Mary Is the Mother of God

So you say, heretic, whoever you may be, you who deny that God was born of the Virgin, that Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, ought not to be called Theotokos, that is, Mother of God, but Christotokos, that is, only the Mother of Christ and not of God. For no one, you say, gives birth to something older than herself. About this utterly foolish argument, by which you think the birth of God can be understood by fleshly minds, and imagine that the mystery of his majesty can be explained by human reasoning, we will say something later on, if God permits. In the meantime we will now prove from divine testimonies that Christ is God, and that Mary is the Mother of God. [a]

Hear, then, how the angel of God speaks to the shepherds about the birth of God. “To you,” he says, “is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” So that you may not take Christ for a mere man, he adds the names Lord and Savior. He does this on purpose, so that you may have no doubt that the one you acknowledge as Savior is God; and, since the work of saving belongs only to divine power, so that you may not question that the one in whom you have learned the power to save resides is himself of divine power. But perhaps this is not enough to convince your unbelief, since the angel of the Lord called him Lord and Savior rather than God or the Son of God; for you certainly, most wickedly, deny that he is God, though you acknowledge him as Savior. Hear, then, what the archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary. “The Holy Spirit,” he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God.”

Do you see how, when he is about to point to the birth of God, he first speaks of a work of the divinity? For “the Holy Spirit,” he says, “will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” The angel spoke admirably, and set out the majesty of the divine work by the divine character of his words. For the Holy Spirit made the Virgin’s womb holy and breathed into it by the power of his divinity. In this way he imparted and communicated himself to human nature, and made his own what had before been foreign to him, taking it to himself by his own power and majesty. And so that the weakness of human nature would not prove unable to bear the entrance of the divinity, the power of the Most High strengthened the Virgin, who is to be honored forever. It supported her bodily weakness by embracing it with its overshadowing protection, so that human weakness did not fall short of carrying through the unspeakable mystery of the holy conception, since the divine overshadowing upheld it. “Therefore,” he says, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

If only a mere man was to be born of a pure virgin, why such careful mention of the divine coming? Why such an intervention of the divinity itself? Certainly, if only a man was to be born of a human being, and flesh from flesh, a command alone could have done it, or the divine will. For the will of God alone, and his command, were enough to fashion the heavens, form the earth, and create the sea; thrones and seats, angels and archangels, rulers and authorities; in a word, to create all the armies of heaven and those countless thousands upon thousands of the divine hosts. (“For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.”) Why, then, was the very thing that was enough to produce all things divine not enough to create what was, according to you, a single man? Why did the power and majesty of God not entrust the birth of one infant to the same command that had been strong enough to fashion all things on earth and in heaven? But surely the reason all those works were done at God’s command, while the birth was brought about only by his coming, is this: God could not be conceived by a human being unless he allowed it, nor be born unless he himself entered in. That is why the archangel declared that the sacred majesty would come upon the Virgin. I mean that, since so great a thing could not be brought about by any human arrangement, he announced that the glory of the one who was to be born would be present at the conception. And so the Word, the Son, came down; the majesty of the Holy Spirit was present; the power of the Father overshadowed her; so that the whole Trinity might work together in the mystery of the holy conception.

“Therefore,” he says, “also the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God.” He does well to add “Therefore,” to show that the one thing would follow because the other had come first: because God had come upon her at the conception, God would therefore be present at the birth. And when the young woman did not understand, he gave her a reason for this great thing, saying: “Because the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and because the power of the Most High will overshadow you, therefore also the holy thing that will be born will be called the Son of God.” That is to say: so that you may not be left ignorant of the plan for so great a work and the mystery of this great secret, the majesty of God will therefore come upon you completely, because the Son of God will be born of you. What further doubt can there be about this? What more is there to say? He said that God would come upon her, and that the Son of God would be born. Ask now, if you like, how the Son of God can fail to be God, or how she who gave birth to God can fail to be Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God. This alone ought to be enough for you; yes, this ought to be more than enough for you.