How God Became Man

Now that those points have been touched on in passing, it is time to take up again our inquiry into the incarnation of our Lord and Savior — how, and why, he became man. We have looked at his divine nature as far as our small ability allows, taking it from the contemplation of his own works rather than from anything we feel. We have seen his visible creation with the eye, while the invisible creation is seen by faith; for human weakness can neither see everything with the body’s eye nor take it all in by reason, since we are weaker and frailer than any other reasoning beings — those in heaven, or thought to exist above the heaven, being our superiors. What remains, then, is to look for someone standing between all created things and God: a mediator, whom the apostle Paul calls “the firstborn of all creation.” [a]

Consider, too, what holy Scripture declares about his majesty: that he is called “the image of the invisible God, and the firstborn of all creation,” and that “in him all things were created, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers; all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” He is the head of all things, and has as his own head God the Father alone, for it is written, “The head of Christ is God.” And it is plainly written as well: “No one knows the Father except the Son, nor does anyone know the Son except the Father.” For who can know what wisdom is, except the one who called it into being? Who can understand clearly what truth is, except the Father of truth? Who can search out with certainty the whole nature of his Word, and of God himself — a nature that proceeds from God — except God alone, with whom the Word was? Seeing all this, we ought to hold it as certain that this Word, or Reason, if it is to be called that, this Wisdom, this Truth, is known to no one but the Father only. And of him it is written: “I do not think the world itself could hold the books that might be written” — written, that is, about the glory and majesty of the Son of God. It is impossible to put down in writing everything that belongs to the Savior’s glory.

When we have weighed questions as great as these about the being of the Son of God, we are left in the deepest astonishment that a nature standing above all others should have stripped itself of its condition of majesty, become man, and pitched its tent among men — as the grace poured out on his lips bears witness, as his heavenly Father testified of him, and as the many signs and wonders and acts of power he performed confess. Before that appearing of his which he showed in the body he sent the prophets ahead of him as his forerunners and as the messengers of his coming. And after his ascent into heaven he took his holy apostles — men without learning or education, drawn from the ranks of the tax collectors and the fishermen, but filled with the power of his divinity — and sent them traveling through the world, so that out of every race and every nation they might gather a great crowd of people devoted to believing in him.

But of all the wonderful and mighty things told of him, this one goes clean past human admiration and beyond the power of mortal weakness to grasp or even to feel: that the mighty power of the divine majesty, the very Word of the Father, the very Wisdom of God in whom all things were created, visible and invisible, can be believed to have existed inside the limits of the man who appeared in Judea. More than that — that the Wisdom of God entered a woman’s womb, was born a baby, and wailed the way small children cry. And then we are told that afterwards he was deeply troubled at his death, saying, as he himself declared, “My soul is sorrowful, even to death”; and that at the last he was brought to the death that men count the most shameful of all — though he rose again on the third day. [f]

Since, then, we see in him some things so human that they seem no different at all from the ordinary frailty of mortal men, and other things so divine that they can belong to nothing but the first and unspeakable nature of God, the narrowness of human understanding finds no way out. Overwhelmed with the astonishment of a great admiration, it does not know where to retreat, or what to take hold of, or which way to turn. If it thinks of a God, it sees a mortal; if it thinks of a man, it sees him coming back from the grave loaded with plunder, after overthrowing the empire of death. So the sight is to be looked at with all fear and reverence, that the truth of both natures may be plainly shown to be in one and the same being: nothing unworthy or unfitting being supposed of that divine and unspeakable substance, and nothing that was done being taken for the tricks of an appearance that was only imagined.

To say such things in human hearing, and to explain them in words, is far beyond anything our standing, or our mind, or our language can manage. I think it is beyond even the holy apostles; indeed, the explanation of that mystery may be past the reach of the whole created order of heavenly powers. About him, then, we will set out in as few words as possible what we believe, rather than what human reasoning usually asserts — and not out of any rashness, but because the plan of this work calls for it. What we lay before you had better be called our guesses than any clear statements.

