Incarnation in the early church

The Word's becoming human: the virgin birth, the reality of Christ's flesh and soul, and the purpose of the incarnation. Part of Christology.

Ascension of Isaiah 10.8Anonymous · late 1st–2nd century
Ascension of Isaiah 10.18Anonymous · late 1st–2nd century
Ascension of Isaiah 11.9Anonymous · late 1st–2nd century
Epistle of Barnabas 5.10Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Christ came in the flesh because no one could look on his glory directly.
Odes of Solomon 7Anonymous · ca. 100–200
2 Clement 9.5Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Christ became flesh; so we will be rewarded in the flesh.
To the Ephesians 18.2Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christ was conceived by Mary, born, and baptized to sanctify the water of baptism.
To the Ephesians 19.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Christ's virgin birth and death were hidden from the devil.
To the Smyrnaeans 1.1Ignatius of Antioch · ca. 110 (range ca. 105–135) · Ignatius praises the Smyrnaeans' firm faith in Christ's true birth and baptism.
To the Philippians 7.1Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Polycarp condemns those who deny that Christ came in the flesh, who deny the witness of the cross, and who twist the Lord's words to deny resurrection and judgment.
Apology 15Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · The Christians descend from Christ, the Son of God born of a virgin, crucified, risen, and ascended; they know the true God and live by his commandments in purity, justice, and love.
Epistle of the Apostles 3Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · The apostles confess Jesus Christ as God, the Son of God, the Creator enthroned at the Father's right hand, who became flesh of the virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit.
Epistle of the Apostles 14Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ says that he himself, in Gabriel's form, announced his birth to Mary and then entered her and became flesh.
Epistle of the Apostles 19Anonymous · ca. 140-170 · Christ promises the apostles a rest without food, grief, or decay, and says he put on their flesh and rose in it, as David foretold.
First Apology 33Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Isaiah foretold the virgin birth; the power of God, the Word, overshadowed the virgin without intercourse.
First Apology 63Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · The one who spoke to Moses from the bush was the Son, the Word, who is also God; the Jews wrongly think it was the Father.
Correspondence of Paul and the Corinthians (3 Cor.), Paul's replyAnonymous · ca. 150-200 · Paul replies that he handed on what he received: Christ was truly born of Mary by the Holy Spirit to save the flesh, God made man and the world, and the flesh will rise, as seeds, Jonah, the dead man laid on Elisha's bones and the widow's son show.
Sibylline Oracles 8.451ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The hymn tells how all creation was ordered for man, and how in the last times the Word came from heaven, took mortal form of the virgin Mary, and Gabriel was sent to her.
Sibylline Oracles 8.461ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The hymn tells of the annunciation: Gabriel bids the virgin receive God; she trembles, then rejoices, and the Word enters her womb and is made flesh.
Protevangelium of James 11Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · The annunciation to Mary at the well and at her spinning, and her visit to Elizabeth.
Protevangelium of James 19Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · Joseph brings a midwife to the cave, where a cloud and a great light attend the birth; Salome refuses to believe that a virgin has given birth.
Dialogue with Trypho 43.7Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · No one but Christ was ever born of a virgin in Abraham's line.
Dialogue with Trypho 63.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Trypho asks proof of the virgin birth, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Dialogue with Trypho 66.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin returns to the virgin birth.
Dialogue with Trypho 66.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Only Christ was born of a virgin in Abraham's line.
Dialogue with Trypho 84.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · A “sign” must be something extraordinary, not an ordinary birth.
Dialogue with Trypho 84.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The virgin birth is the true sign, as wondrous as Eve's creation from Adam's rib.
Dialogue with Trypho 99.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christ's prayer in the garden fulfills the psalm and shows his true humanity.
Dialogue with Trypho 100.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Christ called himself Son of Man because of his birth from Mary, of Abraham's and Adam's race.
Melito, Fr. 1Melito of Sardis · ca. 160-180 · Christ's signs after his baptism showed his hidden Godhead, and his thirty years before it showed his true manhood; he is one person with two essences.
Diatessaron, section 1Tatian · ca. 160-180
Diatessaron, section 2Tatian · ca. 160-180
Diatessaron, section 3Tatian · ca. 160-180
Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Fr. 2Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis · ca. 165-180 · A later historian reports that Apollinaris, with Irenaeus, Clement, and Serapion, taught that the incarnate Word had a human soul.
Acts of Peter (Vercelli) 23Anonymous · ca. 180–200 · The public contest opens in the Forum; Peter recalls Simon's attempt to buy the gift of the Spirit, and Simon mocks a God who is born and crucified.
Adumbrations on 1 John, paragraph 2Clement of Alexandria · original ca. 200; Latin translation 6th century · On 1 John 1:1–5: ‘was from the beginning’ signifies the Son's eternal generation and equality with the Father; the handling signifies the incarnation, with a tradition that John's hand passed into the Lord's body; ‘God is light’ declares his majesty, not his essence.
Exhortation to the Greeks 1.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The Lord has always called humanity to salvation in many ways, through signs, the prophets, and at last by becoming a human being himself.
Against Heresies 1.9.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · John speaks of one Christ who is the Word made flesh, not of a series of Valentinian Aeons with these names.
Against Heresies 1.9.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The one who suffered and dwelt among us is the Word of God himself, made true flesh, so the Valentinian Ogdoad collapses.
Against Heresies 2.22.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ passed through every stage of life, sanctifying each, and was truly what he seemed.
Against Heresies 3.9.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Matthew shows that John the Baptist preached the God of Abraham, who sent his Word incarnate to be seen by all flesh.
Against Heresies 3.11.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · In none of the heretical systems does the Word of God become flesh; John refutes them all with “the Word became flesh.”
Against Heresies 3.16.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Matthew's account of the virgin birth of “Christ,” Emmanuel, shows that Jesus and Christ are one and the same Son of God.
Against Heresies 3.18.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Son existed always with the Father; at the incarnation he summed up humanity in himself so that we might recover in Christ the image lost in Adam.
Against Heresies 3.19.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Those who make Christ a mere son of Joseph stay under death; the Son of God became Son of Man so that man might become a son of God.
Against Heresies 3.21.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The same Spirit spoke through the prophets, the Septuagint translators and the apostles; Isaiah 7 shows Emmanuel to be both God and man, born of a virgin.
Against Heresies 3.22.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Those who say Christ took nothing from the virgin destroy his likeness to Adam; Scripture says he was made of a woman and of David’s seed according to the flesh.
Against Heresies 3.22.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s hunger, weariness, tears, bloody sweat, sorrow, and the blood and water from his side prove he took real flesh from Mary.
Against Heresies 4.33.11Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The prophets each foretold part of Christ’s work: his glory, his second coming and judgment, his kingdom, his birth from the virgin as Emmanuel, his coming in Judea and Bethlehem, and his healings.
Against Heresies 4.38.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Man could not be made perfect at once because created things are childlike; so the Lord came to us as milk, in the flesh, to accustom us to the bread of immortality.
Against Heresies 5.1.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Only the Word made man could teach and redeem us; he redeemed his own from the apostasy by just persuasion, not force, giving his blood, soul, and flesh for ours and uniting God and man.
Against Heresies 5.1.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Against the Docetists and Valentinians, Christ was truly man, having received flesh from Mary and recapitulated Adam’s formation.
Against Heresies 5.1.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Against the Ebionites, the virgin birth by the Holy Spirit is the new birth that brings life, as the Word and the Spirit, God’s hands, perfect Adam’s formation.
Against Heresies 5.14.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ had real flesh and blood, recapitulating the blood of the righteous from Abel onward, which would be pointless unless flesh and blood were to be saved.
Against Heresies 5.14.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s flesh was of the same substance as Adam’s, for only so could he recapitulate and reconcile the flesh that had perished.
Against Heresies 5.14.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ’s flesh differed from ours only in being sinless; had it been of another substance, it could not have reconciled our flesh to God.
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 31Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 32Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 40Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 53Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 54Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 97Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
36Anonymous · ca. 180–185 · Christ, made man, taught the knowledge of God and by his suffering ended sin.
Excerpts from Theodotus 19.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Word became flesh not only at the incarnation, but also, in a sense, when he became Son in the beginning, by limitation, not in substance.
Excerpts from Theodotus 19.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Word also became flesh by working through the prophets; the Savior is called child of the Word.
Excerpts from Theodotus 60.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They read Luke 1:35 as the Spirit forming Christ's body and God's power shaping it; and they hold the Savior was distinct from what he assumed.
Miscellanies 3.17.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If birth were evil, then Christ and the Virgin would be in evil; this is the root of Docetism in Cassianus, Marcion, and Valentinus; man becomes a beast not in marriage but in adultery; the view that the serpent taught Adam intercourse insults the Creator.
Miscellanies 6.9.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows feels only the bodily needs of hunger and thirst; Christ ate only to prove his real body, and the apostles, after the resurrection, rose above even the good emotions, needing neither boldness, cheer, anger, nor zeal.
Miscellanies 6.15.127Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The incarnation, virgin birth, passion, and resurrection look like a riddle to outsiders but, when the Scriptures are opened, are God's power and wisdom; prophecy spoke in veiled terms, and prophets, the Lord, and the apostles were all persecuted.
Miscellanies 7.2.8Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Out of love for humanity the Son took flesh and came for the salvation of all; the Word rules by providence, causes all good, and showed in the flesh what obedience makes possible.
Acts of Thomas 80Anonymous · ca. 200–250 · Thomas glorifies Christ for his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, calling him the heavenly Word of the Father.
Against Noetus 4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–230 · Read in full, Isa 45 speaks of the Son in whom God is, the Word made flesh, who was in heaven as the Word before he took flesh.
Against Noetus 16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–230 · The Father's power, the Word, came down from heaven; how he was begotten is not to be pried into, for the Father keeps it to reveal later.
Against Noetus 17Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–230 · According to the apostles' tradition, God the Word came down into the Virgin Mary, took flesh and a rational soul, and truly became man.
Apostolic Tradition 4Hippolytus of Rome · early third century · After the kiss of peace the new bishop offers the eucharistic prayer: thanksgiving for Christ's incarnation and passion, the words of institution, the remembrance and offering, and the prayer for the Spirit.
Pistis Sophia 8Anonymous · 3rd century
Fragment 17 on Genesis (Gen. 49, 9%)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · Judah's lion's whelp “from a shoot” foretells Christ's birth according to the flesh from the Spirit and Mary.
Commentary on the Song of Songs, fragment 8 (Song 2:8)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · The Bridegroom leaping over the mountains is the Word, who leaped from heaven to the virgin's womb, to the cross, to Hades, to the earth, and back to heaven, and will come again in glory.
Commentary on Daniel 3.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Belshazzar's sacrilege, and the writing hand as a sign of the Word who wrote the law with the finger of God and would one day take flesh.
Commentary on Daniel 4.11Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · On Daniel 7:13–14: the Son of Man receives an everlasting kingdom from the Ancient of Days, the Father; he is firstborn from God, before the angels, from the virgin, and from the dead.
Commentary on Daniel 4.35-37Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · On Daniel 9:25–27 and 10:1–19: the last week, with Elijah and Enoch and the Antichrist; the vision by the great river of the Word in the form of a man, his robe, girdle and body interpreted, and his strengthening of Daniel.
On the Flesh of Christ 1Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Those who deny the resurrection of the flesh also deny that Christ had real human flesh; Marcion denied both his flesh and his birth, and Tertullian sets out to examine them.
On the Flesh of Christ 3Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Birth was neither impossible nor dangerous for God: he can become man and remain God, as angels took real bodies and the Spirit a real dove's body without ceasing to be what they were.
On the Flesh of Christ 4Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Marcion scorns human birth as disgusting, but Christ loved and redeemed man, birth and flesh included; the “foolishness” God chose is precisely a God born of a virgin in the flesh.
On the Flesh of Christ 6Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Apelles granted Christ real flesh taken from the stars, but not birth; yet angels took flesh without birth because they did not come to die, whereas Christ came to die and so had to be born.
On the Flesh of Christ 8Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · The followers of Apelles call earthly flesh shameful, but by their own myth the heavens too are tainted; Paul's “man from heaven” refers to Christ's Spirit, not to a heavenly flesh.
On the Flesh of Christ 9Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Christ's body showed every mark of earthly flesh; he was taken for an ordinary man, was hungry, thirsty, wept, feared death, was insulted and bled, which a heavenly flesh could not have done.
On the Flesh of Christ 11Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Christ did not turn his soul into flesh in order to make souls visible; he showed a real human soul by clothing it with real flesh.
On the Flesh of Christ 13Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Things take the name of what they become, yet Christ speaks separately of “my soul” and “my flesh”; so in him soul and flesh remained two distinct substances.
On the Flesh of Christ 16Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Christ did not abolish his flesh as sinful; he took our flesh and abolished sin in it, being in the likeness of sinful flesh without sin, just as Adam was made flesh without a man's seed.
On the Flesh of Christ 18Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · The Son of God needed no human father, having God as Father, but took real flesh from his human mother; as he said, what is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
On the Flesh of Christ 19Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · John 1:13, read as “he was born … of God”, denies only that Christ was conceived by intercourse, not that he took flesh from Mary's womb; otherwise the Spirit entered the womb for nothing.
On the Flesh of Christ 20Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Scripture says Christ was born “of” Mary and “made of a woman”; the psalm's “you tore me from my mother's womb” and the breasts he sucked prove his flesh came from hers.
On the Flesh of Christ 21Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · If Christ took nothing from Mary, Isaiah's prophecy, the angel's announcement, Elizabeth's “fruit of your womb”, and the promise of a son of David are all emptied of meaning.
On the Flesh of Christ 22Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Matthew's genealogy and Paul's “seed of David according to the flesh” and “seed of Abraham” show that Christ's flesh was the same as that of Abraham, David, Mary, and Adam.
Against Marcion 2.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's human-like actions in the Old Testament belong to the Son, the Word who from the beginning dealt with patriarchs and prophets and was preparing to become man; the invisible Father is never seen, and God's humility is the means of human salvation.
Against Marcion 3.8Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If Christ's flesh was a phantom, as Marcion holds, then his works, sufferings, death, and resurrection were unreal, and our faith and resurrection are empty.
Against Marcion 3.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The angels who ate with Abraham had real, though unborn, flesh; only Christ needed to be born, since only he was to die; so they give Marcion no precedent for a phantom Christ.
Against Marcion 3.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If Marcion's god despised flesh, he should also have scorned its likeness; by feigning flesh he honors it, and the Creator could appear without flesh when he chose.
Against Marcion 3.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion denied Christ's real flesh to avoid his birth, but a real birth is no more unworthy of God than a real death; if Christ had flesh he was born, as the prophets foretold.
Against Marcion 4.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Healing the paralytic and forgiving sins fulfills Isaiah; the title Son of Man, from Daniel, means Christ was born of a human mother, a virgin, and so had a real body.
Against Marcion 4.19Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The women who served Jesus, his warnings about hearing, and his saying “Who is my mother?” all fit the Creator's prophecies, and the last shows that Jesus really had a mother and brothers.
Against Marcion 4.21Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The sending of the Twelve, the feeding of the five thousand, Peter's confession, and Christ's sayings on losing one's life and being ashamed of him all belong to the Creator's Christ, who truly took flesh and suffered.
Against Marcion 4.43Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The burial, the women at the tomb, the road to Emmaus, and the risen Christ's showing of his hands and feet all fulfill the prophets and prove his real body, so that the Christ of Marcion's own gospel is the Creator's Christ.
Against Marcion 5.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, not in a phantom body; God will raise mortal bodies as he raised Christ; and Paul's lament over Israel's ignorance, his praise of God's riches, and his moral precepts in Romans 8–14 all come from the Creator's Scriptures.
Against Marcion 5.20Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In Philippians the differing motives of preachers show no difference of doctrine; Christ, found in the form of a servant, truly became man and truly died; and the promised transformation of our lowly body means the body will rise.
