Chapter Twenty-Two
Objection based on the Incarnation of the Word.
But even supposing any one of the Greeks were so light-minded as to think that the gods dwell within the statues, his idea would be a much purer one than that of the man who believes that the Divine entered into the womb of the Virgin Mary, and became her unborn child, before being born and swaddled in due course, for it is a place full of blood and gall, and things more unseemly still.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Answer to the objection based on the Incarnation of the Word.
If it seems to you far preferable that the Divine should be pleased to dwell in a statue, and not have been made flesh in Mary on account of the humiliation of such an experience, listen more fully to the mystery of the doctrine, how that the all-sufficient and creative Word, though He be great and powerful and far removed from feeling, yet has not feared to face all the things that are a cause of shame among ourselves. For He is without feeling in that wherein He is not ashamed to be born like men who are subject to feeling. He is without defilement in that wherein He receives no corruption through wickedness. Therefore the Word is made flesh, not lowering Himself to the disease or humiliation of the flesh, but leading the things of the flesh to His own immortality. For just as the sun when it descends into wetness does not receive a sense of wetness, and is not found to be muddy, but dries up the wetness of the mud, keeping the water away from itself altogether, and not having its rays affected, even so God the Word, who is the Sun of the world of mind, though descending to the flesh, draws up no sickness therefrom, and is not found either overcome by its passions or falling by reason of the weakness of its evil nature. On the contrary, by leading it up from its slippery places, and dragging it up out of its misfortunes, He set it in a divine blessedness that was allotted to it, giving it warmth when it was wasting away, and holding it together when it was being dissolved by its sins. The result was to make it irresistible and invincible and able to conquer the assaults of its defects, so that the flesh might retain its nature and yet disown the accusation which that nature involves, preserving its limits and yet rejecting the confusion which those limits cause. This is the reason that He worked out the fulfilment of the dispensation, not in any other thing, but in the flesh. Nor did He do this in flesh of any unique kind, but in human flesh, and moreover in that of a virgin. This was in order that He might show that it was from the virgin earth that He took the flesh and made it in the beginning, as the dwelling-place of mind and reason and soul, and in like manner He now prepared a temple for Himself from a maid and virgin, without needing the hand and art of man. Pray, which is the more precious of the two---soil, or a virgin? Man or mud? Surely man is superior to mud, and a virgin more precious than soil. If, therefore, God is not ashamed to take soil from the earth, but works in muddy material and fashions man from it, how will He delay to take man from man, or how will He hesitate to wear flesh from a virgin? Will He not set aside all lingering and delay, and take hold of that compound which is more precious than the earth, and make from it an image that bears His Godhead, in the birth of the Only-begotten?1 It is as dwelling in this image that He shakes the world by the beauty of His virtue, and flashes light upon all by the grace of His gift.
Prometheus, whose story is well known among yourselves, fashions man, and there is no shame at all about it. And Zeus makes in Athena a woman who came to life, and you approve of the myth and magnify the fact, without seeing anything shameful in it or reckoning it a misfortune, and not enquiring into the question of hidden parts. And yet, if there is really any shame about it at all, it is much more shameful to fashion parts and conceal them with certain coverings, than to pass through them for the sake of the dispensation and the word that brings profit.2 For he who makes a building and then turns round and refuses to live in it, stands self-accused, and is an implacable judge of himself, because he did not reckon that there was any question of shame when he was making it; but after its completion, he slanders the result of his own labours, by judging the work on which he has lavished his care to be unfit to dwell in. So the Deity, in making man, incurs the charge of injustice, if He is ashamed to dwell in him, and refuses to take His portion from him. For by so doing He has made the workmanship of His own exertion to be of no value at all, and has slandered all His own wisdom by ignoring it, because He made a representation of His own glory, and then decided that it was shameful to dwell in it.
Footnotes:
1θεοφόρον ἄγαλμα μονογενῶς ἐργάσεται. If μονογενῶς is not to be connected with the name which the author uses as the sub-title of his book, it may only mean "by an unique birth." Could it mean "by a birth that is single "?
2The passage beginning with the mention of Prometheus and ending here, is quoted by Nicephorus, Antirrhet., loc. cit.