God, and through whom we were created, in order to seek and to save that which
SERMON 214 153 feated. Perish the thought that the Almighty should be able to do these and suchlike things. And so it is that truth not only shows he is almighty because he cannot do these things, but also requires anyone who can do them not to be almighty. God, you see, is willingly whatever he is; so he is willingly eternal and unchangeable and truthful and blessed and undefeatable. So if he can be what he does not wish, he is not almighty; but he is almighty, which is why he is capable of whatever he wishes. And therefore what he does not will he cannot be,12 the reason he is called almighty being that he is capable of whatever he wishes. As the psalm says about him, In heaven and on earth he has done whatever he has willed (Ps 135:6).
Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father
5. Almighty God, therefore, who has done all that ever he has willed, begot the one and only Word through which all things were made; but this not out of nothing, but from himself; that's why he didn't make him, but begot him. In the beginning, you see, he made heaven and earth (Gn 1:1), But he didn't make the Word in the beginning, because In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1). This is God from God, while the Father is God, but not from God. This is the only Son of God, because no other son is of the Father's substance, co-eternal, equal to the Father. God the Word, not like a word whose sound can be thought of in the mind and uttered by the lips, but as it says, and it cannot be put better or more succinctly, The Word was God. Abiding unchangeably with the Father, and himself also unchangeable with the Father, about him the apostle says, Who, since he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God (Phil 2:6). It's his nature, after all, not robbery, to be equal to the Father. That's how we believe in Jesus Christ the only Son of God the Father, our Lord.
Born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
6. He, though, who in the form of God did not think it robbery to be equal to God, and through whom we were created, in order to seek and to save that which was lost (Lk 19:10), emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in condition as a man (Phil 2:7). And thus we believe in him that he was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary. Each birth of his, you see, must be considered wonderful,13 both that of his divinity and that of his humanity. The First is from the Father without mother, the second from mother without father; the first apart from all time, the second at the acceptable time (2 Cor 6:2); the first eternal, the second at the right moment; the first without a body in the bosom of the Father (Jn 1:18), the second with a body, which did not violate the virginity of his mother; the first without either sex, the second without a man's embrace.14
The reason, though, that we say born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, is that when the holy virgin inquired of the angel, How shall this come about?