On Flight in Persecution 8Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Christ withdrew from danger only until his teaching was complete; then he faced his Passion, and in Gethsemane, though his flesh was weak, he submitted to the Father's will, as Christians should.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 6Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · The flesh is honoured by the hands of God who shaped it with Christ, the Word to become flesh, in view; its lowly origin in clay no more disgraces it than earth disgraces gold.
Against Praxeas 27Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · Praxeas' followers split Jesus (the flesh, the Son) from Christ (the Spirit, the Father); Tertullian answers that the Word did not change into flesh but put it on, so that Jesus is one person with two substances, God and man, unconfused, each acting in its own way.
On First Principles 1.0.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The apostolic teaching affirms one God, Creator and giver of both Testaments; Jesus Christ, born of the Father before creation, truly incarnate, dead and risen; and the Holy Spirit, equal in honour and the same in both Testaments.
On First Principles 2.6.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Origen turns to the incarnation: the Son, the mediator and image of God whom only the Father fully knows, emptied himself, became man, and sent prophets before him and apostles after him.
On First Principles 2.6.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The incarnation of the Word, born, suffering and dying, is the greatest wonder; the truth of both natures in one person must be held reverently, neither degrading the divine nor treating the human as illusion.
On First Principles 2.6.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The soul of Jesus, clinging to the Word from the beginning with perfect love, became one spirit with him and mediated between God and the flesh; hence divine and human names are exchanged in Scripture.
On First Principles 4.4.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · All things were created through the Son, as Colossians, John and Psalm 33 show; in the incarnation his divinity was neither confined to his body nor separated from the Father, as the Baptist's words 'among you stands one' imply.
On First Principles 4.4.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The Son's undivided divinity took a human body and soul; that soul, joined to the Word in a spotless union, chose the good and could not sin, and is the example for believers to imitate.
Fragment on Matthew 1:18Origen · ca. 220-254 · The fragment distinguishes Christ's “genesis” (Matt 1:1) from his “birth” (Matt 1:18) and explains what he took from each.
PG 12:1107 (Ps 2 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · God’s wrath gives sinners time to repent; Christ receives the nations as heir “as a man,” by the economy of the incarnation; a further note on the inheritance as contemplation; the rod of iron is the sterner treatment that heals sinners.
PG 12:1185 (Ps 8–9 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 8:4–8: God visits man to do him good; man, made in God’s image, is a little lower than the angels and rules the creatures; Hebrews applies the psalm to Christ, and through the incarnation man is crowned with glory; Psalm 9 begins with its title, “for the hidden things.”
PG 12:1229 (Ps 17 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 18:11–15 (LXX 17:12–16): God’s tent is the flesh of Christ, or bodily nature through which the Creator is seen; his arrows, lightnings and rebukes are healing, revealing the springs of living water and the foundations of the world, which are the holy Trinity or the saints on whom believers are built.
PG 12:1253 (Ps 20–21 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · End of Ps 20 LXX (21) and beginning of Ps 21 LXX (22): the cry from the cross, Christ as the worm, and the Saviour drawn from the womb by the Father.
PG 12:1671 (Ps 147–148 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 147:13–18 (LXX 147) and Psalm 148:1–3: the bars of Jerusalem and Zion, the borders of peace, the Saviour as the grain of wheat, the Son in the flesh, and the Word who melts the snow of the rational nature.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.38.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Apelles said Christ was not born of a virgin but made himself a real body from the elements.
Refutation of All Heresies 8.10.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · To put on flesh, the “outer darkness,” he was announced to Mary by an angel and born of her.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · In the last times the Father sent the Word himself, no longer through prophets or angels but visibly present.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.15Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Word took a body from the virgin and lived through every age of life, showing in his humanity that God made nothing evil and that humans are free.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.16Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Christ's humanity is of the same stuff as ours; otherwise his command to imitate him would be unjust.
Fragment 1 on John 1:1Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:1: the Son is called Word as maker of all; ‘was’ (not ‘became’) signifies his eternal existence before the incarnation; he was in the beginning of all creatures, and is the Wisdom ‘created as the beginning of God's ways’ in relation to creation.
Fragment 16 on John 1:23Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:26–27: the Word stands among all as the reason within us, yet unknown when inactive; the sandal thong that John cannot loose is the incomprehensible manner of the Word's union with a body.
Fragment 38 on John 3:18Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 3:17–18: the Son sent into the world was not the body from Mary, formed here, but God the Word and true light, so the name ‘Son’ belongs to the Word.
Fragment 50 on John 4:6Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 4:6: Jesus' weariness at noon shows that he had a true human body subject to common sufferings; he rested by the well also to meet the woman.
Commentary on John 1.107Origen · ca. 230–248 · By nature the beginning of learning about Christ is his divinity; for us, his humanity and cross.
Commentary on John 1.175Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ became man, not a heavenly being, and the star of Bethlehem served knowledge of him.
Commentary on John 1.195Origen · ca. 230–248 · The “king” is the divine nature of the Word, and the king's son is the humanity he assumed.
Commentary on John 2.82Origen · ca. 230–248 · Hebrews says the incarnate Jesus was made lower even than the angels.
Commentary on John 2.83Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen suggests the Spirit, unable itself to undertake the incarnation, joined the Father in sending the Son and promised to descend on him.
Commentary on John 6.157Origen · ca. 230–248 · Untying the sandal strap means explaining the mystery of Christ's incarnation, which John confesses he cannot do.
Commentary on John 6.220Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Jordan is the incarnate Word; the humanity he assumed was washed and received the Spirit permanently, so that he can baptize others with the Spirit.
Commentary on John 10.22Origen · ca. 230–248 · Christ was born of David according to the flesh, but not in his divine power, by which he is Son of God.
Commentary on John 10.25Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Docetists, who say Christ only seemed human, would rob us of the man through whom alone we are saved.
Commentary on John 10.286Origen · ca. 230–248 · Solomon may represent the eternal Son and Hiram the humanity he assumed, together building the temple, the church; this needs the mind of Christ.
Commentary on John 13.237Origen · ca. 230–248 · The work completed is the perfecting of rational beings, for which the Word became flesh.
Commentary on John 20.85Origen · ca. 230–248 · It was the man, not God the Word, who could be killed; Origen asks whether the Word, becoming flesh, became man.
Commentary on John 20.86Origen · ca. 230–248 · If the Word became man, he could be sought to be killed; if not, he returned unharmed to what he was before.
Commentary on John 20.128Origen · ca. 230–248 · Their retort may be a veiled slur that Jesus was born of fornication, since they rejected the virgin birth.
Commentary on John 20.130Origen · ca. 230–248 · They meant: we have God as Father more truly than you, who claim a virgin birth but were born of fornication.
Commentary on John 20.155Origen · ca. 230–248 · By taking the form of a servant the Son came forth to us, yet the Father remains with him and in him.
Commentary on John 32.191Origen · ca. 230–248 · Denying the virgin birth means lacking something essential to full faith.
Commentary on John 32.192Origen · ca. 230–248 · Denying Christ's real humanity also falls short of full faith.
Commentary on John 32.225Origen · ca. 230–248 · This holds even more of Jesus, who took on a whole human nature, including a human spirit.
Homily on Luke 19Origen · ca. 233–250 · The child Jesus, filled with wisdom before twelve, shows a divine presence in a sinless human soul; his parents’ sorrowful search signifies the search for the hidden meaning of Scripture, and he is found in the temple, questioning the teachers in order to teach them.
Homily on Luke 28Origen · ca. 233–250 · Matthew’s descending genealogy, with its sinful ancestors and women, shows Christ taking on sinners’ condition, while Luke’s ascending genealogy follows his baptism; Christ at thirty, like Joseph, gathers the wheat of the Scriptures for the hungry.
Homilies on Exodus 6.12Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The sanctuary prepared by God's hands is best understood of the flesh of Christ, formed in the virgin without human work, the stone cut without hands.
Homilies on Ezekiel 1.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Ezekiel, called “son of man” and seeing the heavens opened at thirty, is a type of Christ, whose true birth Origen defends against those who call it a phantom.
Homilies on Ezekiel 1.10Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Allegorically, the word came to the man born of the virgin, joined to the divine Word; the land of the Chaldeans signifies the error of astrology and fate.
Homilies on Joshua 3.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The two and a half and nine and a half tribes show that the faithful under the law knew the Trinity only in part, and that perfection comes only with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Homilies on Leviticus 8.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The law speaks of a woman who 'has conceived seed' to exempt Mary, who conceived without seed; Paul's calling her 'woman' refers to sex and age, not to loss of virginity.
Homilies on Leviticus 9.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The high priest's linen garments are read as figures of Christ's earthly and virginally conceived body and of the chastity of those who imitate him.
Homilies on Leviticus 12.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Christ alone was 'not defiled for father and mother', being born of an undefiled body without human father and never sinning against God the Father or the heavenly mother; he never leaves the holy place, which is found in holy deeds, not locations.
Homilies on Numbers 27.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The forty-two stations of the exodus correspond to the forty-two generations through which Christ descended; believers ascend by the same steps, beginning, as their first station, with faith in his birth from the Virgin.
Homilies on Jeremiah 1.8Origen · ca. 240 · Christ, the Word of God, can truly say “I do not know how to speak,” because human speech is lower than the divine knowledge he has; like a grown man learning baby talk, he took up human speech in the incarnation.
Homilies on Jeremiah 8.8Origen · ca. 240 · The wisdom Christ brought when he emptied himself is “the foolishness of God” compared with God's heavenly wisdom, yet it is wiser than all human wisdom.
Homilies on Jeremiah 14.6Origen · ca. 240 · Christ can say “woe is me,” as he wept over Jerusalem and as he laments in the prophets over the lack of fruit among men, but he says it as man, in his human soul, not as the divine Word.
Lines 97–120Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · God's majesty is hidden even from the angels, but he shows himself in forms suited to those who see him, appeared in fire, and took flesh.
Lines 765–788Commodian · 3rd century (disputed) · God became man and, born of a virgin, secretly destroyed the death the devil brought; no one can serve both idols and God, and conversion must not be put off.
On the Trinity 10Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The heretics' Christ, who rejects the Old Testament and comes only in appearance, is a fiction; the true Christ took real flesh from Mary, died, and rose in that body as the pattern of our resurrection.
On the Trinity 13Novatian · ca. 240–250 · John's “the Word became flesh” shows Christ both God and man; since he came from heaven, knows hearts, forgives sins, is called God by Thomas and Paul, and made all things, he is God and not only man.
On the Trinity 21Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Christ's power to raise his own body, his title “firstborn of all creation,” and his putting off and on of the flesh show that the Word who took up a man is both God and man.
On the Trinity 23Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Even heretics who call Christ the Father, or who deny his flesh, testify by their error to his evident divinity; the Scriptures show him God as the Son and man as the Mediator who unites God and man.
On the Trinity 24Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Heretics use Luke 1:35 to identify the man born of Mary with the Son of God; but its “also” shows that the Son of God is principally the Word who came down, and that the man he took up became Son of God by union with him.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.196Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Scripture uses human words for divine realities; the left hand is the incarnation and its riches and glory, faith in the passion; the right hand is the eternal Word.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.197Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The Church rests on faith in the incarnation (the left hand) and seeks knowledge of the eternal Word (the right); the Bride adjures the maidens by the field to rouse love as far as the Bridegroom wills.
Against Celsus 1.34Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus ignored Isaiah's prophecy that a virgin would bear Emmanuel; Origen quotes it and defends the translation "virgin" against the rendering "young woman."
Against Celsus 1.35Origen · ca. 248 · From Isaiah's own words: a birth to a young wife would be no sign; the sign fits a virgin birth, given to the house of David and fulfilled in Christ, who descended and ascended.
Against Celsus 1.37Origen · ca. 248 · Nature and Greek stories show that birth without a father is not impossible; the Jew's comparison of Mary with the mothers of Greek myth is buffoonery.
Against Celsus 1.66Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks the flight to Egypt; Origen answers that Christ, being truly man as well as God, was protected by ordinary human means, which suited his purpose better than a spectacular rescue.
Against Celsus 1.69Origen · ca. 248 · Christ truly took a human body, born of a woman and tempted like us but without sin; Celsus's objection rests on his belief in the Panthera story.
Against Celsus 2.9Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not call Jesus' visible body or human soul God, but the divine Word who spoke in him, who created all things at the Father's command and is not confined to Jesus' body, though united with it.
Against Celsus 3.41Origen · ca. 248 · Origen answers that the eternal Son is the Word himself, and that his human body and soul, united with him, were changed into something divine, just as philosophers say matter can take on new qualities.
Against Celsus 4.5Origen · ca. 248 · God fills heaven and earth, so his coming in Jesus does not mean leaving his place; he “departs” only from the wicked soul and fills the virtuous one, and the only change he brings is moral transformation.
Against Celsus 4.15Origen · ca. 248 · Christ emptied himself in the form of God without sinning or losing his blessedness, as a physician touches disease out of kindness; the Word remains unchanged and becomes “flesh” for those who cannot yet see his divine glory.
Against Celsus 4.18Origen · ca. 248 · The Word does not deceive but adapts himself to each person as milk, vegetables, or solid food; and the soul of Jesus freely entered human misfortunes out of love, as Philippians 2 describes.
Against Celsus 6.68Origen · ca. 248 · The Word became flesh so that those bound to the flesh might receive him, and then leads them up, as on the mount of Transfiguration, to see his divine glory.
Against Celsus 6.73Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus asks why God's Spirit needed a virgin's womb, but Origen answers that the pure divine nature is not defiled by a body, as sunlight is not defiled by mud, and that a body formed without birth would not have looked any different.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 65Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Christ, present everywhere as God the Word, is said to go abroad according to the body he took up, which is never separated from him; and he is absent from us while we walk by faith and present when we walk by sight; his money is his pure words.
Commentary on Romans 1.5Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Christ was 'made' of David's seed according to the flesh but 'destined', not predestined, Son of God, for he always existed; his soul, united to the Word, is one spirit with him; his Davidic descent and his being Son of God from the resurrection are discussed.
That Idols Are Not Gods 10Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 246–250, if by Cyprian · The Jews once had God's favor but lost it through disobedience, as their dispersion shows.
To Quirinus 2.9Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 248–250 (book 3 perhaps later) · Isaiah's sign of the virgin who bears Emmanuel, and the woman's seed who crushes the serpent's head, foretell Christ's virgin birth.
Prayer 2 3Anonymous · uncertain · The petitioner thanks the Father for sending his Son, born of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit, to free us from death.
On the Good of Patience 6Cyprian of Carthage · 256 · Christ taught patience by his whole life: his incarnation, baptism, fasting, temptation, washing his disciples' feet, and bearing with Judas and his opponents.
Symposium 3.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Thalia argues that Christ is Adam himself, re-formed: the pre-existent Word united himself with the first man, born anew of a virgin as Adam was formed from virgin earth.
Symposium 3.5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · Like the potter's spoiled vessel, Adam was remade in the virgin's womb, united with the Word and made indestructible; the parable of the lost sheep teaches the same.
Symposium 3.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd century · The Shepherd left the angelic hosts, the ninety-nine sheep, to recover man, and defeated the devil through the very man the devil had overcome.
On the Making of the World 9Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · The saving events of Christ's life correspond to the days of creation, and his deeds show both his humanity and his lordship.
Letter of the six bishops to Paul 6Anonymous · ca. 264–269 · The bishops confess that the Son, God and Lord of all, became man from the virgin, his body united unchangeably with the Godhead, and that Scripture names Christ even before the incarnation.
Res. 1.25Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Proclus explains Origen's view with the image of a waterskin that keeps its shape while water flows in and out, and answers the appeal to Christ's risen flesh by stressing the difference between his virginal conception and ours.
Res. 2.18Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius explains that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom' refers to the flesh's impulses and to corruption, not to the body, which God restores to incorruption, as Justin Martyr also taught.
Res. 2.23Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · A plant flourishing unburned beside a natural fire on Mount Olympus in Lycia prefigures the righteous passing unharmed through the final fire; and since even humble images of a king are honoured, God will not let his images perish but raised them up through the incarnate Word.
