Theotokos; one Son; death and resurrection

— not a mere human begotten from her, but the Word himself enfleshed, with a body from her as his own. That is why he is said to have been begotten in the flesh: he makes the begetting of his own flesh his.

Those who senselessly deny that the holy virgin is God-bearer are forced to say there are two sons of God. For if she did not bear in the flesh the enfleshed God, they must admit — willing or not — that she bore only a common human, with nothing more than we have.

Then how will every knee bend to him, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father? How do angels worship him, and the holy host of the highest powers? Has all heaven, with us, served a common human? God forbid.

We worship Emmanuel as true God. He is not otherwise to be worshiped unless we believe that the Word from God, whom all creation worships, became flesh according to the Scriptures — not changed into flesh, but taking flesh from the holy virgin, as I said, and enduring a human birth with us — so that, having become human, he might die for us in a human way and rise in a divine way, having trampled the power of death.

Only so could we too, as conquerors in Christ, overpower sin, put off corruption, and escape death, and cry out in the joy that is in Christ: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O Hades, is your sting?”

For just as we fell in Adam — if Emmanuel were only a common human, how would a human’s death help human nature? And yet many