The Holy Trinity in Creation and Incarnation

Christos Sp. Voulgaris, Επιστημονική Επετηρίς της Θεολογικής Σχολής, ΛΕ΄,
Τιμητικόν αφιέρωμα εις Ι. Κ. Κορναράκην, Μ. Κ. Μακράκην,
Αθήνα 2000, σελ. 135-149.

Among the other "new teachings" which brought "some strange things to the ears" of the people of the Greco-Roman world (1) Christianity brought also the teachings about the creation of the world. This was one of the biggest innovations in the world of Philosophy, since the idea that the world was created out of nothing was completely foreign to Greek thought and Greco-Roman religion. To the Greeks the world was eternal and unchangable in its essential structure and form; it simply existed and no one cared to ask how, whence and why. All, intellectuals and non-intellectuals, accepted it as a fact and made no effort to study or transcend it, even with their imagination, in order to see what lies behind it. Of course, they observed the motion, the changes and the constant flow of the elements. But that was it; they simply accepted its permanence and eternity.

Side by side with this idea, Greek philosophy, religion and science posed a radical dualism of body and mind or spirit, which placed its mark upon every aspect of the culture. The distinction between a sensible and an intelligible world, drawn by Plato and later emphasized by Aristotle and the Stoics, stressed also the difference between act and thought, event and idea, material and spiritual, visible and invisible, temporal and eternal. As a result of this, God was cast out of the worldly empirical reality.

It was at this point that biblical revelation confronted and challenged Greek thought which, it is true, did not resist effectively. As a matter of fact, even today philosophy is unable to confront the biblical doctrine of the creation of the world by God. Philosophy moves within an anthropocentric context of reflection, while the Bible moves within a Theo-centric context. To the anthropological mind revelation poses the Theological mind, since Scripture begins with the story of creation with the words: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (2). Looked at from the Bible, the world is no longer regarded as self-evident existence; instead, it absolutely depends upon God's will and energy. And this means it was created post nihilum.

Of great importance for our discussion here is that, according to the revealed truth. God's creative activity follows his fatherhood so that his knowledge as Creator stems from his knowledge as the Father of his own Son, not the other way around. And it is this reality that the Church formulated into dogma at Nicea (325) stating that it believed "in one God, Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all visible and invisible things". Founded on its own experience and faith, recorded especially in the New Testament, this conviction of the Church confronted the risk of emanating from both, Hellenism and Judaism, which equally stressed and absolutized God's transcendence to a degree that even Judaism was guilty of a dualistic outlook with reference to God's relation to the world. With Judaism the Church believed in God's creative power. Nevertheless, this doctrine is onesided, stressing the absolute difference between created and uncreated, human and divine, world and God, and it runs the risk of being identified with the dualistic structure of Greek thought. This explains why it was adopted by the Gnostics of the second century and by Arianism in the fourth century, which denied the divinity of Jesus Christ and emphasized that there was a time when the Son of God was not ( ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν ) (3). As such the Son was not born of God's essence, but was made later by his will and energy like all other creatures. Needless to say that this idea had catalytic consequences for the doctrine of salvation. That is, if there was no essential bond between the Father and the Son. i.e. if Jesus Christ was not God too, he could in no way be the Savior of mankind. On the contrary, the Church, preaching the reality of the salvation in Christ relied entirely upon the revealed essential relation between him and God his Father, upon which she also formulated her doctrine about God's creative activity.

