The Divine Lamp

Now the whole of this new birth (of the Second Adam) was prefigured, as was the case in all other instances, in ancient type; the Lord being born as man by a dispensation in which a virgin was the medium. The earth was still in a virgin state, wrought as yet by no human labor, with no seed as yet cast into its furrows, when we are told God made man out of it into a living soul. As, then, the first Adam is introduced to us, it is a just inference that the second Adam likewise, as the apostle has told us, was formed by God into a quickening spirit out of the ground–in other words, out of flesh as yet unstained by any human generation. But that I may not lose the opportunity of supporting my argument from the name of Adam, why, I ask, is Christ called Adam by the apostle, unless it be that, as man, he was of the earthly virgin? And reason, too here maintains the same conclusion: because it was by a rival operation that God recovered his own image and likeness, of which he had been robbed by the devil. For it was while Eve was yet a virgin that the word crept in, which was the framer of death. Into a virgin, in like manner, must be introduced the Word of God who was the builder up of life: so that by that same sex from which had come our ruin, might also come our recovery and salvation. Eve had believed the serpent, Mary believed Gabriel. The fault which the one committed by believing, the other by believing blotted out. But it might be said, Eve conceived nothing in her womb from the devil’s word. Nay, but she did conceive; for the Devil’s word came to her as seed, that she might conceive as an outcast; and bring forth in sorrow. She gave birth, in fact, to a fratricidal devil; while Mary, on the other hand, bore him who one day was to save Israel, his own brother after the flesh and the murderer of himself. God sent down therefore into the Virgin’s womb his Word to be our true brother, who should blot out the memory of that evil brother. Hence it was necessary that Christ should come forth for the salvation of man in that condition (of flesh) into which man had entered ever since his condemnation.

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