Augustine: Earlier Writings (continued)
of swift, we should reply, slow; and so on. But if the question is asked what is the opposite of that which is, the correct answer is: that which is not.
8. But since, by what I have called a temporal dispensation, our mutable nature was assumed by the unchangeable Wisdom of God, for our salvation and restoration, by the act of God's loving-kindness, we also put faith in temporal things done on our behalf for our salvation. For we believe in the Son of God who was born by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. By the gift of God, that is, by the Holy Spirit, there was shown towards us such humility on the part of God most high that he deigned to take upon him the whole of human nature in the womb of a Virgin, inhabiting the body of his Mother and being born of it, while leaving it pure and entire. The heretics have many insidious ways of attacking this temporal dispensation. But anyone who holds the Catholic Faith and believes that the Word assumed the whole of human nature, body, soul and spirit, is sufficiently armed against them. The incarnation took place for our salvation, so we must take care not to suppose that any part of our nature was unassumed. Otherv/ise it will have no part in salvation. Apart from the shape of the limbs, which differs in the different classes of living creatures, man is not different from the cattle except in having a rational spirit, which is also called a mind. How could it be sane to believe that the divine Wisdom assumed that part of our nature which we have in common with the cattle, but did not assume the part which is illumined by the light of wisdom, and is man's characteristic part?i
9. Those likewise are to be detested who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had Mary as his mother on earth. That dispensation did honour to both sexes male and female, and showed that both had a part in God's care; not only that which he assumed, but that also through which he assumed it, being a man born of a woman. We are not obliged to deny the Mother of Christ because he said: "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come" (John 2:4). Rather he lets us know that he had no mother so far as his divine nature is concerned, and he was preparing to manifest his majestic character by turning water into wine. When he was crucified, he was crucified in his human character. That was the hour which had not yet come when he spoke as he did, meaning the hour when he would recognize her. For in the hour when he was crucified he recognized his mother's human nature and commended her most
1 This refers to the heresy of ApoUinarius.