Sang. 8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Heaven and firmament may also mean the mind and the feelings; true confession of Christ come in the flesh includes his coming into the church and into each believer, with a holy life.
Against the Nations 1.60Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Christ took human form because otherwise his invisible divine power could not have been seen or heard by mortals.
Against the Nations 1.61Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Why God chose to act through a man is hidden, and unbelief prevents understanding it.
Against the Nations 1.62Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius argues that the divine Christ did not die; the death was that of the man he had assumed, as a prophet's death is not the death of the god who speaks through him.
Church History 10.4.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Christ, the only good Son, took on human nature like a devoted physician and rescued humanity even from death, as no heavenly being could.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 54Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes, claiming the patience of an apostle, spars with Archelaus over who should debate, and denies that Christ was born of Mary, citing sayings that he "came" and was "sent."
Acta Archelai (Latin) 59Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes argues that the Son needed no mother or baptism, and that if Jesus was a real man the dove must be a real dove; Archelaus answers that a spirit dwells in a true man, as Manes himself claimed of the Paraclete.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 60Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus argues that a Christ who was man only in appearance could not have been seized, have suffered, or been baptized, and that he was baptized not for his own sin but to bear the Spirit in the body born of Mary.
Fragment 2Peter of Alexandria · ca. 300–311 · From Peter's book On the Godhead: God the Word became flesh by God's will without leaving his Godhead, so that he might die for sinners, and was conceived by the Virgin through the power of God and the Holy Spirit without a man.
Testament of Our Lord 1.28Anonymous · ca. 350–500
Prophetic Extracts 1.22Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius takes Solomon's prayer that God would truly dwell with humans on earth as fulfilled in the incarnation.
Prophetic Extracts 2.4Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads Psalm 8 as foretelling the churches of the nations and, with Hebrews, the Son made a little lower than the angels and then crowned with glory.
Prophetic Extracts 2.18Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads “bow the heavens and come down” as the Word's self-emptying descent in the incarnation so that he might be known by humans.
Prophetic Extracts 3.39Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius applies Baruch's “who has gone up into heaven… this is our God… after this he was seen on earth” to the Word who descended, ascended, and lived among humans.
Prophetic Extracts 4.4Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius defends the reading “the virgin shall conceive” in Isaiah 7:14 by the authority of the Seventy and by the sign's marvellousness, and refutes the Jewish view that it referred to Hezekiah.
Prophetic Extracts 4.5Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius interprets Isaiah's son “Plunder swiftly, spoil quickly,” born of the prophetess, not literally but as a further prophecy of the virgin birth by the Holy Spirit and of Christ's spoiling of the hostile powers.
Prophetic Extracts 4.10Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads the Lord coming to Egypt on a light cloud as the Word incarnate, who came into this life and into Egypt as a child, shaking the demons in the idols.
Divine Institutes 4.12.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Spirit of God entered a holy virgin, who conceived without a man.
Divine Institutes 4.12.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If animals can conceive by the wind, the virgin conception is not incredible.
Divine Institutes 4.12.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Odes of Solomon foretold the virgin birth.
Divine Institutes 4.12.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Isaiah foretold that a virgin would conceive.
Divine Institutes 4.13.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · In his second birth he had no human father; as mediator he leads our nature to immortality.
Divine Institutes 4.13.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He is both God and man: his works show divinity, his passion humanity.
Divine Institutes 4.22.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Objectors deny that God could fittingly become man and suffer.
Divine Institutes 4.22.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Why did Christ come in weakness and not in divine power?
Divine Institutes 4.24.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · A heavenly teacher must take a mortal body to be a perfect teacher.
Divine Institutes 4.24.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God without a body could not practise what he taught.
Divine Institutes 4.24.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Without shared weakness, the pupil could plead the weakness of the flesh.
Divine Institutes 4.24.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Only a teacher clothed in flesh can refute the excuse of the flesh.
Divine Institutes 4.24.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The teacher must be like man to show that sin can be conquered.
Divine Institutes 4.25.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · He was born without a human father, to show his heavenly origin.
Divine Institutes 4.25.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God was father of his spirit without a mother; a virgin mother of his body without a father.
Divine Institutes 4.25.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Christ, God and man, is the mediator who leads humanity to God.
Divine Institutes 4.25.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · A bodiless spirit could not lead flesh, which is subject to sin and death.
Divine Institutes 4.25.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God came in the flesh to rescue it from death and show that sin is a choice.
Apology for Origen 5.9Pamphilus of Caesarea · ca. 308–310 (Rufinus's Latin about 397) · Pamphilus lists the last charge (transmigration of souls) and answers the first five charges with Origen's own words: the Son is born of the Father by nature, not by emission; Christ is God and not a mere man; his body was real; and there is one Christ.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.44Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Word came to heal humankind, which had fallen into a madness that forgot God and itself.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.45Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The incarnate Word was truly man and truly the Word of God, without deception.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 38.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Why is the pre-existent Son the same as the man born 300 years ago?
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 38.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · He was born twice: of God before creation and in the flesh under Augustus.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 38.8Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The Father sent the Son to take flesh and teach virtue by example.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 38.9Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Born of a virgin without a father, he became holy flesh to free the flesh from sin.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 39.7Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God took flesh to mediate between God and man and conquer death.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 45.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Why was it fitting for God to take a mortal body and suffer?
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.88Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The “day” of Isaiah 7 is the time of the virgin birth and Christ’s coming.
Demonstration of the Gospel 2.3.150Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Micah’s prophecy foretells Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, pre-existence, virgin birth, and the apostles’ preaching.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.50Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The nursing child is Christ’s birth; the untrodden ground is the virgin who bore him.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.2.51Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah states the virgin birth plainly in the Emmanuel prophecy.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · When neither Moses nor the prophets could cure humanity, the Savior himself came, as the Father had promised in Psalm 2.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Word took a human body so that people could see him, hear his teaching, and witness his miracles.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Word, called Son of Man and Jesus (“savior”), lived a human life without ceasing to be God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · At his birth Christ was born like us yet as God, from a virgin, without sexual union.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.13.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Word’s birth, body, sufferings, and death do not harm his divine nature, just as sunlight is not defiled by what it touches.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.13.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Through his assumed humanity Christ made his divinity perceptible to human senses.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.15.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Word became man to restore humanity to the knowledge and friendship of the Father.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.19.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Baruch says God gave wisdom to Israel and afterward appeared on earth and lived among men, which Eusebius takes as plain prophecy.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.20.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The “light cloud” is Christ's body taken from the Virgin and the Holy Spirit, in which he came to Egypt.
Demonstration of the Gospel 6.20.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · In his flesh from the Virgin, thick as matter yet light as formed by the Spirit, the Word visited Egypt.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Chapter heading: Isaiah foretells Jewish unbelief and the sign of the virgin bearing God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah's account of the enemies of Ahaz symbolizes demonic foes, who could be defeated only by the Word's incarnation from a virgin.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Victory over the enemies had to be won through a sinless flesh.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Word took a body because human senses can perceive only bodies and spoken sounds.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God the Word took a human rational nature so that through it he might reveal saving truth to eyewitnesses.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.24Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · In the incarnation the Word was not bound by the body or limited in his divine presence.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The incorporeal Word gave of his own to the flesh but took no defilement from it.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.26Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The impassible Word, like sunlight on corpses, was untouched by the flesh and made it holy; Isaiah prefaces the virgin birth with a call to faith.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.27Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Isaiah 7:9–16: the sign of the virgin who will bear Emmanuel.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.30Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Against the reading “young woman,” an ordinary birth would be no sign, and the child is called God with us.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.48Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · When the two kingdoms ended, the virgin birth foretold with them must also have happened.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.54Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Matthew's account of Jesus' conception confirms how Scripture foretold his birth.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.1.55Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Matthew applies Isaiah 7:14 to Jesus' birth.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 11.9Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · The pre-existent Son came to earth out of care for creation, by a novel birth: conceived without marriage, born of a virgin, the mother of God.
On the Incarnation 1.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Athanasius links this work to the preceding one against the pagans and announces his subject: the Word's becoming man, which Jews slander, Greeks mock, and Christians worship.
On the Incarnation 1.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word, bodiless by nature, took a body not by necessity of his nature but out of the Father's love for humankind, for our salvation.
On the Incarnation 4.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Human transgression was the occasion of the Word's coming down in love.
On the Incarnation 8.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word took a real body from a pure virgin, making it his temple and instrument.
On the Incarnation 33.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Jews' own Scriptures refute them, foretelling the virgin birth in Isaiah 7:14.
On the Incarnation 35.7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · No patriarch or prophet was born of a virgin, so the prophecy points to Christ alone.
On the Incarnation 41.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Athanasius will show the Greeks that the Word's manifestation in a body is not absurd.
On the Incarnation 44.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Creation from nothing needed only a command, but healing an existing humanity required the physician to come among it.
On the Incarnation 44.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Since existing humanity was perishing, the Word had to take a human instrument to save it.
On the Incarnation 54.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word became man that we might be made god, revealed the invisible Father, and suffered so that we might inherit incorruption.
Letter 3.3Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony explains that Christ, like us in all but sin, became a slave, poor, foolish, and weak so as to free, enrich, and strengthen us, and that his coming is a judgment on the world.
Letter 3.5Antony the Great · before 356 · Antony urges self-knowledge, recalls that God in his goodness turned us back from sin by handing over his Son, and confesses that he spends his life mourning over what he can render to God.
Theophany 3.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 3.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Letter to Marcellinus 6Athanasius of Alexandria · uncertain, after 335 · The Psalms foretell Christ the anointed King, his becoming man, and his birth from a virgin of David's line.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 14.1Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The incorporeal Word took a body because people who sought God in visible things could see him only in human form.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 14.2Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Since like loves like, the Word showed himself in a human body to those who looked for the divine in images and men.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 14.4Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The indwelling Word was not affected by the body, as sunlight is not defiled by what it touches.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 14.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Like Orpheus taming beasts with his lyre, the Word used a human being as his instrument to tame and heal human souls, showing them God in a man.
Against Marcellus 2.3.31Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 336–337 · Marcellus says Ps 110:3 refers to the virgin birth, which preceded the star.
Demonstration 6.10Aphrahat · 337-345
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.13.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The pre-existing Son emptied himself and died so that eternal life might reign through his grace.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.20.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · If the Word lived in the flesh apart from the Father, there were two hypostases.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.20.41Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Marcellus must make either the Father, a subsisting Son, a human soul, or nothing at all move Christ's flesh.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.18.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The Word that once “came to” the prophets now himself became flesh, so John begins with who he was.
Oration I Against the Arians 25Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius turns the Arian question back on them, answering that God and his Word both eternally are, and that the one sense in which the Son was “made” is his becoming man.
Oration I Against the Arians 53Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius introduces the texts the Arians use to call the Word a creature (Prov 8:22; Heb 1:4; 3:1–2; Acts 2:36) and insists they be read of the incarnation.
Oration I Against the Arians 64Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius concludes the first oration: every “became” said of the Son refers to what he became for us in the incarnation, not to any origin of his substance.
Oration II Against the Arians 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Heb 3:1–2 speaks not of the Word's divine generation but of his becoming high priest in the flesh, as Aaron became high priest by putting on the priestly robes.
Oration II Against the Arians 50Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Prov 8:22 says “for the works,” so it cannot describe a Word who is before all things; the Son calls the Father “Lord” only as having taken the form of a servant.
Oration II Against the Arians 51Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · As adopted children call their Lord “Father” by grace, the Son calls his Father “Lord” in his humanity; and “created for the works” refers to a task given after being, as with Adam, Noah, and Moses.
Oration II Against the Arians 52Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · “Formed to gather Israel” (Isa 49:5) and “created for the works” refer to a mission to things that already existed; like a son disguised to recover his father's property, the Word put on our flesh.
Oration II Against the Arians 53Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture gives a reason (“for the works”) only when it speaks of the Word's becoming flesh; of his Godhead it speaks absolutely, since the Father's radiance has no cause beyond the Father.
Oration II Against the Arians 54Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Christ speaks of his divinity without giving any reason, but of his incarnation he gives the reason: the need of human beings for life, light, truth, and deliverance from the devil.
Oration II Against the Arians 60Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The “but” joining Prov 8:22 and 8:25 shows that the begetting before all things precedes and differs from the creating as “beginning of ways,” which refers to the incarnation.
Oration II Against the Arians 61Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · God is first creator, then Father of human beings by grace; but he is first Father of the Word and afterwards his creator in the flesh; so Christ is our brother and “firstborn,” his flesh saved first.
Oration II Against the Arians 64Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If “firstborn” meant a creature among creatures, the Son would be brother to beasts and stones; he is firstborn because he condescended to creation both in making it and in entering the world to make all sons.
Oration II Against the Arians 65Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The way through Adam was lost; the Word put on created flesh to open a new and living way, becoming the beginning of the new creation.
Oration II Against the Arians 67Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Word received the works to complete when he became man; only one who is God, not a creature, could join humanity to God and undo God's own sentence of death.
Oration II Against the Arians 68Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · God could have undone the curse by a word, but what he does is chosen for what profits us; a mere command would have left grace external and humanity ever falling again.
Oration III Against the Arians 30Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Word became man; he did not merely come into a man as the word of God came to the prophets, and “flesh” in John 1:14 means a human being.
Oration III Against the Arians 31Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Unlike his visits to the saints, the Word truly became man from Mary; so the flesh's weaknesses are called his, while his divine works were done through his own body.
Oration III Against the Arians 41Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Human weaknesses in the Gospels belong to Christ's humanity, divine works to his Godhead, both in one Lord: true God in the flesh and true flesh in the Word.
Oration IV Against the Arians 6Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author explains that Christ, as mediator, takes our weaknesses to the Father and receives God's gifts as man, so that they pass to us.
Oration IV Against the Arians 28Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author argues that “before the morning star” cannot refer to Christ's birth from Mary, and, from Rev 22:16, takes the morning star to be the incarnate Christ, so the begetting precedes the incarnation.
Oration IV Against the Arians 31Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author uses Moses' speaking of himself in the third person (Lev 9:7) to show that Peter's words do not make the Word and Christ two, and says that separating them betrays a pagan idea of the incarnation as change.
Oration IV Against the Arians 32Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author appeals to the annunciation (Luke 1:35) to show that the Word is united to the man born of Mary, so that the Word was not sent through another but himself sent the apostles.
Oration IV Against the Arians 34Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author teaches that Christ is the divine Word united with the humanity formed in Mary, the true temple of which Solomon's was an image, and calls Paul of Samosata a disciple of those who objected that Jesus made himself God.
Historical Fragments 1.1.3.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · The Son's obedience and the saying "the Father is greater" belong to his assumed humanity.
Historical Fragments 1.3.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 343–367 · Germinius confesses the incarnation, passion, resurrection, ascension, and return.
Catechetical Lecture 4.9Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Son truly became human from the Virgin, not in appearance only; he acted both as man and as God.
Catechetical Lecture 10.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The one who appeared to Moses was Christ, who later took a human face so that we could see him and live; in Exodus the Lord calls on the name of the Lord, revealing Father and Son.
Catechetical Lecture 12.1Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Christ must be confessed as both God and man, for salvation depends on both; the King and Physician took humanity to heal us.
Catechetical Lecture 12.15Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Christ became man to sanctify baptism, to bring life through a virgin as death came through Eve, to overthrow idolatry, and to defeat the devil with his own weapon: the flesh became the bait that made death give up its prey.
Catechetical Lecture 12.26Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Creator, who fashions every child in the womb, was not ashamed to take flesh; nothing in the body as God made it is defiled.
Catechetical Lecture 17.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Spirit has many names but is one, living and subsistent, the same in both Testaments; he came upon the Virgin Mary.
Catechetical Lecture 17.6Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Gabriel announced the virgin birth but left its working to the Holy Spirit.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 14Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Prov 8:22 speaks of the Word as man, after he took flesh to free us from death and to make us divine, without ceasing to be God.
