ‘John bore witness, saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending from heaven, and He remained upon Him. I myself did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God.”’ Paul also wrote concerning Him: ‘For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from One.’ But the Word, being God and holy by nature, could hardly be sanctified. It remains, therefore, they say, that it was the man assumed by Him through conjunction who was sanctified.
A. Then how does He who was baptized and received the visible descent of the Spirit baptize with the Holy Spirit and accomplish what belongs and is proper to the divine nature alone? For He is the giver of sanctification. To show that this is His own proper gift, the Incarnate Word breathed bodily upon the holy Apostles and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ And how could the inspired Baptist, while very plainly pointing out the One who had been sanctified, bear witness, uniquely and with the definite article, that ‘this is the Son of God’? If he knew Him to be another son besides the One who is truly Son, then, as the teacher who initiated the world into the mystery, he ought to have stated the truth and said clearly: ‘This is the one who, by conjunction with the One who is Son by nature and in truth, became a son by gift and grace.’ But he said nothing of the kind. Knowing Him to be one and the same—both the Word from God the Father and, according to the flesh, from the seed of David—he says that He was sanctified insofar as He is man, and that He in turn sanctifies insofar as He is understood to be God. For, as I said, both were in the same One. If, then, He did not become man, if He was not born according to the flesh from a woman, let us drive away from Him everything human. But if it is true that He lowered Himself into self-emptying and became like us, why do they separate from Him the very things by which He is understood to have emptied Himself, most foolishly undoing the skillful mystery of the dispensation in the flesh?
B. If, then, He is said to have received glory, to have been made Lord, to have been exalted by the Father, and also to have been appointed King, will you attribute these things too to God the Word? And will you not thereby be doing grave injury to His glory?
A. Who could doubt that the nature of God the Word is filled with true glory, kingship, and lordship, or that He is firmly understood to exist in the most God-befitting heights? Yet because He appeared as man, for whom all things are gifts and are imparted, He who is Himself full and gives to all from His own fullness receives in a human manner, making our poverty His own. Thus there was in Christ a strange and unprecedented wonder: lordship in the form of a servant; God-befitting glory in human lowliness; that which, as measured by humanity, was under the yoke crowned with the honors of kingship; and what was low placed in the highest eminence. For the Only-Begotten became man not in order to remain within the limits of the self-emptying, but so that, while taking with it the things belonging to that self-emptying, He might still be known as God by nature and might ennoble human nature in Himself, making it a participant in holy and divine dignities. We will also find the saints themselves calling the Son—even after He became man—the glory of God the Father, and also King and Lord. Isaiah says somewhere: ‘As when a man gleans an olive tree, so shall they glean them; and when the vintage is ended, these shall cry aloud. Those who remain on the earth shall rejoice together in the glory of the Lord.’ And again another of the saints says: ‘Shine, Jerusalem, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Behold, darkness and gloom shall cover the earth, but upon you the Lord shall appear, and the glory of the Lord shall be seen upon you.’ James, His disciple, says: ‘My brothers, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality.’ And the inspired Peter says: ‘If you are reproached in Christ, blessed are you, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.’