Chapter 1 (7): 1. On The Flesh Which The Word Took, What It Was Like Before
Distinction III | 9 first conceived in the Virgin's womb and afterwards taken on, we say most truly and without any ambiguity that, from the moment that God took on human form, he took on the whole man, and joined to himself soul and flesh together; nor was the flesh first conceived and then taken on, but it was conceived as it was taken and taken as it was conceived.
2. AUGUSTINE. Hence Augustine, in the book On Faith to Peter: "Hold most firmly, and do not at all doubt, that Christ's flesh was not conceived without divinity in the Virgin's womb before it was taken by the Word, but that God the Word himself was conceived by taking on his own flesh, and that the flesh itself was conceived by the incarnation of the Word."'!—
The same [Augustine] in the book On the Trinity: "He would not be mediator of God and men, unless the same were God, the same man, one and true in both." "The whole Trinity, whose will and operation is one, made the servile' form which was taken by the Son alone." "But it was not the case that the flesh was first taken in the Virgin's womb and divinity came into the flesh afterwards. Instead, as soon as the Word came into the womb, preserving the truth of its own nature, it was made flesh' and was perfect man, that is, he was born in the truth of the flesh and the soul."°—
GREGORY. Concerning this, Gregory too, in the Moralia, says: "At the angel's annunciation and the coming of the Spirit, as soon as the Word was in the womb, the Word was flesh within the womb."
DISTINCTION III
Chapter 1 (7)
1. ON THE FLESH WHICH THE WORD TOOK, WHAT IT WAS LIKE BEFORE
AND WHEN IT WAS TAKEN. Concerning the Word's flesh, it is also asked whether, before it was conceived, it was in bondage to sin, and whether it was so when it was taken by the Word.—It can surely be said and is necessary to believe, according to the agreement of the testimony of the saints, that "it was first subject to sin,"' like the rest of the Virgin's flesh, but it was so cleansed by the work of the Holy Spirit that, immune from all contagion of sin, it might be united to the Word; the punishment alone remained, but by the taker's will and not by necessity.
'Fulgentius, De fide ad Petrum, c18 n59.
Rather, Leo I, Epistola 35, c3.
CPAP lithe) 1 'Cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, bk 2 c5 n9.
"Ci Anyle 14; 'Gregory, Epistola 67.
7Gregory, Moralia, bk 18 c52 n85.
'Cf. Augustine, De peccatorum meritis seu de baptismo parvulorum, bk 2 ¢24.
10 | THE SENTENCES, BOOK 3
2. THAT NOT ONLY THAT FLESH, BUT ALSO THE HOLY VIRGIN, WAS
CLEANSED FROM ALL CONTAGION OF SIN BY THE HOLY SPIRIT. The Holy
Spirit, by descending upon her, entirely purified Mary too from sin and also freed her from the urge to sin, either by entirely removing the urge itself, as some would have it, or by so weakening and reducing it that she afterwards had no further occasion to sin.
3. The Spirit also prepared in the Virgin the power of begetting without the seed of a man. For this is what the words of the Gospel teach, when the angel speaks to the Virgin, saying: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the holy thing that will be born from you shall be called the Son of God.' The holy
Virgin responds to him: Behold the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word'—JOHN OF DAMASCUS. John, in expounding this; says: "And so, after the assent of the holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended upon her, according to the word of the Lord which the angel had spoken, purified her and prepared both the power to receive and the power to beget the Word of the divinity. And then the Wisdom and Power of the most high God? existing in itself, that is, the Son of God, homousios or consubstantial with the Father, overshadowed her, like a divine seed. From the most holy and most pure blood of the same Virgin, he did not procreate, but created through the Holy Spirit, and joined to himself, flesh of our ancient mixture,' animated with a rational and intellective soul. Therefore he is at once flesh, at once flesh of God: at once flesh animated with a rational and intellective soul, at once flesh of the Word of God animated with a rational and intellective soul."°
4. From these words, what we said earlier' is made very clear, namely that the flesh of the Word was conceived and taken at the same time, and that the same flesh, indeed the whole Virgin, with the coming of the Holy
Spirit, was made chaste from all shame of sin AUGUSTINE, ON F'4ITH TO PETER: And on her was conferred the power "to beget in a new manner, so that" the conception of God and man should be completed in the womb of the Virgin "without joining with a man, without lust of the conceiver.'®
"For that flesh, which God deigned to unite to himself from the Virgin, was conceived without vice and born without sin. And yet do not believe
7h aay SEL 38:
SCE, Cone lacs:
°C ial Core5. 7
°*John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, bk 3 c2.
In dist. 2 c3.
*Fulgentius, De fide ad Petrum, c2 n17.