Twelve Chapters on the Faith 12Gregory Thaumaturgus · 4th–5th century (disputed) · The twelfth anathema condemns saying that Christ appeared only in seeming; the explanation recounts his human life and passions, and an epilogue urges believers to glorify Father and Spirit, avoid disputes, and believe the mystery of the incarnation without prying into it.
Long recension, Ephesians 7Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius warns against false teachers and presents God and Christ, the Word made flesh, as the physicians of souls.
Long recension, Ephesians 18Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius proclaims the cross, the virgin birth of the eternal Son, and the star that announced the hidden mysteries and overthrew the powers of darkness.
Long recension, Trallians 11Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Against docetism Ignatius affirms the reality of Christ's conception, birth, baptism, passion, death and resurrection, and warns against heresies as the devil's inventions.
Long recension, Philadelphians 6Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius lists the errors of those who deny Christ's sonship, the God of the law, Christ's divinity, marriage, the reality of the incarnation, or chastity, and urges unity.
Long recension, Smyrnaeans 1Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius praises the Smyrnaeans' firm faith in Christ, truly born, baptized and crucified in the flesh.
Long recension, Smyrnaeans 2Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Against docetists Ignatius affirms that the Word truly took flesh, suffered and rose.
Long recension, Antiochians 2Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius shows from Moses, the prophets, the evangelists and the apostles that the one God has a Son who became man and suffered, condemns those who deny either, and reminds the Antiochians of Paul, Peter and Evodius.
Long recension, Philippians 3Anonymous · later 4th century (probable) · Ignatius sets out the one God, one Son and one Paraclete, the true incarnation and passion of the Son alone, and addresses the devil, who fears the cross, works through heresies, and could not recognize the Son of God in his lowly birth and life.
To the Bishops of Egypt 17Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius answers the Arian appeal to “The Lord created me” by referring such expressions to Christ's human flesh, and judges Arianism worse than other heresies because it attacks the Godhead itself.
Life of Antony 74Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Antony answered Greek sages who mocked the cross: the cross shows courage, the Incarnation shows the unchanged Word sharing human birth, while their myths and doctrine of the soul’s fall and transmigration dishonor the divine.
On the Trinity 1.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The prologue of John's Gospel taught Hilary that the Word is God from God, became flesh, and makes believers sons of God.
On the Trinity 1.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Son shares the Father's eternity and nature, and became true flesh so that believers might become sons of God.
On the Trinity 2.24Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · For our salvation the Son was born of the Virgin by his own divine power, taking human flesh so that all humanity might be sanctified in him.
On the Trinity 2.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The eternal God became a helpless infant for our sake; his humiliation is our exaltation.
On the Trinity 2.26Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The miracles surrounding Christ's conception show the divine dignity behind his lowly human beginning.
On the Trinity 2.27Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · At Christ's birth angels, prophecy, a star, and the Magi bear witness that the wailing infant is God with us.
On the Trinity 3.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Son prays that the flesh he assumed may be raised into the eternal glory he always had with the Father.
On the Trinity 5.17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The appearances of God in human form to the patriarchs foreshadowed the incarnation; the one seen as a man was true God.
On the Trinity 5.18Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Arians cannot see God in Christ's birth and sufferings, yet only almighty God could become what he was not while remaining what he was.
On the Trinity 9.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Saving faith confesses Christ as both true God and true man, the one Mediator who unites both natures.
On the Trinity 9.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Christ's sayings must be distinguished by the three times: God before the incarnation, God and man in the flesh, and wholly God and man after the resurrection.
On the Trinity 10.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The incarnation did not weaken God's nature but raised man toward God, as the name Emmanuel and the prayer of John 17:5 show.
On the Trinity 10.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Word himself took flesh from the Virgin and gave it a soul, so the nature of his body and soul came from his own power, not human conception.
On the Trinity 10.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · John 3:13 shows the Word made flesh came down from heaven, is Son of Man, and remains in heaven at once.
On the Trinity 10.19Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The one Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, is wholly and truly man and wholly and truly God.
On the Trinity 10.20Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Hilary rejects the view that Christ took Adam's sinful soul and flesh from Mary: every soul is God's work.
On the Trinity 10.21Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Some make the Word a mere uttered word that dwelt in Jesus as in a prophet; Hilary preaches the subsisting Word who became true man.
On the Trinity 10.22Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Christ took his soul as well as his body from God; one and the same Christ, truly God and truly man, was born, died, rose, and is in heaven.
On the Trinity 10.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Christ had a true body born of the Virgin, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, free from its defects (Phil 2:7–8; Rom 8:3).
On the Trinity 10.52Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The church's faith knows Christ's birth without a beginning and his dispensation without division: one undivided Jesus Christ, wholly God and wholly man.
On the Trinity 10.54Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The incarnation, the Son of Man ascending where he was before and in heaven while on earth, surpasses human reason (John 6:62; 3:13; 1:14).
On the Trinity 11.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · 1 Tim 3:16 calls the incarnation the great mystery of piety, manifested in the flesh and taken up in glory, not a weakness of divinity.
On the Trinity 11.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God is the Son's Father both by eternal birth and, since the Word became flesh, as Father of all flesh; the shared Father and God of John 20:17 belong to the latter.
On the Trinity 11.19Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The anointing of Ps 45:7, given for a merit and later in time, applies to Christ's assumed humanity, not to God the Word born in the beginning.
On the Trinity 12.48Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Paul calls Christ's birth in the flesh "made of a woman" (Gal 4:4) and the new man "created according to God" (Eph 4:21–24); this refers to his humanity.
On Saint Athanasius 1.33Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Wisdom on keeping God's law Lucifer argues that the Arians, denying the Son, serve the Antichrist, and expounds Philippians 2: the Son, equal to the Father, took a perfect man from the virgin without change in his divinity.
Letters to Serapion 1.9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Amos’s “creates spirit,” beside the announcing of Christ, refers to the renewal of the human spirit through the incarnation, not to the Holy Spirit, in whom we are renewed.
Letters to Serapion 2.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · A father begets, not makes, a son of the same essence; so God’s Son is of the same essence, and texts such as “he created” refer to his becoming man.
Letters to Serapion 4.14Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Christ as God worked miracles and as man suffered, yet the one Lord did all things conjointly, as when his human spittle healed the blind man.
Letters 261, 262Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil warns the church of Sozopolis against those who say Christ had a heavenly body or that the Godhead itself suffered, setting out why the Lord took real human flesh from Mary; in a second letter he warns the monk Urbicius against the idea that God was changed into flesh.
Against Arius 1.10Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus distinguishes Christ's natural sonship from our adoption, against Photinus, and explains his prayers and fear as part of the mystery of the incarnation.
Against Arius 1.14Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus explains the order of Christ's sayings about coming from the Father in John 16–17, and shows from them that Christ existed before the world and is God in a man.
Against Arius 1.22Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues from Philippians 2 that Christ is the form of God, homoousios with him, who emptied himself and became man rather than taking up a man, as Marcellus and Photinus held.
Against Arius 1.26Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus applies 1 Timothy 3:16 to the incarnation of the pre-existent Word, who gives life to all things, and reads Isaiah 45:14–15 as a prophecy that God is in Christ.
Against Arius 1.51Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus describes the Son as infinite life going forth from the Father and returning as wisdom, and reads the incarnation from the virgin as the earthly type of this descent and return.
Against Arius 1.58Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus calls the Holy Spirit the “mother” of Jesus above and below, and reads Luke 1:35 as the Spirit and the Word together bringing about the incarnation for the liberation of soul and flesh.
Against Arius 3.3Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues that the Son is life from himself, in whom all things were made, and that in the incarnation the Word took the universal principle of flesh and of soul, so that the whole man was assumed and freed.
Against Arius 4.32Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus sums up: Father and Son are homoousion; the Son, the Logos of all things, became incarnate from the Virgin, and Philippians 2:5–8 shows that he who existed in the form of God emptied himself even to the cross.
To Justinus the Manichaean 2Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the sun, the stars and the whole world refute the Manichaean doctrine of two unbegotten principles, and presses Justin on the Manichaean denial that Christ's flesh came from Mary.
To Justinus the Manichaean 9Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author contrasts Babylonian magic with Christ's raising of buried flesh, insists that Christ was born of a virgin, died and rose in real flesh, and argues that darkness and evil have no being of their own but arise from the act of another, as cold from wind.
Homilies on the Psalms 44.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil expounds Ps 45:2–7: the beauty of the Word's Godhead seen by the prophet; the grace poured on Christ's lips and on the preachers of the Gospel; the sword of the Word joined to the flesh, whose incarnation is the greatest proof of power; the arrows of the word that wound souls with love; and the throne and scepter of the Son, whom the psalm calls God.
Homilies on the Psalms 45.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · The morning help of Ps 46:5 is also Christ's resurrection at dawn; Ps 46:6 pictures a besieged city relieved by a general whose shout routs the nations; and in Ps 46:7 the prophet sees Emmanuel, God with us, the same God who appeared to the patriarchs, not another god.
On the Holy Spirit 31Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Sent in the Son's name, the Spirit shares the Son's divine character and makes adopted sons; he teaches by nature, not acquired skill, and with the power of the Most High formed Christ's body in the Virgin.
On the Holy Spirit 51Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · The right hand of God is Christ, as the Psalms and Peter's Pentecost sermon show of the risen Lord exalted at God's right hand.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 8Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author answers the Arian argument that the visible and changing appearances of the Son prove a different substance from the Father’s, explaining the theophanies and the incarnation as God showing himself without change, and closes with a confession of the Trinity and of Nicaea.
Letter 181Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory rejects the view that Christ has put off his flesh: he will return in the body, as seen at the Transfiguration.
Letter 187Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory argues that the mind, which first sinned in Adam, most needed salvation and so was assumed by Christ; the Apollinarians misread “the Word became flesh”.
Letter 189Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory explains that “the Word became flesh” names the whole man by a part, as Scripture often does, and means that Christ took up our condition, as he is said to have become sin and a curse.
Letter 195Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory tells Cledonius to hold communion only with those who confess the Spirit as God and one Son, not two, and explains how the Apollinarians use orthodox words with a different sense.
Letter 197Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory shows how the Apollinarians misread “the mind of Christ”, “he became man” and “in the likeness of men”, at times making Christ's flesh gross and carnal, at times a mere appearance.
Letter 331Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory complains to Nectarius that Arians, Macedonians and Eunomians trouble the Church, but worst of all the Apollinarians, whose pamphlet teaches that Christ's flesh existed in heaven before the ages.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.2.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · The name Adam prefigures Christ's birth.
Treatise on the Mysteries 1.12.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–366 · Noah prefigures Christ's humanity, as Lamech's prophecy at his birth shows.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.33Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Philippians 2 explains Psalm 2: the one who took the form of a servant was exalted after the cross and given the ends of the earth, heaven, earth, and underworld.
Tractates on the Psalms 9.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The hidden things are the mysteries of Christ: incarnation, virgin birth, and resurrection; but these are not yet "the end."
Tractates on the Psalms 51.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The tabernacle is also Christ's body, the true vine, which took the nature of all flesh; the unbelieving and the fruitless are torn from it though they share its nature.
Tractates on the Psalms 52.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Transgressing God's law leads to corruption and abomination; Christ became flesh to clothe corruption with incorruption.
Tractates on the Psalms 53.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ's persecutors, no true children of Abraham, sought his soul, not recognizing God in the one who, remaining Son of God, had become son of man with body and soul.
Tractates on the Psalms 61.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · After the endless confusion of pagan philosophy and religion, the believer finds in the prophets, the apostles, and the incarnation the firm ground of faith and is no longer moved.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ’s suffering comes from his assumed flesh: emptying himself, the second Adam sank into the mire of our nature and down into death and the underworld.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.25Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Christ is both God and man: emptying himself he took the form of a servant without ceasing to be God, and the man he assumed was taken up into the glory of God.
Tractates on the Psalms 91.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Those in Christ enter God’s rest; through his assumed flesh we are joined to him, if we put off the old man in baptism and crucify the flesh.
Tractates on the Psalms 135.15Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God remembered our lowliness in the incarnation, redeemed us by Christ's blood from the devil and death, and feeds the redeemed with the living bread, all from his mercy.
Tractates on the Psalms 138.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Weak things said of Christ refer to the humanity he took; he bore our sins and weaknesses without becoming weak, and as God he did not feel pain.
Tractates on the Psalms 139.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · On deeper reading the psalm is Christ's, spoken from both his divine and his assumed human nature, and in what fits our nature it is ours too.
Tractates on the Psalms 143.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · All things were 'given' to Christ not as God, who already had them, but to the humanity he assumed and obediently offered; human nature in him was raised into the divine glory.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 101Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Christ’s teaching that the maker of the outside made the inside, and his care for bodily purity, show that the body is God’s work; his own real body, crucified and buried, refutes the Manichees.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 102Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Christ’s baptism, hunger, weariness, crucifixion and burial prove his real body; he came in a body to free our bodies, which God made.
Commentary on Galatians 4.4Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · In the fullness of time the Father sent his eternal Son, born of a woman and made under the law in Israel, to redeem those under the law and make believers sons by adoption, and sent the Spirit of the Son, by whom, knowing the Father, they cry “Abba, Father.”
Commentary on Philippians 2.6Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Christ, the form of God, which for Victorinus is the life and understanding of the Father who is Being, equal with God, freely emptied himself, not by losing his power but by taking a true human body and a slave’s lowliness, obedient to the Father even to death on the cross.
Tome to the Antiochenes 7Athanasius of Alexandria · 362 · The council records that both parties confessed that the Word himself became flesh, with a body not without soul or mind, and that one and the same Son acted both humanly and divinely.
Oration 2.22Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Unlike medicine, the cure of souls aims at deification, the goal of the law, the prophets, and the whole incarnation, from birth to resurrection.
Oration 37.2Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Christ moves from Galilee to Judaea; the timeless and bodiless Word, without becoming two, became one out of two natures, and bears our inadequate bodily language about him.
Oration 38.1Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · The Christmas oration opens by proclaiming Christ's birth: the timeless Word is made flesh, the old order gives way to the new, and all are summoned to praise.
Oration 38.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · After many lesser remedies failed, the eternal Word himself became man, uniting flesh to himself through a rational soul, being born of the Virgin, so that he might save the image and make the flesh immortal.
Oration 38.15Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Christ was sent as man and as God by the Father's good pleasure, gave himself up and rose by his own authority; Gregory rebukes those who deny his Godhead and calls all to worship at Bethlehem with Magi, shepherds and angels.
Oration 39.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God made man to worship him on earth and, when man fell, became man without ceasing to be God, deceiving the deceiver; Christ's baptism teaches reverence for purification, humility before the church's ministers, and patience before teaching.
Oration 45.9Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · After many lesser remedies failed, the eternal Word himself came to his own image, taking flesh and a rational soul, and was born of the Virgin.
Tractates 1.2.9Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno hymns the love of God, which created and redeemed man, brought about the incarnation and cross, inspires martyrs and almsgiving, and is one in the Trinity.
Tractates 1.12.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno begins a sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:47 and John 3:13, explaining how the heavenly 'second man' and the Son of Man 'who was in heaven' are to be understood.
Tractates 1.12.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno explains the incarnation, death and resurrection of the Son of God, by which, as Romans 5 says, justification and life come to all.
Tractates 2.7.3Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno argues against placing time between Father and Son and gives prophecies of the incarnation, the virgin birth and the forerunner.
Tractates 2.9.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno marvels at God become an infant in the manger and presents Christ as the true sun, crowned by the twelve apostles and carried by the four Gospels.
Against Parmenian the Donatist 1.8Optatus of Milevis · ca. 366–385 · Optatus rejects Parmenian's claim that Christ's sinful flesh was cleansed in the Jordan: Christ's flesh was sinless, and his baptism cleansed the water, not himself.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul preached Christ crucified in plain speech, unlike the eloquent heretics who denied the virgin birth and real crucifixion.
Commentary on 1 Timothy 1:15Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ came to save sinners, taking flesh without defilement and dying to destroy death, and his mercy to Paul, the chief of sinners, is an example for all who will believe.
