His Power to Give Grace Was His from Birth

But perhaps you will say that this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, of which the apostle writes, was not born with him, but was poured into him afterward by the divinity coming down upon him. For you say that the man Jesus Christ our Lord, whom you call a mere man, was not born together with God, but was afterward taken up by God; and that through this, grace was given to the man at the same time as divinity was given to him. Now we too say nothing other than that divine grace came down with the divinity, for the divine grace of God is, in a way, a bestowing of the divinity itself and the gift of a generous supply of graces. Perhaps, then, it may be thought that the difference between us is one of time rather than of anything essential, since the divinity that we say was born with Jesus Christ, you say was poured into him afterward. But the fact is that if you deny that the divinity was born with the Lord, you cannot afterward make a confession that agrees with the faith. For it is impossible for one and the same thing to be partly ungodly and also to turn out partly godly, and for the same thing to belong partly to faith and partly to false belief. [a]

To begin with, then, I ask you this: do you say that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the Virgin Mary, is only the Son of Man, or that he is the Son of God as well? For we, I mean all who hold the catholic faith, all of us, I say, believe and are sure and know and confess that he is both: that he is the Son of Man because he was born of a woman, and the Son of God because he was conceived of the divinity. Do you, then, admit that he is both, the Son of God and the Son of Man, or do you say that he is the Son of Man only? If you say he is the Son of Man only, then the apostles and prophets cry out against you, yes, and the Holy Spirit himself, by whom the conception was brought about. That utterly shameless mouth of yours is stopped by all the witnesses to the divine decrees. It is stopped by sacred writings and holy witnesses; yes, and it is stopped by the very Gospel of God, as if by a divine hand. And that mighty Gabriel, who silenced the voice of unbelief in Zechariah by the power of his word, condemned the voice of blasphemy and sin in you much more strongly, with his own lips, when he said to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God: “The Holy Spirit 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 Jesus Christ is first proclaimed to be the Son of God, so that according to the flesh he might become the Son of Man? For when the Virgin Mary was to bring forth the Lord, she conceived because the Holy Spirit came down upon her and the power of the Most High worked with him. From this you can see that the origin of our Lord and Savior must come from the same source his conception came from. And since he was born because the fullness of the divinity came down in its completeness upon the Virgin, he could not be the Son of Man unless he had first been the Son of God. And so the angel, sent to announce his birth and sacred nativity, after he had already spoken of the mystery of his conception, added a word that speaks of his birth, saying: “Therefore also the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God”; that is, he will be called the Son of the one from whom he was begotten. Jesus Christ is therefore the Son of God, because he was begotten of God and conceived of God. But if he is the Son of God, then most certainly he is God; and if he is God, then he does not lack the grace of God. Nor indeed was he ever without that of which he himself is the maker. For grace and truth were made by Jesus Christ.