So the only Son of God, through whom, as the argument has already shown, all things were made, visible and invisible — this is Scripture’s own view — both made all things and loves what he made. Since he is himself the invisible image of the invisible God, he invisibly gave all his reasoning creatures a share in himself, so that each one received a portion of him exactly matching the love with which that creature regarded him. [i]

But free choice made the individual souls various and different, so that one clung with a warmer love to the Author of its being and another with a fainter and weaker regard. There was one soul, though — the soul Jesus spoke of when he said, “No one will take my soul from me” — and that soul, from the beginning of creation and ever after, held to him inseparably and indissolubly, since he is the Wisdom and Word of God, the Truth and the true Light. It received him whole, passed over into his light and splendor, and was made one spirit with him in the first and highest degree, according to the apostle’s promise to those who ought to imitate it: “Whoever is joined in the Lord is one spirit.”

This substance of a soul, then, stands between God and the flesh — for the nature of God cannot be mixed with a body without some instrument in between — and so the God-man is born, as we have said, with that substance as the go-between, a substance whose nature it did not contradict to take on a body. Nor, on the other side, was it against the nature of that soul, a reasoning being, to receive God: the God into whom, as we said above, into the Word and the Wisdom and the Truth, it had already entered whole.

That is why the soul, together with the flesh it had taken on, is rightly called the Son of God, and the Power of God, the Christ, and the Wisdom of God — either because it was wholly in the Son of God, or because it received the Son of God wholly into itself. And in the same way the Son of God, through whom all things were created, is named Jesus Christ and the Son of Man. For the Son of God is said to have died — with reference, that is, to the nature that could admit death; and the one announced as coming in the glory of God the Father with the holy angels is called the Son of Man. This is why, all through Scripture, the divine nature is not only spoken of in human words, but the human nature is dressed in titles of divine dignity. Of this union, more truly than of any other, these words can be affirmed: “They shall both be one flesh, and are no longer two but one flesh.” For the Word of God is to be thought of as more one flesh with that soul than a man is with his wife. And whom does it suit better to be one spirit with God than this soul, which has so joined itself to God by love that it can justly be said to be one spirit with him?

It was the perfection of its love and the sincerity of an affection that had earned it which formed this inseparable union with God, so that the taking up of that soul was no accident, and no matter of personal favor, but was granted as the reward of its virtues. Listen to the prophet addressing it: “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” [n]

As a reward for its love, then, it is anointed with the oil of gladness; that is, the soul of Christ, together with the Word of God, is made Christ. For to be anointed with the oil of gladness means nothing else than to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And when it says “above your companions,” the meaning is that the grace of the Spirit was not given to this soul as it was given to the prophets: in it was the whole essential fullness of the Word of God himself, as the apostle says — “in whom all the fullness of deity dwelt bodily.”

Finally, this is why he did not only say “You have loved righteousness,” but added, “and you have hated wickedness.” For hating wickedness is what Scripture says of him: that “he committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth,” and that “he was tested in every way as we are, yet without sin.” The Lord himself also said, “Which of you can prove me guilty of sin?” And again he says of himself, “Look, the ruler of this world is coming, and he finds nothing in me.” All these passages show that in him there was no feeling of sin at all. And to show still more plainly that no feeling of sin had ever entered him, the prophet says, “Before the boy knew enough to call on father or mother, he turned away from wickedness.”

Now we have shown above that Christ had a reasoning soul, and we have proved again and again all through these discussions that the nature of souls is capable of both good and evil. If that raises a difficulty for anyone, here is how the difficulty is to be met. There is no doubt that the nature of his soul was the same as the nature of all other souls; it could not be called a soul at all if it were not truly one. But since the power of choosing good and evil lies within the reach of everyone, this soul that belonged to Christ chose to love righteousness, so that in proportion to the immensity of its love it clung to righteousness unchangeably and inseparably. Firmness of purpose, immensity of affection, and a warmth of love that could not be put out destroyed in it every capacity for alteration and change; and what had once depended on the will was turned by the force of long habit into nature. So we must believe that there existed in Christ a human and reasoning soul, without supposing that it had any feeling of sin, or any possibility of it. [s]