Commentary on Colossians 1:16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ is begotten, not created, before all creation; all things, including the angelic powers, were made through him from nothing and hold together in him; as he made all, so he restores all, first from the dead.
Commentary on Ephesians 3:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ's love in becoming man and dying for sinners surpasses knowledge; the fulness of faith honours the Son equally with the Father.
Commentary on Philippians 2:1–4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul calls for unity and humility after the example of Christ, who, equal to God in the form of God shown in his works, emptied himself by withholding his power, took the form of a servant in his humiliation, and obeyed to death on the cross.
Commentary on Romans 8:1–2Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · There is no condemnation for those in Christ; the law of faith frees from sin and death, which the law of Moses, though spiritual, could not do; Christ, born of a virgin in sinless flesh like ours, condemned sin (the devil) by the devil’s own sin in crucifying him.
Commentary on Romans 9:33Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ is the stone of stumbling in Zion, the stone of Daniel cut without hands, that is, born of a virgin; the Jews stumbled at his body and would not see God at work in it.
Question 51, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Spirit sanctified Mary and formed a holy body in her, while the “power of the Most High,” Christ, overshadowed her, dwelling in her womb as much as human nature could hold.
Letter to Adelphius 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius explains that Christians do not worship a creature but the Word made flesh, never dividing the body from the Word, as the leper and others in the Gospels show.
Letter to Adelphius 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius argues that creation itself worshiped its creator in the body, and that the incarnation brings no dishonor but our deification and freedom.
Letter to Adelphius 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius shows that refusing to worship the incarnate Word is ingratitude for the redemption he won in the flesh, which remains inseparable from him in heaven.
Letter to Adelphius 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius sets out the right faith from the prophets and apostles: the Word came in the flesh and gave himself for us, so that his coming is the ransom from death.
Letter to Adelphius 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius argues that as Israel rightly worshiped God in the temple, so the Lord's body, his temple, is rightly worshiped with him.
Letter to Adelphius 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius concludes that only a creator Word could save creatures, and that the Church both confesses his Godhead and worships his coming in the flesh.
Letter to Epictetus 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius lists the errors in the memoranda sent to him: that Christ's body is of the same essence as the Godhead, that the Word changed into flesh, that the body was eternal, and that Christ and the Word are two.
Letter to Epictetus 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius refutes the claim that Christ's body is of the same essence as the Word's Godhead, showing that it would make the Father earthly and Mary unnecessary.
Letter to Epictetus 5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius shows from the Gospel narratives that Christ's body was truly born of Mary, while the Word himself remained unchangeable and impassible.
Letter to Epictetus 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius insists that the incarnation was real, not a mere appearance, so that the whole man, soul and body, is saved, and he cites the risen Lord's words in Luke.
Letter to Epictetus 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius explains that “the Word became flesh” means that he became man, not that he was changed, and he rejects the claims that Christ's flesh was eternal or immortal.
Letter to Epictetus 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius shows that it is the opponents' own view that would make a Tetrad, and that the incarnation adds nothing to the Trinity but brings immortality to the body.
Letter to Epictetus 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius rejects the view that the Word merely came upon a man from Mary as he came to the prophets, pointing to the virgin birth, the saving death, the resurrection, and the name Emmanuel.
Letter to Epictetus 12Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius concludes that the Word himself became man from Mary, rejoices that the dispute at Corinth ended in agreement, and asks for correction of anything lacking.
Letter to Maximus 3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 371 · Athanasius explains that the Word became man by the Father's good pleasure, not by the course of nature, and showed both what belongs to the body and what belongs to the Godhead.
Letter 21.19Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the father's running to meet his son as God's prevenient grace in the incarnation of the Word.
Letter 21.20Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the father's embrace as the incarnation and the placing of Christ's easy yoke on the believer by grace.
Letter 21.21Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome interprets the father's kiss as the incarnation longed for by the church in the Song of Songs.
Letter 98.4Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus teaches that the Word became fully human without ceasing to be God, and rejects the Apollinarian view that Christ lacked a human rational soul.
Letter 98.8Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus teaches that Christ took a complete human body and soul at his birth from Mary, rejecting the Origenist view that his soul pre-existed in heaven.
Letter 100.11Jerome · ca. 370–419 · The eternal festival is anticipated in praise of the incarnate Word, who took all our nature except sin, suffered in the flesh while impassible in his Godhead, and overthrew idolatry and, Theophilus adds, the Origenists.
Ancoratus 19.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He became truly man while remaining truly God.
Ancoratus 19.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · John's word order shows the Word came from above and became flesh from Mary.
Ancoratus 27.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Others stumble over his Godhead because of the incarnation.
Ancoratus 28.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Son took the form of a servant because he was God.
Ancoratus 30.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Only after the incarnation does the Son say “my God.”
Ancoratus 30.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He calls the Father God because of the incarnation.
Ancoratus 31.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Word truly bore human weakness and suffering.
Ancoratus 31.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Wisdom of God endured all human conditions to make the incarnation real.
Ancoratus 33.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ's human needs prove the reality of the incarnation.
Ancoratus 34.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He came willingly, and his trouble shows the reality of the incarnation.
Ancoratus 35.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Flesh” in John 1:14 includes the whole man, as “formed” does in Genesis.
Ancoratus 40.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He grew as a child so his incarnation would not seem illusory.
Ancoratus 43.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · If Proverbs 8 concerns the Son, “created” refers to the incarnation.
Ancoratus 43.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Beginning of ways” and “founded” refer to the incarnation.
Ancoratus 49.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Father's good pleasure concerns the incarnation.
Ancoratus 65.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Savior came in the likeness of flesh to redeem me.
Ancoratus 66.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Word came down on Mary like rain on a fleece.
Ancoratus 74.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He turns to the incarnation and the resurrection.
Ancoratus 75.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Savior came from heaven, born of Mary, taking flesh and soul.
Ancoratus 75.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He truly became perfect man from Mary.
Ancoratus 75.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Word became flesh, not dwelling in a man as in the prophets.
Ancoratus 75.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · He took a complete humanity so that nothing is left unsaved.
Ancoratus 76.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Paul had his own mind and the mind of Christ; Christ had a human soul and mind.
Ancoratus 76.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ took a human mind and soul.
Ancoratus 78.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Word made flesh was not without a soul.
Ancoratus 79.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ's human flesh was without sin.
Ancoratus 80.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · A complete humanity does not mean Christ sinned.
Ancoratus 80.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Word held his whole humanity free from sin.
Ancoratus 92.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Christ's unique conception does not make his body unlike ours.
Ancoratus 93.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Word truly became man.
Ancoratus 93.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Our hope is in God made man, not a man made divine.
Ancoratus 119.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The second creed: the incarnation, with a complete humanity.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.9.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ willingly took flesh and suffered.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.9.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The eternal Son was truly born of a virgin to die for his sheep.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 26.18.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ had real flesh and was truly crucified.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 27.8.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their denial of the virgin birth contradicts their own system.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 28.7.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Isaiah's sign of the virgin refutes the claim that Christ was Joseph's son.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 28.7.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The annunciation shows that the conception was not by a man.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.20.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Only a woman who conceived without a man is properly a virgin.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.20.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Isaiah foretells a birth without labour pains.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.20.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The painless virgin birth is unique, unlike John's.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.20.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ is man from Mary and God the Word from the Father.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.20.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The annunciation shows both the flesh from Mary and the Word from above.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.27.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God the Word truly took flesh and was truly circumcised.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.28.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Circumcision proves a real body against the Manichaeans.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 30.28.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God the Word became truly man without laying aside the Godhead.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.7.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They say Christ's body came from heaven and took nothing from Mary.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.22.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some say the Demiurge's psychic Christ passed through Mary, and the Saviour descended on him at baptism.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.28.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · John proclaims one God and one Christ, the same who became flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.28.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · John 1:14 says the Word became flesh, which their system denies.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.29.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They deny that the Word truly became flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.29.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word truly became the flesh God formed from dust.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 35.2.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ's humanity, not the Father's, explains the word 'man'.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.10.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word took flesh and a human soul from the Virgin.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 42.10.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Some passages show Christ's true incarnation.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.2.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Apelles says Christ had real flesh, but not from Mary.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.2.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ's body was gathered from the four elements as he descended.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.2.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Apelles' Christ formed his body from the four elemental qualities.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.4.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word who formed Adam took a body from Mary.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.4.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Christ assumed the whole human being in body and soul.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.5.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Matthew opens with Christ's genealogy and virginal conception.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.5.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Matthew cites Isaiah's prophecy of the virgin birth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.12.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · John affirms the incarnation but denies that Christ began at his birth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.12.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · John proclaims the Word made flesh and the Baptist's witness.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 54.3.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Isaiah's prophecy shows the virgin-born Son is 'God with us'.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 54.3.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · 'Therefore also' shows the Word himself took flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 54.3.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · John says the Word, not the Spirit, became flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 57.7.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word dwells in his flesh as in a temple.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 57.7.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word, born of the Virgin, is one in flesh and spirit.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 57.8.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word came down from heaven and was made flesh.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 57.8.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word, not flesh before, became flesh from the Virgin.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 62.5.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Only the Son took a body.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 62.5.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Word took a full human nature, not merely dwelling in a man.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.62.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God sent his Son in real flesh to strengthen the natural law.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.16.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · The prophecies of the virgin birth and of the divine child are quoted.
On the Christian Faith 1.14Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that Christ is not a creature: he is the Creator to whom the Gospel to every creature is entrusted, the begotten and only-begotten Son, and “made” only according to the flesh born of Mary.
On the Christian Faith 1.15Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains Acts 2:36 and Prov 8:22 (“The Lord created me”) as said of Christ’s humanity, prophesied as though already done, and reads Wisdom’s banquet in Prov 9 as fulfilled in the Gospel.
On the Christian Faith 3.2Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose refers Christ’s hunger, tears, sorrow, and being “made” to his human nature, shows from the Psalms and Luke that Christ is the Most High, and argues from Col 2:12–15 that the God who raised us is the Son, not the Father alone.
On the Christian Faith 3.7Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains Prov 8:22 (“The Lord created me the beginning of his ways”) of the incarnation, by which Christ redeemed the Father’s works and became the beginning of every virtue, above all through the cross.
On the Christian Faith 3.9Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains that Prov 8 mentions Christ’s creation in the flesh before his eternal begetting because Scripture speaks of future things as past and shows both natures of the one Christ.
On the Christian Faith 3.10Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains John 1:30 (“a man who was made before me”) of Christ’s incarnation and honor, not his divinity, and reads the loosing of the shoe in Ruth and in the commands to Moses and Joshua as signs that Christ alone is the bridegroom of the Church.
On the Christian Faith 3.11Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose shows from the Psalms, Hebrews, and Philippians that Christ is said to be “made” in respect of his humanity, priesthood, and sacrifice, explains Melchizedek as a man who prefigured Christ, and concludes that the work of Father and Son is one.
On the Christian Faith 4.3Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian use of 1 Cor 11:3 (“the head of Christ is God”) as said of Christ’s humanity, and distinguishes the unity of Father and Son by nature from the unity of believers by grace (John 17).
On the Christian Faith 4.12Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian use of John 15:1 (“my Father is the vinedresser”) by explaining the vine of Christ’s incarnate flesh, showing from Jeremiah that the Son too is vinedresser, and so explaining John 14:28 of his humanity.
On the Christian Faith 5.4Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains John 4:22 (“we worship what we know”) as Christ speaking as a Jew according to his humanity, and lists how his human weaknesses served divine purposes.
On the Christian Faith 5.14Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose explains that Christ will be subject to the Father in the human nature he took, as he was subject to Mary and obedient unto death, and in his members, when all believers are subject to God and God is all in all.
On the Trinity 3Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · Faustinus proves the Son almighty and unchangeable from Zechariah, Revelation, Wisdom, the Psalms, and Isaiah, and explains Christ's weaknesses as belonging to the human nature he assumed.
On the Trinity 4Faustinus · ca. 380–384 · 'The Father is greater than I' refers to the Son's emptying of himself in the form of a servant, or, as some catholics hold, to the Father's being the source of the Son, not to any inequality of deity.
Theological Oration 3 (Or. 29), On the Son 19Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Gregory sets the humble facts of Christ’s birth and early life beside the divine glory that accompanied each.
Theological Oration 4 (Or. 30), On the Son 3Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Christ is called “servant” because of the humanity he took on; that humanity was exalted by union with God.
Chapter 3Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas explains the article on Jesus Christ: “Jesus” means Saviour and “Christ” king; he came down and was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, becoming man while remaining God.
Chapter 4Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas teaches that Christ, born of the Virgin as Isaiah foretold, is truly incarnate (against those who make his body a phantom) and is both man and God, as his works show.
Book of Heresies 69.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some deny that Christ took a human soul.
Book of Heresies 69.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Christ's words show he had a human soul.
Book of Heresies 69.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Christ took both body and soul.
Book of Heresies 69.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Christ had a rational soul and a body able to suffer.
Book of Heresies 70.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Tropites wrongly say the Word was changed into flesh.
Book of Heresies 70.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Word assumed visible flesh without change.
Canons on the Letters of Paul 12Priscillian · ca. 380–400 · Christ took the likeness of sinful flesh, holds the treasures of wisdom, made both one, and ascended on high.
Section 3Anonymous · 382 · The bishops profess the Nicene faith: one divinity, power, and essence of Father, Son, and Spirit in three perfect hypostases, against Sabellians, Arians, Eunomians, and Pneumatomachi, and Christ's full humanity.
On the Complaints of Job and David 4.17Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Christ is both the great mountain of divinity and the little mountain of the incarnation, the stone become a mountain, so that we may ascend.
Expositio fidei 2Eunomius of Cyzicus · 383 · Eunomius confesses the Son as the only-begotten God, begotten and created before all creation, like the Father only as Son to Father, the agent of creation, judgment, and salvation.
Second Apology of David 27Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Against Manichees and Valentinians, who deny Christ’s flesh, Matthew calls him son of David: Son of God by divine substance, son of David by the flesh.
Second Apology of David 28Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Continuing on another day, Ambrose concludes that only the Son of God, who took flesh from Mary as David’s seed, sits on the heavenly throne promised to David.
Second Apology of David 29Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · It is neither impossible nor injurious for God to take flesh; he willed it and is untouched by our passions.
Second Apology of David 30Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Pagans believe their gods took human and monstrous forms, and Jewish Scripture speaks of God becoming present and even beast-like; so the incarnation is not incredible.
Second Apology of David 50Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · The fourth mystery: as Hosea’s marriage to a harlot was devout, so the “unequal union” of divinity and flesh in the incarnation is a holy fellowship.
Second Apology of David 64Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Great mercy is the incarnation: the Word became flesh, coming down without leaving his divinity, as if bringing heaven with him.
Apology of the Prophet David 57Ambrose · ca. 384-390 · Only Christ, conceived and born of the Virgin, was free from the contagion of human origin; David lamented that stain in himself.
Catechetical Oration 9Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · The human experiences of Christ, from birth to death and burial, are not shameful, since only vice is shameful, and so they are not unworthy of God.
Catechetical Oration 10Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · The infinite Godhead is not confined by the flesh, just as the soul is not confined by the body and a flame is united to its fuel without being shut up in it.
Catechetical Oration 11Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · How God is united with human nature cannot be explained, any more than the union of soul and body, but the miracles show that it happened.
Catechetical Oration 12Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Christ's works, giving life, feeding, healing, ruling nature, and conquering death, prove that God was manifested in the flesh.
Catechetical Oration 13Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Christ's birth from a virgin without pleasure and his death without corruption are beyond nature, and so prove that he is God.
Catechetical Oration 14Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · The objector asks why God would stoop so low as to be mixed with the cheap covering of human nature.
Catechetical Oration 15Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · God became man out of love for humankind, to heal, raise, and free fallen man; since only vice is opposed to virtue, taking human nature is not unworthy of God.
