One of these things is that man was shown what place he holds among the things God created. Human nature could be united with God in such a way that one person arose from two substances, ex duabus substantiis fieret una persona.
And thereby, even from three: God, soul, and flesh. Thus those proud and malicious spirits, who attempt to thrust themselves in as mediators for the sake of deception under the appearance of help, do not dare set themselves above man because they have no flesh.
This is especially so because God deemed it worthy to die in that same flesh. Therefore, because they seem immortal, they cannot persuade men to honor them as gods.
And again, the grace of God is now communicated to us in the Man Christ without any preceding merits. For even He Himself did not attain by any preceding merits to be united in such unity with the true God.
Nor by merits did He become the Son of God, one person with Him, una cum illo persona filius dei fieret. From the moment He began to be man, He was also God. Therefore it is said: "And the Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14).
Moreover, human pride, which is the chief obstacle preventing man from cleaving to God, can be exposed and healed by so great a humility of God.
Through God's Incarnation, man also learns how far he has withdrawn from God. He learns what serves him as healing suffering when he returns through such a Mediator.
As God, this Mediator comes to man's aid, subuenit, by His divinity. As man, He is joined to them, conuenit, by His infirmity.
For what greater example of obedience could be given to us, who perished through disobedience, than the Son Himself obedient to God the Father, "even unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8)?
And where could we better see the reward for this obedience than in the flesh of such a Mediator, which rose to eternal life?
It also belongs to the justice and goodness of the Creator that the devil was overcome by the same rational creature over whose former victory he boasted. He was overcome through One who came from the same race that he held entire because of the original fall of one man.
Certainly God could have taken upon Himself a man from another race, in whom He would be Mediator between God and man, and not from the race of that Adam who bound the whole human race by his sin.
For when God created the first man, He did not create him from anyone's race. Therefore He could, in this way or in whatever way He wished, have created another through whom the conqueror of the first man might be conquered.
But God judged it better to take upon Himself man from that very race which had been conquered by the devil. Through Him He would conquer the enemy of the human race.
Yet He caused Him to be born of a Virgin. His conception was to be from the Spirit, not from the flesh. Faith, not lust, was to precede it.
In this conception there was no fleshly desire, through which those who draw ancestral sin after themselves are sown and conceived. No, holy virginity was made fruitful by faith, not by intercourse.
Lust was removed to the utmost degree, so that what was to be born from the seed of the first man would reproduce only the race, not the guilt.
For what was brought forth was not nature corrupted by participation in transgression, but the one remedy for all such corruption.
I say, a Man was born who had no sin and could not have any sin. Through Him those who could not be born without sin would be reborn and freed from sin.
Although marital chastity uses well the desire of the flesh contained in our reproductive members, this desire is nevertheless an involuntary impulse.
This proves either that it could not have existed in paradise before sin at all, or that, if it did exist, it was not such as ever to be at variance with the will.
Now we experience it as something that resists the law of the mind and impels toward intercourse, even when procreation is not intended.
If one yields to it, one satisfies it by committing sin. If one does not yield, it is restrained by dissent.
Who doubts that neither the first nor the second belonged to paradise before sin? At that time, piety did nothing indecent, and that happiness suffered nothing disturbing.
Therefore it was necessary that there be absolutely no fleshly desire when the Virgin conceived Him. In Him the maker of death was destined to find nothing worthy of death.
Yet he was to kill Him, so that by His death the Creator of life might conquer. The conqueror of the first Adam, who held the human race, is conquered by the second Adam and loses the Christian race.
That race was freed from the human race and from human transgression through Him who was not partaker of transgression, though He was from that race.
Thus the evil one was conquered by the race which he had conquered through transgression. This was accomplished so that man would not exalt himself, but that "he who boasts may boast in the Lord" (2 Cor 10:17).
For the one who was conquered was only man, and he was conquered because in his pride he wished to be God.
But He who conquered was both man and God. He, born of the Virgin, conquered in such a way that God did not govern this Man as He governs the other saints, but bore Him with humility.
None of all these gifts of God, nor any others which it would take too long for us now to examine and discuss on this occasion, would exist at all if the Word had not become flesh.
The Apostle says: "But the gift of grace is not like the transgression." Grace is more excellent in two respects.
First, it is more powerful because it gives eternal life, although death reigns in time because of Adam's death. Second, it is more excellent because, while many were subjected to death through Adam's transgression, grace for eternal life was given through the forgiveness of many sins by our Lord Jesus Christ.
THEOSIS