Indeed, the unity in substance between the Father and the Son, not broken by the incarnation, since at it the Son simply received to himself also the human nature, is not only the starting point for the knowledge of God's fatherhood, but of his creative quality as well. Only the Son, being of the same essence with the Father, can reveal him fully and accurately as he is in himself and in his relation to the world. In other words, the Son reveals the Triune God in Himself and in the Economy. It was in accordance with this reality that St. Athanasius stated that "it would be more godly and true to signify God from the Son and call him Father, than to name God from his works alone and call him Unoriginate " ( « Ἀγένητον » ) (4). The Son ' s timeless birth from the essence of God not only precedes the Father's creative activity in time, in absolute difference from his substance, but it also enlightens it. Indeed, if priority is given to God's knowledge from his works, in the context of his relationship between Creator and creature or Unoriginate ( « Ἀγένητον » ) and originate ( « γενητόν » ), we are forced to restrict ourselves to general and vague expressions about him in terms of the absolute difference existing between uncreated and created, because in this case we have no knowledge of God as he is in himself. That is to say, the knowledge of God from his works is not totally excluded, because "ever since the creation of the world his visible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in things that have been made" (5). But the difference between this kind of knowledge and the other one is that the latter, i.e. through the Son, provides accuracy to God's knowledge of his mode of existence in himself and in his relation to the world and thus places the knowledge from his works in its proper context. So, in the one case we have a knowledge of God from within, i.e. from the Son who, born of God's substance and being of the same being with the Father, knows and reveals him as he is in his essential being, and in the other case we have a knowledge of God from outside, i.e. from what is externally related to him.

Therefore the doctrine about God as Creator is governed by the doctrine about the essential relation between the Father and the Son and their common activity. The Church's formulation of it was fundamentally based upon the Prologue to St. John's Gospel and Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians and Hebrews. According to them, God creates everything through his Son and Word who "being eternally with God and being himself God," i.e. of the Father's essence, brings into being everything that exists outside of his being. Or to put it into simple terms, it is through his Son that God is the Creator of everything. This implies that if we try to get a knowledge of God from his works alone, we ignore the existence and the work of the Son and so side with philosophy. Crystal-clear is what St. Athanasius says again at this point: "He who calls God Father, signifies him from the Son, being well aware that, since there is a Son, it is of necessity through the Son that all things that have come into being were created. When they call him Unoriginate, they name him only from his works, and so they do not know the Son any more than the Greeks. But he who calls him Father, names him from his Word and, knowing the Word, acknowledges him to be the Maker of all, and understands that through him all things have come into being" (6). The absolute essential unity between the Father and the Son signifies that everything that the Father does, he does it in and through the Son, his Logos, and everything that the Son does is identical with what the Father does. The unity between the two, rooted in their nature, is also a unity of will and activity. Therefore creation is the work of the common activity of the Father and the Son, since the Father is never without his Son and Logos, and the Logos is never without God the Father (7). It is because of this that God is never revealed as Creator-God, but only as Father, and Christ is never revealed as Christ, but only as the Son of God, his Logos. And it is this unity in substance, will and energy which prevents the Son from being God's creature. And it is this unity also that makes the Son co-creator with the Father. Being "the image of the invisible God," the Son is "the firstborn-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the Church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (8).

Fatherhood, then, being God's unique and absolute personal quality or mode of existence, signifying his very being, indicates that God is not the cause of creation in the same way as he is the cause of his Son. Creaturehood is not equal to fatherhood. On the contrary, he is Creator because he is Father, and he cannot be Creator unless he is the Father of his eternal Son. In other words, he acts externally to his essence because he gave birth to his Son internally to his essence, or simply, he acts because he has a Son. Begetting is primary to God and creating is secondary. And while begetting is internal to God, creating is not, because he has always been Father, but he has not always been Creator. That is to say, creation does not coincide with God's very existence, but has a beginning, and as such is not eternal, as Greek philosophy maintained, but it is bound to time. It was brought into existence out of nothing (ex nihilo ), freely and externally to his essence, by his will, having therefore an absolute beginning and end, because it is different from God's essence which alone is eternal. And like God, the Son has no beginning and no end, because he is begotten within God's essence as God from God.

There is a radical difference in nature, then, between the Son and creation, and it is this difference which prevents human beings from falling into idolatry. This is what marks Christian (biblical) revelation off from pagan reflection, or theological reasoning from philosophical contemplation. The world is not eternal, but is bound to time, rooted in God's love for it. And although God had always the power to create, he did not use it simultaneously with his existence. Rather, it was brought into being when God decided to do so. In this sense creation is like the incarnation because although God had always the power to send his Son into the created world, he did so only when he saw it fitting for the benefit of mankind and the world. This being the case then, creation and incarnation are absolutely connected with the "when."