Catechetical Oration 16Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Birth and death are natural movements, not the passion of vice; Christ shared them, and by reuniting his own soul and body in the resurrection he began the resurrection of all humanity.
Catechetical Oration 19Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Gregory turns to explain why God saved humanity by uniting himself with it rather than by command, starting from what is rightly believed about God.
Catechetical Oration 20Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · God's goodness, wisdom, justice, and power must all be present together in the incarnation; goodness moved him to save us, and wisdom made that love effective.
Catechetical Oration 24Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · God's power is shown most in his descent to our lowliness: hidden in flesh like a hook in bait, the Godhead entered death so that life and light might destroy death and darkness.
Catechetical Oration 27Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Christ had to pass through every stage of human life, from birth to death, to cleanse it all, and he came as a man on earth because the sickness was on earth; no creature is nearer to God than another.
Catechetical Oration 28Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Human birth is not shameful, for only vice is; the organs of generation serve the preservation of the race against death, so God's entering life by birth is not unfitting.
Catechetical Oration 29Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · God delayed the incarnation, like a physician waiting for a disease to come to the surface, until every form of human wickedness had shown itself.
On the Life of Moses 381Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The heavenly tabernacle is Christ, uncreated in his divinity and “constructed” in his incarnation, the one who was before the ages and became man to restore us to being; like his other names, “tabernacle” fits him in a sense befitting God.
On the Life of Moses 397Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The broken and renewed tablets figure human nature, made unbroken and immortal, shattered by sin, and refashioned by Christ, who took flesh from our earth without marriage, inscribed by the Spirit, God’s finger; Moses’ glory figures Christ’s glory at his coming, which the ungodly will not see.
On the Duties of the Clergy 3.15Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · As a Roman general refused to win by poison, Moses, gentler still, prayed for Pharaoh when asked; his rod and hand signs prefigure the incarnation and the cross.
Exposition of Psalm 118 3.19.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Through the incarnation and the cross Christ overshadows us; the Word came veiled in the form of a servant.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.26.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Wisdom’s words “the Lord created me” refer to Christ’s incarnation, not to his divine nature.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.26.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ became a creature to redeem creatures and to show the way back to God.
Exposition of Psalm 118 6.6.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ’s leaps run from heaven to the Virgin, the manger, the Jordan, the cross, the tomb, and back to heaven.
Exposition of Psalm 118 6.21.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ alone stands above the nets of sin; the Father sent him in the likeness of sinful flesh to condemn sin.
Exposition of Psalm 118 6.23.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Born of a virgin, Christ is free of inherited sin; he breaks down the dividing wall and calls the soul to see him face to face.
Exposition of Psalm 118 8.38.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The sign given to Ahaz is the virgin birth; Christ, equal with God, humbled himself.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.14.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Man has something angels may not: Christ born for us of a virgin.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.14.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · In Christ’s flesh humanity is seated with God, an honor not given to angels.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.19.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Ambrose thanks Christ for creation and for becoming our brother by taking a body.
Exposition of Psalm 118 22.30.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Christ is asked to take up humanity in flesh born of the sinless Virgin Mary and carry it on the cross.
Letter 11.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine takes up Nebridius's question why, if the works of the Trinity are inseparable, the incarnation is attributed to the Son alone.
Letter 11.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine explains that the incarnation is attributed to the Son because it gave us a rule and example of life, form being proper to the Son, while the Father is known through the Son and the delight of abiding in that knowledge is the gift of the Spirit.
Letter 12.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Nebridius which questions have been answered and recalls briefly why the incarnation is attributed to the Son.
Letter 14.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine compares the sun's unique brightness among the stars with the unique greatness of the man Christ, whom God assumed in a way unlike any other saint.
Letter 102.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The “morning worm” is Christ, who calls himself a worm in Psalm 22 and rose at dawn; let the pagans laugh, for they are being consumed.
Letter 135.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Volusian reports a friend's objections to the incarnation, the virgin birth, and Christ's miracles, and asks Augustine to answer them.
Letter 137.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine restates Volusian's questions about the virgin birth, the incarnation, and Christ's miracles.
Letter 137.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christian teaching does not say that God left the government of the universe when he took flesh, for God is not a body but is whole everywhere and contained by no place.
Letter 137.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · If the soul's perception is so wonderful, it should not be incredible that the Word took a body without losing his immortality, eternity, power, or government of the world.
Letter 137.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God is great in power, not size; his power made the virgin fruitful, united a whole man to himself, and brought Christ forth through the inviolate womb as later through closed doors.
Letter 137.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ's sleeping, eating, and human feelings show he was truly man, against heretics who denied his human nature; he joined both natures in one person.
Letter 137.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · As God works wonders daily in seeds and nature, he made a man for himself without seed, taking flesh in time without being changed into flesh.
Letter 137.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · As soul and body form one human person, so God and man form the one person of Christ; the union of two incorporeal realities, the Word and a soul, is easier to believe than that of soul and body.
Letter 137.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The eternal Word took a man and became one Christ, equal to the Father in divinity and less in humanity, bringing teaching that confirms what is true and the help of grace to overcome sin.
Letter 140.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ, born under the law, redeemed those under the law so that we might receive adoption; the Word made flesh shows that humans can become children of God by sharing in the Word.
Letter 140.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The unchangeable Word took flesh through a rational soul, against the Apollinarians; 'flesh' means a whole man, and God and man are one person in Christ.
Letter 140.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · 'I am a worm and not a man' may mean, besides the virgin birth, 'I am the son of man and not man', that is, Christ in whom all are made alive, not Adam in whom all die.
Letter 140.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine weighs how the psalm's words about the womb and the breasts could refer to Christ himself, as man, and to the virgin birth.
Letter 140.82Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine sums up: all five questions have been answered within the sixth, on the grace of the New Testament, by which the Son of God became man so that we might become children of God.
Letter 143.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · On the virgin birth, Augustine answers that those who reject it because it happened only once should recall that secular histories record unique events they believe.
Letter 161.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Evodius questions Augustine's saying that the virgin birth would not be wonderful if a reason could be given nor unique if an example could be found, since no conception can be explained.
Letter 161.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Evodius cites animals said to conceive without male seed, and the spider spinning its web, as possible examples that would make the virgin birth not unique.
Letter 161.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Evodius asks how to answer the objection that, if the virgin birth is beyond reason, so might Christ's glorified body be able to see God; he affirms his own faith in both doctrines.
Letter 169.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The voice and the dove were passing signs, but the man assumed by the Word was united to him in one person, the Word remaining unchanged.
Letter 187.40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ differs from the greatest saints not only by the fullness of divinity dwelling in him but by the singular union of his humanity with the Word in one person, a pure grace.
Letter 219.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine and other African bishops tell the bishops of Gaul that they have received and corrected the monk Leporius, who had denied that God was made man and so introduced a fourth person into the Trinity.
Letter 219.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The African bishops explain that Leporius, fearing change in God, had separated the Son of Man from the Son of God, but now confesses Christ as one, God and man, with both natures unchanged, and has signed a retraction.
Letter 264.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine confirms Maxima's faith that the Son took a complete human nature, rational soul and flesh, without sin, and asks for the heretics' writings to refute them.
Homilies on Matthew 2.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Homily 2 opens with Matt 1:1: hearers must prepare to enter the Gospel more purely than Israel prepared at Sinai, for it shows Christ's victory; the divine generation is beyond telling.
Homilies on Matthew 2.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The earthly birth of the Son of God from a virgin and from David and Abraham is a pledge that humans may become children of God; the double birth and the baptism join old and new; the name Jesus means Savior.
Homilies on Matthew 3.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · A second, more mystical reason for Joseph's genealogy: the virgin birth was veiled at first to protect Mary from being stoned as an adulteress and to avoid offending the Jews; then the question why Judah's brothers are named.
Homilies on Matthew 4.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Matthew counts generations from Abraham and David to the exile to Christ to fit prophecy; he introduces the virgin birth carefully; the manner of the Spirit's work is not to be pried into, though Christ truly took flesh from Mary; Joseph's righteousness and the angel's timing are explained.
Homilies on Matthew 8.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Homily 8 opens with Matt 2:11–14: the magi, moved by the star and inner illumination, worshiped a poor child as God with symbolic gifts; they and Joseph obeyed without questioning; Christ fled rather than show his power, lest his incarnation seem unreal.
Homilies on Matthew 44.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The sower is Christ, who came out to us by taking flesh and sows the word without distinction; the loss of most of the seed comes from the hearers, who, unlike soil, can change; the ways of destruction are various.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.65Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · If vultures conceive without males, the virgin birth of Christ from Mary is not incredible.
On the Blessings of the Patriarchs 19Ambrose · ca. 387-392 · 'From a shoot you went up' signifies the incarnation: Christ the flower from Mary, the rod from Jesse's root.
On the Blessings of the Patriarchs 51Ambrose · ca. 387-392 · The blessings of breasts and womb signify the two Testaments or Mary, and the two births of Christ, from the Father before the ages and from the Virgin, in two natures.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.33.7Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The child is born of the virgin, the Son given from God: the Word made flesh.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.5.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ came in true flesh, in the likeness of sinful flesh.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.5.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ took our nature, but without the contagion of sin.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.10.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The true Jesus came when Christ, given a body, came to do the Father’s will, and the sacrifices of the law ceased.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.18.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ took on the fear of death, our sins and weaknesses in order to conquer them for us.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 39.18.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ took on our own flesh, born of a human virgin, and so is truly man, the mediator.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.78.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ took on real flesh and willingly humbled himself to death on a cross.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 43.78.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ humbled himself as man to free the humbled; his body is a body of life and glory, not of death.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.4.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The Word of God became all things for us, flesh to save flesh and water to sweeten the water of contradiction.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.13.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The city and tabernacle of the Most High are the soul in which Christ dwells and the body born of the Virgin.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.18.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Since Emmanuel was born of the virgin, we can say, “The God of powers is with us.”
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.25.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The refrain is repeated as confirmation: God is with us in Christ, born of the Virgin and risen, until the end of the world.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.16.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ’s sinless flesh, in which the Godhead dwelt, is the temple; or God was in Christ reconciling the world.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 47.17.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · The mercy received in the temple is the Word made flesh, who offered himself; his flesh, full of the Spirit, is God’s temple.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.5.1Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Those who say Christ took flesh without a human soul and affections are wrong, for he had to heal the source of sin.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.5.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · We know Christ is truly man because he hungered, thirsted, wept and was sorrowful.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 61.5.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Christ is one person, from the Father and from Mary, who took our affections and so grieved for us.
Tractates on Matthew 5.5Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains that Christians glorify God by good works, and that the lamp may also be Christ in his humble incarnation, set on the lampstand of the cross.
On True Religion 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine describes the incarnation of the Son as God's greatest help to the human race, showing the dignity of human nature, and presents Christ's life, death and resurrection as a complete moral teaching.
Homily 4Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · Expounding Song 1:15–2:7, Gregory describes the soul refined like gold and made a mirror of the Word, the shaded couch as the Incarnation, the cedars and cypresses as virtues, the apple tree as Christ, the right ordering of love, the wound of love's arrow, and the oath by the angelic powers.
Sermon 12.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichees, who worship the sun though the devil and the wicked see it, are forced to admit that Christ took a body; yet they would rather derive it from the race of darkness than from the Virgin's womb.
Sermon 12.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All bodies are from God, and Christ took flesh from a woman to restore both sexes; as the sun lights mud without being dirtied, the Word took mortal flesh without being changed or defiled; the Manichee myth itself has the race of darkness seeing God.
Sermon 28.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A spoken word reaches every hearer whole without being divided, as bread would be; so the Word of God is whole everywhere, with the Father, in the Virgin, in the underworld, and in paradise.
Sermon 28.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A meaning passes to the hearer by means of sound without leaving the speaker; so the Word, remaining with the Father, came to us by taking flesh.
Sermon 30.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What Christ teaches us to learn from him is not creation but humility: God emptied himself to become man, so we should acknowledge that we are sinners and come to him.
Sermon 36.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The truly rich are those of Christ, who became poor, that is, mortal, while remaining rich as the Creator Word, so that by his blood we might become rich in righteousness and immortality.
Sermon 37.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Church’s double cloak for Christ is praise of him as both God and man; the Photinians, who call him only man, and the Manichees, who call him only God, weave false single cloaks.
Sermon 41.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The “neighbor” in his poverty is Christ, who became poor for us in his incarnation and passion; whoever keeps faith with him in this will share his riches.
Sermon 51.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ was born of a woman, though he could have become man otherwise, so that neither sex should despair: through a woman came death, through a woman the Savior, and women first announced the resurrection.
Sermon 51.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The critics’ first objection concerns Matthew’s three sets of fourteen generations; Augustine first restates the Church’s faith that Christ was born of the Father eternally and of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.
Sermon 51.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The angel told Joseph that Mary’s child was of the Holy Spirit and was to be called Jesus, that is, Savior.
Sermon 51.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The generations run through Joseph, chastely husband and father, whom the Spirit gave a son; Matthew descends from Abraham to show Christ coming down to bear our sins, Luke ascends from his baptism to God to show sins cleansed.
Sermon 51.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Matthew’s genealogy centers on forty, the number of our pilgrim life of fasting and continence; the one extra generation either does not matter or marks Christ, who alone is both man and God.
Sermon 67.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The incarnation is pure grace, by which the Word made one person with the man he took up; the confessing thief shows the same grace.
Sermon 75.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Heretics who deny Christ’s true birth and body are like the disciples who thought he was a phantom; Christ answers, “It is I.”
Sermon 88.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ “passes by” in his humanity and temporal deeds but “stands still” in his unchangeable divinity; faith in the one heals the eye to see the other.
Sermon 92.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ did not deny being David’s son; through Paul he explains that as God equal to the Father he is David’s Lord and by emptying himself in the flesh David’s son, and the Catholic faith confesses both.
Sermon 97.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ overcame the world for us by becoming man and rising again, so the Christian need not fear men’s threats but should cling to God and trust in him.
Sermon 119.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The incarnate Christ is eternally God with the Father; John, who drank from the Lord’s breast, proclaimed that in the beginning the Word was, not was made, and was God.
Sermon 119.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No one should doubt that the Word became flesh or that believers can become children of God: he who descended to share our death and evils will raise us to his life and goods.
Sermon 119.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The almighty Word could both remain with the Father and come to us in a virgin’s womb, since he existed before his flesh and created his own mother.
Sermon 119.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As a spoken word reaches the hearer without leaving the speaker’s heart, the Word came forth in flesh without leaving the Father; unlike our fleeting voice, he raised his flesh, his garment, vehicle, beast of burden, and temple, to the Father’s right hand, as our hope.
Sermon 121.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Word became flesh so that those born of men might be born of God, a great exchange in which the Son of God became son of man; born of a virgin, not of lust, he is the Mediator, neither above us as flesh nor below us as sinner, yet always above as God.
Sermon 126.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In Christ there is what can be seen, a man born of a virgin, and what must be believed, the eternal Word; his temporal miracle is medicine for the sick so that they may come to the vision the angels enjoy.
Sermon 127.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, Son of God with life in himself, became son of man by taking our nature without losing his own; he died by what he took from us, and we live by what is his.
Sermon 130.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God becoming man and dying is more incredible than man living forever; since the greater has been done, we must believe the lesser, and rejoice that we are Christians, belonging to Christ.
Sermon 136.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As Gehazi’s staff could not raise the dead boy but Elisha, stretching himself on him, did, so the Law could not give life, but Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh and gave it.
Sermon 140.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ has two births, from the Father without time and from the virgin in time; the Son receives all he is from the Father, including his equality, given not to one in need but in his very begetting.
Sermon 141.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, who is truth and life with the Father, became the way by taking human nature; those who live well outside him run fast but off the road, and it is better to limp on the way than to stride beside it.
Sermon 142.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s humility, the way back to the exalted Christ, was made necessary by our pride and weakness; the soul that left God for many pleasures is like an unfaithful wife, rebuked by the prophets but not given up.
