Why Being Born Did Not Defile God

But perhaps they say: if it was possible for God that a virgin should conceive, it was possible also that she should give birth. But they think it unfitting for a being of such great majesty to enter the world in such a way that, even though there was no defilement from intercourse with a man, there was still the unseemliness that goes with the act of delivery. To this let us reply briefly, meeting them on their own level. Suppose someone saw a little child being smothered in a swamp, and he, a great and powerful man, went into the mud, just at its edge, so to speak, to rescue the dying child. Would you blame this man as defiled for stepping into a little mud, or would you praise him as merciful for saving the life of one who was perishing? But the case supposed is that of an ordinary man. Let us return to the nature of him who was born. How far below him, do you think, is the nature of the sun? How far, beyond doubt, is the creature below the Creator? Consider now: if a ray of the sun falls on a swamp, does it pick up any pollution from it? Or is the sun the worse for shedding its light on foul things? Fire too, how far below the things we are speaking of is its nature? Yet no substance, however foul or vile, is thought to pollute fire when it is put to it. When the case is plainly so with material things, do you suppose any pollution or defilement can come upon that supreme and bodiless nature, which is above all fire and all light? Then, lastly, note this as well. We say that man was created by God out of the clay of the earth. But if God is thought to be defiled in seeking to recover his own work, much more must he be thought so in making that work in the first place. And it is idle to ask why he passed through what offends our sense of modesty, when you cannot say why he made what offends it so. So it is not nature but common opinion that has made us think these things are such. Otherwise, all the things in the body, being formed from one and the same clay, differ from one another only in their uses and natural functions.