The above apply equally to the Holy Spirit in his relation to the Father. The Spirit precedes eternally from the Father, simultaneously with the begetting of the Son and therefore there is not a "single moment" in the Father's existence when the Spirit was not. The first person of the Trinity is as much the Father of the second person as he is the processor of the third person. Thus, the Son and the Spirit are both of the essence of the Father, and this means that there is no notion of subordination in God, but only a specific order signifying the mutual relationships of the three divine persons. What the Father is, this is also the Son and the Spirit in the Godhead. What marks them off from each other is each person's peculiarly personal attribute, i.e. the fatherhood of the first person, the sonship of the second, and the procession of the third. This order cannot be violated or altered, because any change necessitates the change of the attributes or roles. In other words, the Son can never be mentioned first, because he can never be Father, and so on. What must be stressed, however, is that the Son's and the Spirit's being of and with the Father is beyond beginning and time, since there is no "before" or "after" in the Godhead. The first person exists simultaneously with the other two, even though he is the cause and source of their life and existence, so that when we think of the Father we also think of the Son and the Holy Spirit. And it is as such that the Spirit is creative.

Indeed, sharing fully in the communicatio idiomatum and, therefore, in the creativity of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit is as much Creator as the other two persons. Where one person of the Trinity is, there also are the other two. And when one person acts, the other two persons also act with him, though each one in his own peculiar way. Thus, creation is the work of their collaboration. This is so because the will is common to all three persons, and it is this that creates. This means that the Father cannot be Creator unless the Son and the Spirit are also Creators. According to St. Basil, the Father is "the primordial cause of everything that has been made," the Son is "the operative cause," and the Holy Spirit is "the perfecting cause" (9). The undivided Trinity is the sole ultimate principle or cause of all things, and its activity appears as the double Economy of the Son and the Holy Spirit, in that the Son makes the Father's desire become real, while the Spirit achieves it in goodness and beauty, or the Son by calling creation to come to the Father, and the Spirit by leading it to him and so communicating perfection to it. In other words, the Father wishes, the Son reveals, and the Holy Spirit gives form to it. Therefore, we can say that creation is the work of the love of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, i.e. of the undivided activity of the Triune God, from Whom and through Whom and in Whom are all things (10), or to put it in the words of St. Athanasius, "the Father created all things through the Word and the Spirit" (11), and of St. Irenaeus, «Per Verbum et Spiritum suum omniafaciens et disponens et gubernans et omnibus esse praestans » (12) . No divine person creates alone, because divine energy cannot be divided and cannot be exclusively appropriated by any one of the three persons alone, and because divine essence cannot be divided or exclusively appropriated by anyone person alone. Whatever is done by the Trinity is done by all three persons together, though what is done is not three different things but one. In the Trinity we observe the opposite of what happens in humanity where the energy of each individual person is distinguished from that of the other persons. Gregory of Nyssa's statement is very characteristic about it: "Thus, since among men the action of each in the same pursuits is distinguished, they are properly called many, since each of them is separated from the others within his own context, according to the special characteristic of his operation. But in the case of the divine nature we do not similarly learn that the Father does anything by Himself in which the Son does not work conjointly, or again that the Son has any special operation apart from the Holy Spirit, but every operation which extends from God to the creation, and is named according to the variable conceptions of it, has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit" (13). This is why creation is ascribed in Scripture indifferently either to the Father (14), or to the Son (15), or to the Holy Spirit (16).