Sermon 152.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ’s flesh, conceived by grace rather than desire, was not flesh of sin, but had its likeness, so that he could hunger, tire, and die.
Sermon 155.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · What the Law could not do, God did by sending his Son in true flesh without sin, who, like the temple tax he paid without owing it, paid a death he did not owe to free us from ours.
Sermon 171.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God was far from us by unlikeness, not place; he became our neighbor by taking our mortality without our guilt, destroying both; the world's joy is wickedness unpunished, while God mercifully chastises now to spare us hell.
Sermon 174.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul calls the saying that Christ came to save sinners “human” because Christ, always present as God, came by his humanity; and he who took man into himself is supremely humane.
Sermon 182.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · John commands believers to test the spirits because of false prophets, and gives the test: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ come in the flesh is from God; so the Manichees, who deny it, must be rejected.
Sermon 183.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The full confession joins Christ's “Son of Man” with Peter's “Son of the living God”; the Arian, who says “in the beginning God made the Word,” denies John's “in the beginning was the Word” and so denies the Son.
Sermon 184.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christmas celebrates the humility of God, which the proud wise of this world despise, and the virgin birth, which they refuse to believe.
Sermon 185.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Truth that holds the world sprang from the earth for our salvation; without his birth and death we would have perished.
Sermon 186.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against those who say only that a son of man became Son of God, Augustine insists that the Son of God himself became son of man, as the creed confesses.
Sermon 186.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Philippians 2, Romans 1, and Galatians 4 all show that the eternal Son himself became son of man; fittingly he was born on the day from which daylight grows.
Sermon 187.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · A litany of paradoxes praises the incarnate Lord, great in the form of God and small in the form of a slave, without loss to either.
Sermon 187.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Just as a spoken word reaches every hearer whole without being divided, so the Word of God could take a body in Mary without leaving the Father.
Sermon 187.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As a thought becomes speech without being changed into sound, so the Word became flesh without ceasing to be God; but unlike our words, God's Word remains forever.
Sermon 187.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ is both less than the Father as man and one with the Father as God, which would be impossible had the Word been changed into flesh.
Sermon 188.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christmas celebrates the Word's birth in time, which can in some way be told, not his eternal birth, which cannot; and it shows the love of God who became small for us.
Sermon 190.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ has two births, divine and human; by being born a man of a woman he honored both sexes, since the serpent had ruined both through the woman.
Sermon 192.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God became man to make men gods; the virgin birth shows his power, but his willingness to be born shows even greater mercy.
Sermon 192.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Psalm 85's righteousness from heaven was fulfilled when Christ ascended and sent the Spirit; the psalms guard against thinking him a mere man, and he chose the shortest day, from which light grows.
Sermon 196.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Both of Christ's births are beyond words: the eternal begetting without beginning and the birth from a virgin who remained a virgin.
Sermon 213.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The only Son of God was crucified and buried according to his flesh, as an injury to one's tunic is an injury to oneself; we worship the one clothed in that flesh.
Sermon 214.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ's two births are both wonderful; “born of the Holy Spirit” refers to the Spirit's sanctifying work, not to fatherhood, and the one Christ is Son of God by the Word and son of man by the man he assumed.
Sermon 215.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Son is true God from true God, one with the Father; both his eternal birth and his virginal birth are beyond words, and can only be believed and praised.
Sermon 225.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Word was in Mary's womb without leaving heaven or the Father, as a spoken word reaches the hearer without leaving the speaker.
Sermon 232.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The eternal Word took death from us to give us his life, dying by his own power; yet the disciples, who had heard him foretell it, lost the hope that the thief on the cross held.
Sermon 233.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · True salvation is not on earth; Christ, the heavenly merchant, took our birth and death, born of a virgin without lust in the likeness of sinful flesh, and killed death.
Sermon 237.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The disciples who thought the risen Christ a spirit anticipated the Manichees, who deny his true flesh and so empty the whole work of redemption.
Sermon 237.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Word, whose power is beyond even the inexplicable human word, took on a whole human being, including a rational mind, against those who denied Christ a human mind.
Sermon 238.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichees and Priscillianists, who deny Christ's true flesh, the Church holds what Christ himself showed: he is the Word, a human spirit, and true flesh without sin.
Sermon 239.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The greedy should seek not the things Christ made but Christ himself, who though rich became poor for us, so that our poverty might be restored.
Sermon 258.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Thomas, in darkness while he would not believe, was made light when he touched the risen Christ and confessed him Lord and God, man and God, the fullness of faith.
Sermon 261.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Through Christ the man we reach Christ God, who is both the way and the goal; one person, Word, soul, and flesh, he speaks sometimes as God, sometimes according to his soul, sometimes according to his flesh.
Sermon 262.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “Be exalted above the heavens, O God” is said not to the Father but to the Son, who was born, nursed, wearied, betrayed, and crucified for us and now sits in heaven, to come as judge with his apostles.
Sermon 264.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ, equal to God by nature, not by robbery as Adam sought, emptied himself and chose the worst death, the cross, to free believers from all shame; strong to make all things, weak to remake them.
Sermon 264.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · “The Father is greater than I” rebuked and consoled disciples fixed on Christ’s flesh: he is less as man, equal as God, unchanged by taking flesh as a senator by prison clothes; he withdrew outwardly to fill them inwardly.
Sermon 264.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The forty days signify this age, in which faith in the Incarnation is necessary while the Church, like the ark in the flood, holds clean and unclean; in the end believers will enjoy Christ’s divinity.
Sermon 273.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The martyrs were men like us and are to be imitated; even Christ, God equal to the Father, as man chose to be priest and sacrifice rather than receive them, so we honor the martyrs and worship their God.
Sermon 279.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We should not be ashamed of a crucified Christ: what died was the servant’s form he took from us, and his birth and death showed our condition, his resurrection and ascension our hoped-for reward.
Sermon 287.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Both births are miraculous, but John humbled himself before Christ, as the shortening days after his birthday and his beheading show, while Christ, conceived without lust, is exalted.
Sermon 290.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ testified that none born of women is greater than John, and John that Christ is greater than he; John knew himself and humbled himself rather than accept being taken for the Christ.
Sermon 291.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · ‘What will this child be?’ If John was so great because the Lord’s hand was with him, how great is that hand itself, the eternal Word through whom all things were made, who became flesh without ceasing to be God?
Sermon 292.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ was baptized out of humility, as he became man out of humility: equal to the Father by nature, he took the form of a servant without losing the form of God.
Sermon 293.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Most High, above all creation, came in exceeding humility to the unworthy, taking human nature but not human fault, so as to heal it, and appeared as man while hiding as God.
Sermon 293.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As the groomsman to the bridegroom, John stands to Christ, who as man is mediator between God and men, wholly God and wholly man; Paul calls the mediator ‘the man Christ Jesus’ because the one God is Father, Son and Spirit.
On Faith and the Creed 6Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Augustine reads “The Lord created me” of Christ's humanity, the humble way back to God, and distinguishes the only-begotten Son by nature from sons by adoption.
On Faith and the Creed 8Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Christ, born of the Virgin through the Spirit, took up the whole human being, body, soul, and rational spirit, because what he did not take up would not be saved.
On Faith and the Creed 9Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Against those who deny that Christ had a human mother, Augustine explains Jesus' words at Cana and his question “Who is my mother?”
On Faith and the Creed 10Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Birth from a woman could not defile the Word, just as sunlight is not soiled by the filth it shines on.
Against Jovinianus 1.32Jerome · 393 · Jerome defends the reading "virgin" in Isa 7:14 from the Hebrew almah and argues that God chose a virgin, not a married woman or widow, to bear his Son.
On Continence 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · In Scripture 'flesh' often means the whole man, so living 'according to the flesh' means living according to oneself rather than according to God.
On Continence 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine answers Manichaean teachings on Christ's flesh, the church, the sexes and the body with Paul's own words.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 22Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Christ was truly born of the virgin Mary, as the Gospel says; rejecting parts of Scripture at will leaves no rule for correcting error.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 32Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · If Christ had no mortal flesh, his crucifixion and piercing would be a mere phantasm.
On the Christian Struggle 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The Christian's crown is won by conquering the devil, whom Christ conquered by taking our nature, and who is cast out of the hearts of those who renounce love of the world.
On the Christian Struggle 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Our weakness comes from our own sinful will, not from God, who made man with free choice; the unchangeable Son took up this weakness in the incarnation.
On the Christian Struggle 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Augustine answers those who ask why the Wisdom of God had to become man and suffer: the incarnation is the medicine that heals every vice and honors both men and women.
On the Christian Struggle 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Christ was truly born of a woman, not given a body like the dove at his baptism; both bodies were real, and his birth from a woman honors both sexes.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · If the Holy Spirit was not defiled by taking up Mani, born of human intercourse, the Wisdom of God could not be defiled by birth from a virgin.
On Christian Doctrine 1.11Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Wisdom became man to give us an example of life, and so is both our homeland and the way to it.
On Christian Doctrine 1.12Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Wisdom, present everywhere, came to us not by moving through space but by appearing in mortal flesh to those who could not know God.
On Christian Doctrine 1.13Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · The incarnation is compared to a thought taking the form of speech without ceasing to be itself.
On Christian Doctrine 1.14Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Christ heals humanity like a physician, using contraries (humility for pride) and likes (born of a woman, a mortal for mortals).
On Christian Doctrine 1.34Augustine of Hippo · Books 1–3 ca. 396–397; completed 426–427 · Christ in the flesh is the way, which we must pass through without clinging even to the temporal things he did for us, to reach God himself.
Confessions 4.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine proclaims Christ, our Life, who came down through the virgin's womb, conquered death, and calls us to return to him by humility, going down in order to go up.
Confessions 5.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine describes his former Manichaean conception of good and evil as two infinite material masses, which also made him deny that Christ truly took flesh from the Virgin Mary.
Confessions 7.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The Platonist books taught the eternal divinity of the Word, but not his incarnation, humiliation, and death for sinners, which God hid from the proud and revealed to the humble.
Confessions 7.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Only the humble, incarnate Christ, the mediator, gives the strength to reach God; pride is healed by his humility.
Confessions 7.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine then saw Christ only as a supremely wise man; Alypius had thought the catholics denied Christ a human soul.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that accepting the gospel does not mean accepting that Christ was born, since the genealogy in Matthew is not the gospel.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers from Paul that Christ’s descent from David belongs to the gospel, and that Christ constantly calls himself the Son of Man.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 3.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ was born of a woman in the form of a servant, not in his divine nature, and turns the charge back on the Manichaean doctrine of divine substance bound in all wombs.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 11.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Paul’s statement that Christ was of David’s seed was either corrected by his later words in 2 Corinthians or is an interpolation.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows from Isaiah and Psalm 110, as used by Jesus, that Hebrew prophecy foretold Christ as God and not only as man.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine reads Jeremiah 17 as forbidding hope in a mere man yet declaring that Christ is man, so that hope rests in Christ as God made man.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that, since the Manichaeans deny Christ had a real body and real wounds, the curse on hanging could not touch their Christ, and that charging Christ with deceit is worse than any curse.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that Christ, taking real flesh from Adam through Mary, took on the curse of death without guilt, to end both our guilt and our punishment.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends Deuteronomy 18:15 as a prophecy of Christ, showing that likeness need not be in every respect and that Christ is both unlike and like Moses in different ways.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine turns Faustus's appeal to Thomas against him: the scars Thomas touched prove Christ's true flesh, which the Manichaeans deny.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine turns the Manichaean “suffering Jesus” born of the earth against their denial of the virgin birth, and asks how many Christs they believe in and how a bodiless Christ could be crucified.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends Isaac's calling Rebecca his sister like Abraham's case, and interprets his playing with her, by which Abimelech recognized them as married, as a figure of Christ's condescension to the church.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.64Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine suggests Faustus attacked Judah to discredit Christ's ancestry, and explains that Christ chose to be born of both good and bad ancestors, but of a virgin.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 23.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Matthew presents Jesus as son of David by birth and Son of God only from his baptism, contradicting the Catholic creed, so either the gospel is not Matthew's or Catholics do not hold the apostolic faith.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 23.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that the apostolic faith confesses Christ as Son of God by divinity and son of David by the flesh, and points out that Matthew calls the virgin-born child “God with us” before the baptism.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 23.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the incarnation does not confine the Son of God in Mary's womb, since the Word rules all things while taking a human body, whereas the Manichaeans confine their god in every womb from elephants to flies.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 26.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says Christ could have had true flesh without being born, but Catholics believe in his virgin birth, crucifixion, and death because the gospel, which is truth, says so.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 27.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that if Jesus could be born without a father, he could also suffer without being born.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 29.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that the virgin birth is as contrary to nature as a passion without birth, and asks Catholics to admit that Christ’s birth too was only apparent.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 29.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ could have had true flesh without birth, but chose to be born of a virgin, and that the Manichaean view of an apparent death makes his resurrection and wounds a deception.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine contrasts the apostles’ preaching of Christ’s birth, circumcision, sacrifice, baptism, and temptation with Mani’s myth of God’s divided and defiled substance.
Tractates 13Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · A Christmas sermon on the incarnation and Mary's virginity in giving birth, followed by an exposition of Christ's gentle answer to Judas at Bethany, which leads into a long appeal for almsgiving against the luxury of rich landowners.
Tractates 14Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · On John 14:25–26: the sending of the Paraclete shows both the distinction of the persons and the one omnipresent divinity of the Trinity, as Psalm 139 confesses; the incarnation is to be received in faith, not probed by curiosity.
Tractates 19Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · A letter to the deacon Paul on John 14:28 ('the Father is greater than I'): against the Arians, Gaudentius distinguishes Christ's two substances, divine and human, showing from the Gospels the works of God and the weaknesses of man in him, and reads the saying of the assumed manhood before its glorification (Phil 2:6–11).
On the Trinity 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine gives his rule for reading Scripture about Christ: in the form of God the Son is equal to the Father, in the form of a servant he is less, as Philippians 2 teaches, without either nature being changed into the other.
On the Trinity 2.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine argues that being sent does not make the Son or the Spirit less: both are sent to where they already were, and 'sending' means their visible appearance in a creature, which the invisible Father and Son brought about together.
On the Trinity 4.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine connects the forty-six years of the temple's building with the 276 days (46 × 6) from Christ's conception on 25 March to his birth on 25 December, since the temple signified his body.
On the Trinity 4.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that we, being temporal and changeable, had to be cleansed through faith in temporal events, so the eternal Truth came into being as man, was born, died, rose and ascended, that our faith might become truth and our mortality be changed into eternity.
On the Trinity 4.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine defines the Son's sending as everything done in time to produce cleansing faith; all creation bore witness to him; he was sent as made of a woman, lesser insofar as made, yet equal to the Father who sends; and before and even after the incarnation his divinity was not seen.
On the Trinity 4.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that the Son is sent not because he is less but because he is from the Father, as Wisdom is the 'brightness of eternal light' equal to its source; sending means being made known in time, by the incarnation or in the mind; the Father is never sent, since he is from no one; and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and also from the Son, the Father being the principle of the whole deity.
On the Trinity 4.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that the inseparable Trinity is shown separably through visible creatures, as memory, understanding and will together produce each of their names; he restates that pre-incarnation theophanies were done through angels, that the Word became man with a human body and rational soul, and that being sent implies no inequality, closing Book 4.
On the Trinity 8.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · We believe Christ's virgin birth and resurrection through our general knowledge of such things, but we have no such knowledge of any other trinity or God, so Augustine asks how we can love the Trinity we do not yet know.
On the Trinity 13.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · No way of freeing humanity was more fitting than the incarnation and death of the Son, which shows God's love; even our merits are God's gifts.
On the Trinity 13.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Other benefits of the incarnation: it shows man's place in creation, commends grace without prior merit, heals pride by God's humility, gives an example of obedience, and defeats the devil through the race he had conquered.
