Section CLI

Therefore those altogether overturn and utterly undermine the rationale of the divine counsel and the divine οἰκονομία in Christ and through Christ who a) teach that there was some time when God neglected the care of the human race and did not provide with paternal piety for the wounds inflicted upon it. For the Lord, who made us, remade us from the beginning through all the things which he worked, and he was always preparing the mysteries of our salvation, that is, of human reparation.

Those who b) teach that the primitive stain was so virulent and fatal that it introduced a necessity of perishing. For the divine artificer always so had mercy upon his work, although depraved and corrupted, that he never wholly withdrew from it the ability to repair the heavenly likeness.

Those who c) teach that the blood of the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world did not always profit all. For it was poured out for the impious and offered for all those whom the Only-begotten first expressed according to his own image and breathing likeness.

Those who d) teach that so great a ruin flowed into the human race from the original separation from God that afterward there were some who could not aspire to divine fellowship.

For Christ continued the immense interval by which mortal things had been separated from divine things by his mediation, common to either side, like a certain bridge, so to speak.

Finally, those who e) teach that there once were—or that even now some are found—for whom the kingdom of heaven ought to be considered closed by a supreme and absolute destination. For Christ is life to all, way to all, gate to all; he closes his kingdoms to no one, for he even permits violence to be brought upon them.

And in very truth, what cause was present to the Only-begotten Son of God, that he should unite our mortality to himself? Ambrose responds¹:

Therefore he received from us what he might offer as his own for us, so that he might redeem us from what was ours and confer upon us from what was his, by divine largess, what was not ours. Therefore according to our nature he offered himself, so that he might work beyond our nature. From what is ours is the sacrifice; from what is his is the reward. And you will find many things in the same one both according to nature and beyond nature. For according to the condition of the body he was in the womb, was born, was suckled, was placed in a manger; but beyond the condition of nature a Virgin conceived, a Virgin gave birth, so that you might believe that he was God, who was renewing nature, and that he was man, who was born according to nature from man.

And immediately afterward²:

You have learned, therefore, that he offered a sacrifice from what was ours. For what was the cause of the Incarnation, unless that the flesh which had sinned might through itself be redeemed? Therefore that which had sinned is that which was redeemed. Consequently, the divinity of the Word was not immolated, because the divinity of the Word had not sinned; and therefore the nature of the Word was not converted into the nature of flesh, because divinity immune from sin ought not to offer itself for a sin which it had not committed. For Christ offered in himself that which he put on, and he put on that which he did not have before. Therefore he did not put on the divinity of his own divinity, in whom was the fullness of eternal divinity; but he assumed flesh, so that he might strip off the spoil of the flesh and in himself crucify the spoils of the devil and raise the trophies of power.

With these agree the things which he writes when comparing Christ with Aaron³:

Aaron indeed once stood in their midst⁴, setting himself in the way so that death would not pass from the corpses of the dead to the ranks of the living. But this one, as the Word, always stands in each one, whom we do not see, separating within us the rational virtues from the corpses of lethal passions and pestilential thoughts. This one stands⁵, as he who came into this world that he might blunt the sting of death, obstruct its devouring maw, give to the living the eternity of grace, and grant resurrection to the dead.

Nor are those things discordant⁶ in which he compares the innocent first parents with their depraved offspring and describes the divinely supplied remedy, saying:

But if that first man, who was speaking with God while placed in paradise⁷, could fall so easily—created from virgin earth, which at its recent origin had been formed and created at the word of God, not yet congealed with the blood of parricide and slaughter, not yet polluted by crimes and dishonor, our flesh not yet condemned and subject to the curse of a guilty inheritance—how much more easily afterward did the slippery road to sin bring a greater precipice upon the human race, when through the successive turns of generation something worse succeeded something more tolerable? For⁸, if a magnet stone has so great a force of nature that it draws iron to itself and transfuses itself into its species, in such a way that, when many who desire to make trial bring several iron rings to that stone, it holds all in an equal manner; and then, if to the ring to which the stone adheres you bring another ring, and again in order place others beneath each, although the force of nature from that stone penetrates into all in order—

—nevertheless it binds the former with a more vehement bond and the latter with a more relaxed one; how much more did the condition and nature of the human race fall from a purer state into a worse one when it touched what was more wicked? For if nature is diminished through those species which are not capable of guilt, how much more is its power blunted through souls and members polluted by the stain of crimes? Hence, because malice had increased and innocence had been abolished, there was none who did good⁹, there was not even one: the Lord came, who would reform the grace of nature, indeed would increase it, so that¹⁰ where sin abounded, grace might superabound.

For the man¹¹:

Whom the Lord protected as his own work and, as good parent and author, did not abandon, he cherished after creation to this extent: that he redeemed him after he had been disowned, received him after he had been cast out, and raised him from the dead through the Passion of his Only-begotten Son. God, therefore, is the author of man; and the good worker loves his own work, nor does the good father abandon him whom, even as a rich householder, he redeemed with the wealth of his own inheritance.