Along the same lines we can also understand the incarnation of the eternal Son into creation. Both, creation and incarnation make up the divine Economy whose end is man's perfection and " theosis ". And like creation, the incarnation too, begins with God, the Triune God, as its cause. If the incarnation had taken place regardless of the Father's will, then Christ and his work on earth would be completely meaningless for man. But such an idea is foreign to the Church's faith since the heart of the Gospel consists of God's love for man revealed in history in various ways and by various agents in the past and last of all, at the end of time, in his eternal Son (17) who became man in a real and not in an abstract sense (18). Through the incarnation of the Son the entire Godhead became subject to history, "for us and for our salvation", as the Council of Nicaea declared.

Rooted in the Godhead creation and incarnation are connected, as both stem from God's love for man before and after the fall, and both have a common goal, man's " theosis " and glory (19). As such the incarnation is disconnected from the fall and placed in God's original plan of creation. The idea that the incarnation of the Son was a mere remedy for man's failure to achieve his final goal underestimates its significance and dimensions for the whole creation. In the same way it is monstrous to accept the Thomistic notion that the Son of God would not have become man had man not fallen (20), because in this sense we would have to accept that God was tempted and blackmailed by Satan. If the incarnation is entirely connected with the fall, God's creative activity is deprived of any reason and purpose. In this case the incarnation would become a corrective movement imposed on God by the activity of a creature, Satan, and by man's disobedience. But it is impossible to admit that God was taken by surprise and that the incarnation of his Son was his "second thought" in the course of his plan for creation.

The first to deal with this issue was St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662) who, however, absolutized the idea that the incarnation belonged to God's original plan concerning creation (21), and that it was planned regardless of man's sin and fall. St. Maximus was followed by Duns Scotus and his followers in their debate with Thomas Aquinas and his followers. However, Scripture makes it plain that God was not taken by surprise by man's fall and that he did not start thinking how to restore him after it. This absolutely diminishes the conception of God's absolute knowledge. As his will to create the world and man is connected with his essence, so also his plan to save them was" a mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things" (22). Likewise Christ's redemptive work "was destined before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times" (23). There are no "first" and "second" thoughts in God, no successive plans and decisions, either with reference to creation or with reference to incarnation and redemption. Both plans, the creational and the incarnational, are original. God knew before man's creation that he would fall, hence it is only natural that he put forward immediately after his fall his plan to restore him, or better, to re-create him. Therefore, Christ's incarnation served the original purpose of creation by recapitulating it in the communion of the Holy Trinity, as Paul declared (24) and Irenaeus developed further. And though the incarnation belongs to God's original plan, together with creation, it nevertheless refers particularly to man's fall and his re-creation through the Son: "For if the flesh were not in a position to be saved, the Word of God would not have become flesh. And if the blood of the righteous were not to be required after, the Lord certainly would not have had blood" (25). Likewise St. Ambrose asks, Quae est cause incarnationis, nisi ut caw, quae peccaverat redimeretur (26). Similar thoughts are found in Chrysostom (27) and in Athanasius (28).

Therefore, the incarnation of the divine Logos belongs to the very same existence and life of God, although the Logos was not eternally incarnate, as the Father was not eternally Creator. Creation and incarnation are related to space and time, because they are both historical events. At his incarnation the Son, who was by nature eternally of the same uncreated nature with the Father and the Spirit, also received to himself the created human nature and became fully man in body and soul. In other words, in the one historical person of Jesus Christ we have at once the presence of Godhead and manhood (29) which means that through the incarnation the Godhead entered into history and appropriated manhood. This circumincession ( perichoresis ) of the two natures in the one person of Christ is clearly expressed in Christ's own statement: "I am from above... I am not of this world" (30) and the similar: "I and the Father are one" (31). At the same time, such statements indicate that the historical person of Jesus Christ is distinguished from the Father during his incarnation as it was before it. As the "head" of all creation, in whom and through whom and for whom all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible (32), he is the only one who can act for all as redeemer and Savior. Upon receiving the created human nature, he received to himself the whole creation and was united with it so that in this capacity "he gave himself as a ransom for all" (33) and "for many" (34) and so he became "the head of the body, the church" and thus "reconciled to himself all things" (35). It is because the Son is the "head" of all creation that he can act on behalf of all and instead of all. In Christ who is "the head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all", Church and creation are utterly united in the sense that the dimensions of the Church extend to all creation. In other words, it is the Church which is God's "new creation" destined to include in itself the entire created order. It is in the Church that the Son revealed "the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places... according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord" (36).