On the Trinity 15.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The inner word, not the spoken word, resembles the Word of God: as our word takes up voice without being changed into it, so the Word took flesh without being changed, and as works begin from a word, all things were made through the Word.
On the Trinity 15.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The Spirit of both Father and Son proceeds from both without time, principally from the Father, who gave the Son in begetting him that the Spirit proceed from him too; Christ gave the Spirit twice, as God, and received him as man from his conception.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.53Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Christ, the wisdom of God, became man so that by faith in temporal things we might be cleansed and reach eternal truth; he is the mediator between God and humanity.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Matthew and Luke agree that Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit; Luke tells the annunciation Matthew omits, and Matthew tells Joseph's dream Luke omits.
Exposition of the Right Faith 10Anonymous · early 5th century (probably Theodoret) · The Word came down without leaving heaven, formed for himself a temple from the Virgin, and as the one Son died as man and rose as God; contrary statements are to be assigned to the two natures.
Exposition of the Right Faith 15Anonymous · early 5th century (probably Theodoret) · Against those who teach the mixture of the natures and the change of Christ's body into Godhead: such a change would add to God, produce two divine substances, or be pointless.
Exposition of the Right Faith 17Anonymous · early 5th century (probably Theodoret) · The Word is present to all by substance but received according to each one's measure, as the sun is equally present yet received by each eye according to its strength; only in his own sinless temple does the fullness of the Godhead dwell.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 65–66Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Christ was betrayed on Thursday night, not Wednesday, since he was tried that night and crucified the next day; and “Son of man” does not imply a human father, for Luke says he was only supposed to be Joseph's son, and as Joseph was Heli's son by law, so Christ was Joseph's son without marital union.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 132–133Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Levirate marriage was lawful even for a married brother, since the law allowed more than one wife, and it gave the dead man an heir and kept the inheritance in the tribe; and Christ, born of Joseph's wife without his seed, was Joseph's son as Joseph was Heli's son by law, as the evangelists' written genealogies show.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · That the woman was made from the man without intercourse is as credible as that Christ was born of a woman without intercourse; we lack a likeness only because we do not know how angels serve God's creating.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · If Wis 8:19–20 is applied to Christ, his soul did not come by transmission from Adam, and his flesh, conceived of a virgin without the law of sin, was the likeness of sinful flesh; Augustine would say his soul came from where Adam's came.
Letter 43Innocent I, bishop of Rome · 401–417 · A confession of faith ascribed to Innocent: the divine Word formed his own body in Mary’s womb and his divinity was never separated from his humanity, from conception to the cross and the ascension.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 11Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Rufinus answers pagan mockery of the virgin birth by pointing to the phoenix, bees, and the pagans' own myths of strange births.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 12Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · Christ was not defiled by being born of a woman, any more than a rescuer by mud or the sun by shining into a pit; what God made is not foul by nature.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 13Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · The Word was united to the flesh through a human soul, as light is received by the eye; nothing shameful or weak attaches to this birth.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.9Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine explains that the Son, unable to suffer in his divine nature, took flesh in order to suffer for us out of mercy, whereas the Manichaean part of God descends to be bound and polluted.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.17Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine distinguishes what God begot of himself (the Word, equal to him and incapable of pollution) from what he made (the soul and all creatures), which could be polluted by sin and remade through the incarnate Word.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, always present by his divinity, came in the flesh to fallen and wounded humanity, even accepting a human witness, John the 'lamp', because of our weakness.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · So that men might be born of God, God was first born of men: the Word became flesh, to assure us that our adoption is not incredible.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The incarnation is an eye-salve made of 'earth': flesh that blinded us by carnal desire is healed by the Word made flesh, so that we can see his glory.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Those who receive Christ are born of God, and the proof is that the Word was born of man; the incarnation is the medicine that heals our sight so that we see his glory.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 8.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's apparently cold words to his mother at Cana hide a mystery; heretics who deny that he had real flesh use them to claim Mary was not his mother, but Christ is wholly true, with true flesh, birth, death, and resurrection.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 12.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, present on earth in the flesh and in heaven by his divinity, alone descended and ascended; believers ascend as his members.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 14.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Philip asked to see the Father because he saw only Christ's flesh; Christ, equal to the Father, became visible man so that believers might be healed to see his hidden divinity.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 15.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Jesus' weariness at the well begins the mysteries: strong as the Word through whom all was made, he became weak in the flesh to remake and seek us.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 15.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, like a hen weakened with her chicks, became weak in the flesh, his “journey” to us, so that we might be strong in his weakness.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 16.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, made man in Zion, which as the Word he had himself created, was not honored by his own country; let him be honored by the people he has reborn.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 19.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Son of God raises souls; as son of man he received power to judge and will raise bodies; the Word having man is one Christ, as soul and body are one man.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 21.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, God and man, speaks sometimes in majesty and sometimes in humility; the Father shows the greater works to Christ's members, in whom he learns as he suffers in them.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 21.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · What is shown to Christ's members is shown to Christ through Christ, as the head guides the hand; the distant Word came near by becoming flesh.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ is Word, rational soul, and flesh; souls rise from sin through Christ as God, and bodies rise from corruption through Christ as man.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 36.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's judgment is true because the Father, who sent him, is with him; his being sent is his incarnation, which is believed before it is understood.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 40.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Father's teaching of the Son must not be pictured in human form; human form belongs to Christ's servant form from Mary, while the Word, like wisdom and justice, has no bodily shape.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 46.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ may be taken as the doorkeeper too, since by likeness he is door, shepherd, sheep, lion and rock, whereas properly he is the eternal Word, equal to the Father, who became man.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 47.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Even Christ's dead flesh in the tomb is called Christ, as the creed confesses; so when the flesh laid down and took up the soul by the Word's power, Christ did so.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ’s troubling of himself shows his power: as the Word made flesh in one person, he hungered, grieved, and died because he willed to.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 66.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Peter truly denied Christ, for to deny Christ the man is to deny Christ himself; his tears refute those who would excuse him.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 69.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, one person as Word and flesh, came to us and returned to himself through the flesh, so that he is the way even for himself.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 94.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ had to withdraw his bodily presence so that the disciples, no longer clinging to him in a fleshly way, could receive the Spirit and know him spiritually.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 98.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Solid food does not contradict the milk of faith; the incarnate Wisdom became milk for little ones, and Christ crucified remains the foundation to which understanding is added.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 99.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Son's "I cannot do anything of myself" is said as man; but the Holy Spirit took no creature into unity of person, so "he will not speak from himself" needs another explanation.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The Word who was from the beginning became flesh, so that what could be seen only by the heart might be seen and handled, to heal our hearts.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 9.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God first loved us when we were foul, to make us beautiful by loving him; Christ is both 'fair beyond the sons of men' in his divinity and 'without form' in his humanity, as Paul's Philippians hymn shows.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 1.68Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Adam was created with mature reason, we are born weak because of his sin, and Christ took our weakness in the likeness of sinful flesh; infants' bodily helplessness itself may be penal.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.38Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · The Word became flesh so that those born of flesh might be born of God; Christ, born in the likeness of sinful flesh of a virgin without concupiscence, never had sin, yet was baptized as an example, so sinful flesh needs baptism all the more.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.48Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Jesus, whose name means Savior, saves infants as well as adults; though he took the likeness of sinful flesh and passed through infancy, he did not share infants' ignorance and went freely to a death he did not owe.
City of God 7.31Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine gives thanks for the special gift to the faithful: the incarnation and unique sacrifice of the Son, and the love poured out by the Spirit.
City of God 10.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine confesses one God in three persons against Sabellianism and teaches that Christ, the Word made flesh, is the one Principle who purifies human nature, which Porphyry's pride would not accept.
City of God 10.29Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine urges the Platonists, who glimpse the Trinity and even confess grace, to accept the incarnation, virgin birth, and bodily resurrection of Christ, rejected only out of pride.
Commentary on Jeremiah 3.52Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jeremiah's lament at being a man of strife fits Christ, set for a sign spoken against; the one Son speaks sometimes according to the flesh, sometimes as the Word, without dividing his person.
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.22Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Ephraim is called to set up watchmen and return; the 'new thing' that 'a woman will encompass a man' is the virginal conception of Christ, perfect man in Mary's womb; Jerome corrects the Septuagint's 'Zion' for 'watchmen' (Jer 31:21–22).
Apologetic Book 25.6Orosius · ca. 415–416 · The sinless Word made flesh.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.7Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Under Augustus God sent his Son.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 2.32Augustine of Hippo · 418 · Abraham rejoiced to see Christ's day and made his servant swear with a hand under his thigh, showing that the righteous of old believed in the coming incarnation.
On the Soul and Its Origin 1.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Arguing from “flesh of my flesh” resembles the Apollinarian argument from “the Word was made flesh”; both sides need unambiguous texts.
Carmina 1.1–7Orientius of Auch · 5th-6th century(?) · A short poem on the feast of Christ's birth: he who reigns with the Father took flesh, and after his death carried man back into heaven.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The Word became flesh by taking up a whole human nature free of sin, conceived by a virgin through faith, whose virginity remained intact in his birth.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The union of a human nature with the Son, with no prior merit, shows the free grace by which we too are justified; Mary was full of grace to be the Lord's mother, Christ full of grace and truth.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Christ born of the Holy Spirit is not the Spirit's son; the whole Trinity made his humanity, and he was born of the Spirit not as of a father but of Mary as of a mother.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Christ's birth from the Spirit, not as his son, signifies the grace by which his humanity was united to the Word from its first moment without prior merit, so that it could admit no sin.
The Conferences 22.11John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, with real flesh but without sin; his hunger, thirst, sleep, and anguish showed the likeness of sin, while his knowledge, gifts, and power showed he had none.
On Rebuke and Grace 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 427 · Adam had a grace “without which” he could not persevere, left to his free choice; the saints receive through Christ a more powerful grace “by which” they actually will and persevere; Christ's own humanity was taken up into union with the Word by grace, not merit.
On the Predestination of the Saints 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · Christ himself is the brightest example of predestination and grace: his human nature was united to the Word with no prior merit; as he was predestined to be our Head, we are predestined to be his members.
Cyril, Second Letter to Nestorius (doctrinal part) §1Anonymous · 430–433 · Cyril explains the Nicene creed's "became incarnate and became man": the Word united to himself, according to hypostasis, flesh with a rational soul; the natures stay distinct but form one Christ, born eternally of the Father and in time of a woman.
Cyril, Second Letter to Nestorius (doctrinal part) §3Anonymous · 430–433 · Christ is worshipped as one, not as a man alongside the Word; rejecting the union according to hypostasis leads to two sons. The fathers therefore called Mary Theotokos, and Cyril urges Nestorius to teach the same for the peace of the churches.
Confession of FaithAcacius of Beroea · ca. 431-437 · Acacius of Beroea confesses one God in three persons and one Son of God from two natures, passible in the flesh and impassible in the divinity.
Letters 2Capreolus of Carthage · 431-433 · Capreolus answers Vitalis and Constantius against the Nestorian heresy: the Son of God and son of man are one inseparable person, as many Scriptures show, so that God was born, suffered and descended to the dead in the man he took.
Part 2Eutherius of Tyana · ca. 431-440 · The author defends the study of Scripture against those who would forbid it, and then, in a new chapter, argues that 'the Word became flesh' means union with flesh, not change into flesh, so that two natures must be confessed.
Part 4Eutherius of Tyana · ca. 431-440 · The author argues that one nature in Christ would empty the promises to Abraham and David, since Christ must be both David's Lord and his son according to the flesh.
Part 6Eutherius of Tyana · ca. 431-440 · The author answers the charge that confessing Christ's manhood is hoping in a man, citing the Scriptures on Christ as man and arguing that our hope is in God the Word acting through his flesh.
Part 14Eutherius of Tyana · ca. 431-440 · The author argues that each of Christ's miracles is great only if his flesh is real, and, in a new chapter, that denying that Christ took our nature empties the promises, the fulfilment of the law, and our hope of resurrection.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 71.5Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · God suffered not in his nature but by uniting himself to what can suffer; John, whose relic Ephesus holds, sums up all piety in 'The Word became flesh'.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 72.2Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · The burning bush that was not consumed prefigured the virgin who gave birth without losing her virginity; God is not outraged by the lowly things he took on to save us.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 72.3Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · The virgin's remaining a virgin shows that the one born is God; God appeared as man so that we might approach our judge as a kinsman.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 72.4Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · The manner of the incarnation, like the healing of the man born blind with clay, is a wonder beyond reason; we should believe that it happened and leave the how to God.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 72.7Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · As a spoken word becomes visible when written on paper without beginning to exist then, so the eternal Word, begotten of the Father, became visible when born of the virgin.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 72.11Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · God restored man's lost honour by uniting his image to himself; he made human passions and death his own in order to destroy passion and death.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 73.2Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · The Word did not begin to exist at his birth but began to be man; remaining unchanged God, he emptied himself into the form of a servant, as Paul says.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 73.5Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · The magi's gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh confess Christ as king, God, and one who would die; the union makes him one, so that dividing him even in thought dissolves the union.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 73.9Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · The furnace was flame and dew at once; God, who changed nothing there, became man without change; and since prophets and angels could not save humanity, God saved it himself, respecting free will.
Theodotus, ACO I.1.2, homily 73.10Theodotus of Ancyra · 431 · When prophets, law, and angels failed, God came himself, not in terror as at Sinai but in poverty, born in a manger, so that all might approach him; Isaiah's ox and donkey point to that manger.
Homily 2, on the Incarnation (Alexandria, 432)Paul of Emesa · Dec 432-433 · In a second sermon at Alexandria, Paul teaches that Emmanuel is consubstantial with the Father and with us, two natures in one person, and that God the Word, remaining impassible, made his own the sufferings of his body; the people acclaim Cyril.
Commonitory 13Vincent of Lérins · 434 · Against these errors Vincent sets out the catholic faith: in God one substance and three persons, in Christ two substances and one person.
Commonitory 14Vincent of Lérins · 434 · Christ's 'person' is not a role played like an actor's mask, as the Manichees held, but the Word truly became man.
Commonitory 15Vincent of Lérins · 434 · The union of God and man in Christ took place at the conception in the Virgin's womb, which is why Mary is truly called Theotokos.
Tome to the Armenians 8Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · Love moved God the Word to become flesh; he became incarnate without change of nature and without adding a fourth to the Trinity.
Tome to the Armenians 12Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · When law and prophets could not rescue humanity, God the Word himself became flesh of a virgin, beginning from the very start of human existence.
Tome to the Armenians 13Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · As a man begins as flesh and grows, so the Word began from the root of human generation, becoming flesh without being changed into it.
Tome to the Armenians 14Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · 'Became flesh' shows the indivisible union in one person; 'took the form of a servant' shows the Godhead's immutability.
Tome to the Armenians 16Proclus of Constantinople · ca. 435-437 · There is one Son, eternally begotten, who without leaving the Father became man through a virgin birth beyond nature.
Consolatory Letter to Arcadius 1Antoninus Honoratus · ca. 437-440 · Antoninus encourages the exiled confessor Arcadius to persevere to martyrdom rather than yield to Arianism, and explains by analogies how the one triune God works together while the Son alone took flesh.
Chapter 9Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The Son, equal to the Father in divinity, was born of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, a unique miracle in which God and flesh were joined in one Christ.
Chapter 10Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · At Christ’s birth angels and a star rejoiced and the Magi adored him, while Herod and the Jewish leaders plotted his death and Herod killed the infants, whom Christ received into eternal life.
Chapter 13Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · Moses, David, and Habakkuk are called as witnesses: the prophet like Moses, the Lord at God’s right hand, and Christ known “in the midst of two living creatures” at the manger, on the cross, and at the Transfiguration.
Confession to Theodosius IIFlavian of Constantinople · 448-449 · Flavian assures Theodosius II of his orthodoxy: Christ is one person and hypostasis in two natures after the incarnation, consubstantial with the Father and with his mother, and Nestorius is anathematized.