Question 228. Whether it is fittingly said: What will be born from you holy will be called Son of God?

Latin (Borgnet)English

p. 319

QUAESTIO CCXXVIII. An congrue dicatur: Quod nascetur ex te sanctum, vocabitur Filius Dei?

Post haec quaeritur de hoc quod sequitur: Quod nascetur ex te sanctum, vocabitur Filius Dei ¹.

1. Cum enim natura non nascatur, sed persona, videtur quod dixisse debuisset: Qui ex te nascetur.

2. Item, Etiam oratio videtur incongrua, Filius est sanctum.

3. Item, Filius Dei est commune multis.

Solutio. Quod bene solvit Bernardus: "Ut quid enim ita simpliciter sanctum et absque additamento? Credo quia non habuit quid proprie digneve nominaret illud eximium, illud magnificum, illud reverendum, quod de purissima videlicet Virginis carne cum sua anima unico Patri erat uniendum. Si diceret, sancta caro, vel sanctus homo, vel sanctus infans, quidquid tale poneret, parum sibi dixisse videretur. Posuit ergo indefinite sanctum: quia quidquid illud sit, quod Virgo genuit, sanctum procul dubio ac singulariter sanctum fuit, et per Spiritus sanctificationem, et per Verbi assumptionem."

QUESTION 228. Whether it is fittingly said: What will be born from you holy will be called Son of God?

After these things inquiry is made concerning this which follows: What will be born from you holy will be called Son of God ¹.

1. For since a nature is not born, but a person, it seems that he ought to have said: He who will be born from you.

2. Likewise, the expression also seems incongruous: The Son is a holy thing.

3. Likewise, Son of God is common to many.

Solution. Bernard solves this well: "For why so simply holy and without addition? I believe because he did not have something by which he could properly and worthily name that exceptional, that magnificent, that reverend thing which, namely from the most pure flesh of the Virgin with its soul, was to be united to the only Father. If he said holy flesh, or holy man, or holy infant, whatever such thing he might put, he would seem to himself to have said too little. Therefore he put holy indefinitely, because whatever that is which the Virgin bore, it was holy without doubt and singularly holy, both through the sanctification of the Spirit and through the assumption by the Word."

Notes

Luke 1:35. (Luc. I, 35.) ↩