Thus Christ's redemptive work was fully vicarious and universal in its range. Both aspects are effective through the union of his divine person as Creator and Lord with creaturely nature. And the bond of unity that exists between man and creation, due to their creatureliness, extends the effects of Christ's incarnation and redemption to the whole creation. Now recapitulation became possible (37) and so Christ became the leader of the new humanity through which the re-creation of the old, fallen creation, is worked out. "Subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it" (38), i.e. man, fallen creation depends for its re-creation on him also (39). As Irenaeus commented, when the Evangelists preach the birth of Christ from Mary they mean the union of the Logos of God with his creature (40).

Like creation, incarnation too, is the work of the Holy Trinity. This truth is stressed throughout the New Testament as the Church's experience and faith, like, for example, in the story of the annunciation (41), or the story of Jesus' birth (42), of his baptism (43), or his preaching in the Synagogue of Nazareth ( Lk. 4,17-21), of his command to his disciples to baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Mt. 28,19), ect., while a number of Trinitarian formulae are scattered here and there witnessing to the Church's revelatory experience and faith (44). This evidence stresses that the message of the Gospel which was handed down by the apostles, is one in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit belong together to the fundamental experience and faith of the Church as it is rooted in the person of Christ and his redemptive work. The same trinitarian experience and faith is subsequently recorded in numerous early Church documents (45). All these and all similar statements stem from a " regula fidei ; "which goes back to the revelatory events as such and the experience of the first ecclesial community and tell that the one being of God cannot be properly understood apart from a doctrine of the Trinity at work in the incarnation. Its doctrinal formulation at a later time made explicit what was already implicit in the New Testament as the fundamental deposit of the experience and faith of the apostolic community and Church. Along these lines the use of the term homoousios expressed and clarified the essential relation of the Son and the Spirit to the Father upon which the message of the Gospel rested. In other words, the term homoousios stressed that the incarnational and saving revelation of the Godhead as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is traced back to what the Godhead is in Himself in His eternal existence. This truth made evident that the Godhood of the incarnate Son entailed the Godhood of the Holy Spirit and explains why the consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father rests upon the consubstantiality of the Son to the Father. Therefore, the validity and saving effectiveness of the Gospel rest not only upon the oneness in essence between the incarnate Son and the Father, but upon the oneness in essence of the Spirit, the Son and the Father, because God is given to the world through the Son in the Holy Spirit. As St. Athanasius explained, "the Holy and blessed Trinity is invisible and one in himself. When mention is made of the Father, there is included also his Word and the Spirit who is in the Son. If the Son is named, the Father is in the Son, and the Spirit is not outside the Word. For there is from the Father one grace which is fulfilled through the Son in the Holy Spirit; and there is one divine nature and one God 'who is over all and through all and in all" (46). Since there is one essence and one energy of the Holy Trinity, the activities of the Son and the Spirit are not regarded of a lesser degree than that of the Father, because they are all activities in the one God and from the one God. The doctrine about each particular person, i.e. Theology, Christology and Pneumatology, though not entirely legitimate, stems from and rests upon the doctrine of the one Triune God. For when we think about the incarnation of the Son, we automatically think of the Father whose Son is the Son and whose Spirit is the Holy Spirit who made the incarnation possible (47). Similarly when we think of the activity of the Holy Spirit, we at once bear in mind the Father who sends him and the Son through whom he comes to us.

Summing up we may say that the Church's doctrine about God is spherical, in order to render the whole truth about him. Monisms distort the reality about him and are contrary to revealed truth which forms the content of faith. Accordingly, Theo-logia, i.e. the "word" about God, must of necessity be Trinitarian, expressing that fact that the Father-God of creation is the same with the Son-God of redemption and the Spirit-God of personal salvation.

In this respect the oneness in essence between the three divine persons entails their common activity outside their essence. The result of this activity is described as Economy. Thus, creation, incarnation, and redemption are the work of a common activity, each person contributing a particular role. It is the Triune God's eternal love and care for man, made in His image, that brought creation into being and incarnation and redemption into effect. In the creation story of Genesis (1-3) it is clear that the world is "anthropocentrism", created by God in order to form the appropriate environment within which man, created last and the sole creature in God's image and likeness, was to progress from the state of blessedness to that of perfection and theosis . Creation as a whole forms a unity due to its creaturely essence, in spite the fact that to each creature "God gives a body, as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed, its own body. For not all flesh is alike, but there is one kind for men, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are celestial bodies and there are terrestial bodies" (48). Nevertheless, there exists a radical difference between man and the rest of creation, because man alone (male and female) is created in God's image and likeness (49). Indeed, it is because of this that man was given by God "to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth" (50). The whole creation is placed at man's disposal "to till it and keep it" (51). However, having sinned and fallen under the power of Satan, man subjected both himself, and the whole creation to decay and futility (52). In other words, it is man alone who is responsible for the conditions of "bondage and decay" which prevailed in creation after the fall, conditions foreign to God's original plan and will. Therefore, creation will be redeemed and set free from this state only when men become again "children of God" (53), "for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God", because they have received "the spirit of sonship in whom we call the Father 'Abba'. It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (54).

Therefore, man's dominion over creation, before and after the fall, determines the way by which fallen creation as a whole could be recreated. This way consists in God's activity on the human level where he confronts Satan, "the ruler of this world" (55) and casts him out (56). In other words, it is in the form of man (57) that the Son of God became incarnate and began the work of re-creation. The Son's presence in humanity resulted in the creation of the Church as a historical entity consisting of all those who accept Jesus Christ as the incarnate eternal Son of God: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us... and from his fullness have we all received" (58), because with his incarnation, to "all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (59). Hence, the incarnation of the Son is an ecclesial event experienced by all those who "have beheld his glory, as a glory of the only Son from the Father" (60). Those who believe in him as the only Son from the Father are united with him through his human nature into one body, "his body, which is the Church" (61), and so they become the leaven which works out the redemption of the whole creation.

NOTES

1. Acts 17,19-20. 136

2. Gen. 1,1.

3. Athanasius, Contra Arianos , 1,11.

4. Contra Arianos, I, 34.

5. Rom. 1, 20.138.

6. Contra Arianos, I, 3.

7. John 1,1.

8. John5,17-19.Heb.1,2-3a. Col. 1, 15-19.

9. Cf. De Spiritu Sancto, VI, 38 : "... ἐννόησόν μοι τήν προκαταρκτικήν αἰτίαν τῶν γινομένων, τόν Πατέρα· τήν δημιουργικήν, τόν Υἱόν · τήν τελειωτικήν, τό Πνεῦμα · ὥστε βουλήματι μέν τοῦ Πατρός … ὑπάρχειν, ἐνεργείᾳ δε τοῦ Υἱοῦ εἰς τ ό εἶναι τοῦ παράγεσθαι, παρουσίᾳ δε τοῦ Πνεύματος τελειοῦσθαι … Ἀρχή γάρ τῶν ὄντων μία, δι ' Υἱοῦ δημιουργοῦσα και τελειοῦσα ἐν Πνεύματι. Καί οὔτε ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ τά πάντα ἐν πᾶσιν ἐνεργῶν ( Α΄Κορ. 12, 6), ἀτελῆ ἔχει τήν ἐνέργειαν · οὔτε ὁ Υἱός ἐλλιπῆ τήν δημιουργίαν, μη τελειουμένην διά τοῦ Πνεύματος … Τρία τοίνυν νοεῖς, τόν προστάσσοντα Κύριον, τόν δημιουργοῦντα Λόγον, τό στερεοῦν τό Πνεῦμα ». Cf. Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. XXXVIII. Gregory of Nyssa, Quod non sint tres dii , PG 45, 125. Hipollytus, Contra Noeti , VIII, 2, 6, 167.

