The Word Takes a Body from the Virgin

For this purpose, then, the Word of God, who is without body, incorruptible, and immaterial, comes to our realm, although he was not far from us before. For no part of creation has been left empty of him; he has filled all things everywhere, while remaining present with his own Father. But he comes, stooping down to us, to show us his love for humankind and to visit us. [a]

He saw the race of rational creatures on the way to destruction, and death reigning over them through corruption. He saw, too, that the threat against transgression gave a firm hold to the corruption that was upon us, and that it would be monstrous for the law to lapse before it was fulfilled. He saw, again, the unfitness of what had happened: that the very things he himself had crafted were passing away. He saw, further, the overwhelming wickedness of men, and how little by little they had increased it against themselves until it was past bearing. And he saw, lastly, how all men were under the penalty of death. So he took pity on our race and had mercy on our weakness. He stooped to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should be master, so that the creature should not perish and his Father’s handiwork in men should not be wasted for nothing, he takes to himself a body, and one of no different kind from ours.

For he did not simply will to be in a body, or will merely to appear. If he had willed merely to appear, he could have made his divine appearance by some other and higher means as well. But he takes a body of our kind, and not only that, but from a spotless and stainless virgin who had not known a man, a body clean and truly untouched by intercourse with men. For being himself mighty, and the Craftsman of everything, he prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple for himself, and makes it his very own as an instrument, making himself known in it and dwelling in it. So, taking from our bodies one of the same nature, since all were under the penalty of the corruption of death, he gave it over to death in the place of all and offered it to the Father. He did this, moreover, out of his love for humankind. He did it, first, so that, since all were counted as having died in him, the law that brought ruin on men might be undone, since its power was fully spent in the Lord’s body and it no longer had any ground against men, who are like him. And he did it, second, so that, as men had turned toward corruption, he might turn them again toward incorruption, and give them life out of death by making the body his own and by the grace of the resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire.