|
33. Thus it was that the human race was bound in a
just doom and all men were children of wrath. Of this
wrath it is written: "For all our days are wasted; we
are ruined in thy wrath; our years seem like a
spider's web."(64) Likewise Job spoke of this wrath:
"Man born of woman is of few days and full of
trouble."(65) And even the Lord Jesus said of it: "He
that believes in the Son has life everlasting, but he
that believes not does not have life. Instead, the
wrath of God abides in him."(66) He does not say, "It
will come," but, "It now abides." Indeed every man is
born into this state. Wherefore the apostle says,
"For we too were by nature children of wrath even as
the others."(67)
Since men are in this state of wrath through
original sin--a condition made still graver and more
pernicious as they compounded more and worse sins
with it--a Mediator was required; that is to say, a
Reconciler who by offering a unique sacrifice, of
which all the sacrifices of the Law and the Prophets
were shadows, should allay that wrath. Thus the
apostle says, "For if, when we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God by the death of his Son, even more
now being reconciled by his blood we shall be saved
from wrath through him."(68) However, when God is
said to be wrathful, this does not signify any such
perturbation in him as there is in the soul of a
wrathful man. His verdict, which is always just,
takes the name "wrath" as a term borrowed from the
language of human feelings. This, then, is the
grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord--that we
are reconciled to God through the Mediator and
receive the Holy Spirit so that we may be changed
from enemies into sons, "for as many as are led by
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."(69)
34. It would take too long to say all that would
be truly worthy of this Mediator. Indeed, men cannot
speak properly of such matters. For who can unfold in
cogent enough fashion this statement, that "the Word
became flesh and dwelt among us,"(70) so that we
should then believe in "the only Son of God the
Father Almighty, born of the Holy Spirit and Mary the
Virgin." Yet it is indeed true that the Word was made
flesh, the flesh being assumed by the Divinity, not
the Divinity being changed into flesh. Of course, by
the term "flesh" we ought here to understand "man,"
an expression in which the part signifies the whole,
just as it is said, "Since by the works of the law no
flesh shall be justified,"(71) which is to say, no
man shall be justified. Yet certainly we must say
that in that assumption nothing was lacking that
belongs to human nature. But it was a nature
entirely free from the bonds of all sin. It was not a
nature born of both sexes with fleshly desires, with
the burden of sin, the guilt of which is washed away
in regeneration. Instead, it was the kind of nature
that would be fittingly born of a virgin, conceived
by His mother's faith and not her fleshly desires.
Now if in his being born, her virginity had been
destroyed, he would not then have been born of a
virgin. It would then be false (which is unthinkable)
for the whole Church to confess him "born of the
Virgin Mary." This is the Church which, imitating his
mother, daily gives birth to his members yet remains
virgin. Read, if you please, my letter on the
virginity of Saint Mary written to that illustrious
man, Volusianus, whom I name with honor and
affection.(72)
35. Christ Jesus, Son of God, is thus both God and
man. He was God before all ages; he is man in this
age of ours. He is God because he is the Word of God,
for "the Word was God."(73) Yet he is man also, since
in the unity of his Person a rational soul and body
is joined to the Word. Accordingly, in so far as he
is God, he and the Father are one. Yet in so far as
he is man, the Father is greater than he. Since he
was God's only Son--not by grace but by nature--to
the end that he might indeed be the fullness of all
grace, he was also made Son of Man--and yet he was in
the one nature as well as in the other, one Christ.
"For being in the form of God, he judged it not a
violation to be what he was by nature, the equal of
God. Yet he emptied himself, taking on the form of a
servant,"(74) yet neither losing nor diminishing the
form of God.(75) Thus he was made less and remained
equal, and both these in a unity as we said before.
But he is one of these because he is the Word; the
other, because he was a man. As the Word, he is the
equal of the Father; as a man, he is less. He is the
one Son of God, and at the same time Son of Man; the
one Son of Man, and at the same time God's Son. These
are not two sons of God, one God and the other man,
but one Son of God--God without origin, man with a
definite origin--our Lord Jesus Christ. |