To explain the matter more fully, it will not seem absurd to use an illustration, though on a subject as difficult as this suitable illustrations are hard to come by. Still, if we may say it without giving offense: iron is capable of cold and of heat. Suppose, then, that a mass of iron is kept in the fire all the time, taking the heat in through every pore and vein, the fire never breaking off and the iron never taken out of it, until the iron is turned wholly into fire. Could we say of that iron — a mass of iron by nature — that while it lies in the fire and burns without a break it is at any time able to admit cold? Surely not. Closer to the truth is what we often see happening in furnaces: we say the iron has become fire through and through, since nothing but fire can be seen in it. And if anyone tried to touch it or handle it, what he would feel acting on him would not be iron but fire. [t]

In just this way, then, that soul which, like iron in the fire, has been set always in the Word, always in the Wisdom, always in God, is God in everything it does and feels and understands. So it can be called neither capable of turning nor capable of change, since, heated without a break, it took its unchangeableness from its union with the Word of God. Some warmth from the Word of God, in short, must be supposed to have passed into all the holy ones; but in this soul the divine fire itself must be believed to have rested, and from it some warmth may have passed on to the others.

Finally, the words “God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions” show that that soul is anointed with the oil of gladness — that is, with the word of God and with wisdom — in one way, and his companions, the holy prophets and apostles, in another. For they are said to have “run in the fragrance of his ointments,” while that soul was the jar that held the ointment itself, whose fragrance all the worthy prophets and apostles were given a share in. As the substance of an ointment is one thing and its scent another, so Christ is one thing and his companions another. And as the jar that holds the substance of the ointment cannot possibly take on any foul smell, while those who enjoy its scent may, if they move a little way off from the fragrance, pick up whatever bad smell comes over them — in the same way it was impossible for Christ, who is as it were the jar itself with the substance of the ointment in it, to take on a smell of the opposite kind, while those who are his “companions” will share in his scent and receive it in proportion to how near they stand to the jar.

I think that Jeremiah the prophet also understood what the nature of the wisdom of God in Christ was — the same nature he had taken on for the salvation of the world — when he said, “The breath of our face is Christ the Lord, of whom we said that under his shadow we shall live among the nations.” The shadow of our body cannot be separated from the body; it necessarily performs and repeats the body’s movements and gestures. So I think that when the prophet wished to point out the work of Christ’s soul, and the movements that belong to it inseparably, and how it carried everything out according to his movements and his will, he called this the shadow of Christ the Lord — the shadow under which we were to live among the nations. For it is in the mystery of this taking-on that the nations live, who, imitating it by faith, come to salvation. [v]

David seems to me to mean the same thing when he says, “Remember my disgrace, Lord, the disgrace with which they reproached me in exchange for your Christ.” And what else does Paul mean when he says, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God” and again, in another passage, “Do you look for proof of the Christ who speaks in me?” Here he says that Christ was hidden in God. What that expression means may be beyond the grasp of the human mind, unless it is shown to be something like what we pointed out above as the prophet’s meaning in the words “the shadow of Christ.”

But we also see a great many other statements in holy Scripture about the meaning of the word “shadow.” There is the well-known one in the Gospel according to Luke, where Gabriel says to Mary, “The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And the apostle says of the law that those who have circumcision in the flesh “serve a copy and shadow of heavenly things.” And elsewhere: “Is not our life on the earth a shadow?”

If, then, not only the law that is on the earth is a shadow, but our whole life on the earth is a shadow too, and we live among the nations under the shadow of Christ, we must consider whether the truth behind all these shadows may not come to be known at that unveiling, when all the holy ones will deserve to see the glory of God, and the causes and the truth of things, no longer in a mirror and in riddles but face to face. And it was because the pledge of this truth had already been received through the Holy Spirit that the apostle said, “Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, from now on we know him so no longer.”

These, for the present, are the thoughts that have come to us in handling subjects as difficult as the incarnation and the deity of Christ. If there is anyone who can find something better, and can establish what he says by clearer proofs from holy Scripture, let his opinion be accepted rather than mine.