10. 2 Cor. 8,6. Rom. 11,36.

11. Ad Serap. 3,5.

12. Adv.Haer.X , 22, 1 .

13. Quod non sin tres dii, PG 45,125.

14. Cf. Lk. 10,27. Acts 4,24. XCor . 8,6.

15.Cf. John 1,2-3. I Cor . 8,6. Heb. 1,2; 10-12. 3,3-4.

16. Job 33,4. Ps. 32,6.

17. Heb. 1.1-2.

l8 .Cf.Heb. 2,14;17.10,5-10. Ps.39.7-9a.

19. Rom. 8,30.

20. Cf. Thomas Aquinas , Summa Theologica, Ilia, qu.I : "si homo non peccasset, Deus incarnatus non fuisset ".

21. Cf. Questiones ad Thalassium , PG 90,317;621;642. Ambiguorum Liber, PG 91,1097; 1305f ; 1308.

22. Eph. 3,9.

23. I Pet. 1,20. Cf.Eph . 1,4, Rev. 13,8. Col. 1,26.Jude25.

24. Eph. 1,3-14. Col. 1,12-20.

25. Si enim haheret caro salvari, nequaquam Verbum Dei carofactum esset. Et si non haberet sanquis justorum inquiri, nequaquam sanguinem habuisset Dominus. Adv . Haer. V,XIV, 1.

26. De incarn. 6, 56.

27. In . Gen. Hom. 3,4.

28. De incarn. 4. Contra Arianos, II, 54, etc.

29. 2 Cor. 5,19.

30. John 8,23.

31. John 10,30.

32. Col. 1,15-16.

33. I Tim. 2,6.

34. Mk. 10,45.

35. Col. 1,18-20.

36. Eph. 3,9-11. Col. 1,26-27.2,2b-10.

37. Eph. 1.1,10.

38. Rom. 8,20.

39. Cf. I Cor. l5,22;47;48. Rom. 5,12-21. 2Cor. 5,17. Gal. 6,15. Eph. 2,15. 4,24. Heb. 8,8-12. etc.

40. Adv. Haer. IV 23,11.

41. Cf. Didache (7,1), Ignatius (Ad. Magn. 13,1 ), Polycarp (Martyr. 14,3), Justin ( Apol. 1,6,13,61,65). Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. I,2ff), and many others.

42. Lk .11,26-38.

43. Mt . 1.18-25. Lk . 2,1-7.

44. Mt. 3, 13-17. Mk. 1,9-11.Lk. 3, 21-22. Cf. John 1,29-34.

45. Cf. Acts 2,32f. I Cor. 12,4-6. 2Cor 13,14. I Pet.1,2.2. Thes. 2,13f. Eph. 2, 18.4,4-6.

46. Lk . 1,26ff.

47 . Eph. 4,6. Ad. Serap. I,14.

48. I Cor. 15,38-40.

49. Gen. 1,26-27.

50. Gen. 1,28.

51. Gen. 2,15.

52 . Rom. 8,19ff.

53. Rom. 8, 19; 21.

54. Rom. 8, 14-17.Cf. Gal. 4,4-7.

55. John 2,31 . Cf. also 16, 11, 14, 30 . Matth. 9, 34. 12, 24 . Mk. 3,22 .Lk. 11,15 .Gal. 1,4. Eph. 2,2 etc.

56. Cf. 1 John 4,4.

57. Phil . 2,7-8. Heb. 2,14; 17 etc.

58 . John 1, l4;16.

59. John 1, 1 2.

60. John 1,14. Cf. 1 John 1,1 -3.

61. Col. 1, 24. Cf. also 1 , 18 .Eph. 1, 23. 5, 23 etc., Rom. 6,l ff.