His Almighty Power Shown in His Own Birth

Confess, then, the same truth about the actual birth of the Lord as about everything else. Believe that God was born when he willed, since you do not deny that he could do what he willed. Unless perhaps you think that the power which was his for all other things fell short where he himself was concerned, and that his omnipotence, though it proceeds from him and passes through all things, was not enough to bring about his own birth. In the case of the Lord’s birth you bring this objection against me: “No one gives birth to one who is earlier in time.” And about the birth which Almighty God underwent you say that the one who is born must be of one substance with the one who bears him. You talk as if you were dealing with human laws, as with some ordinary man, against whom you might raise the impossibility because you count him among the weaknesses of earthly things. You say that all men share the same conditions of birth and one law of begetting, and that something which God has forbidden to happen to all could not possibly happen to one man alone out of the whole human race. You do not understand whom you are speaking of, nor do you see whom you are talking about. He is the author of all conditions and the very law of all natures. Through him exists both whatever man can do and whatever man cannot do, for he certainly laid down the limits of both: how far man’s powers should reach, and the bounds beyond which his weakness should not go. How wildly, then, you raise human impossibilities as an objection in the case of him who holds all powers and all possibilities! [a]

If you judge the person of the Lord by earthly weaknesses and measure God’s omnipotence by human rules, you will most certainly find nothing that seems fitting to God in the sufferings of his body. If it seems unreasonable to you that Mary could give birth to God who was earlier than she, how will it seem reasonable that God was crucified by men? And yet the same God who was crucified foretold it himself: “Will a man afflict God? For you afflict me.” If, then, we cannot think that the Lord was born of a Virgin because the one born was earlier than the one who bore him, how can we believe that God had blood? And yet it was said to the elders of Ephesus, “Feed the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” And finally, how can we think that the author of life was himself deprived of life? And yet Peter says, “You killed the author of life.” No one who is placed on earth can be in heaven; and yet how does the Lord himself say, “The Son of Man who is in heaven”?

If, then, you think that God was not born of a Virgin because the one born must be of one substance with the one who bears him, how will you believe that different things can be produced from different natures? On your reckoning, then, the wind did not suddenly bring the quails, the manna did not fall, water was not turned into wine, many thousands of men were not fed with a few loaves, and the blind man did not receive his sight after the clay was put on him. But if all these things seem incredible and contrary to nature unless we believe that God worked them, why do you deny in the matter of his birth what you admit in the matter of his works? Or was he unable to supply for his own birth and coming what he did not refuse for the help and good of men?