...Christ is both man and God, compounded of both natures, that He might be a Mediator between us and the Father. In Jeremiah: "And He is man, and who shall know Him? Also in Numbers: "A Star shall arise out of Jacob, and a man shall rise up from Israel."--from Treatise XII

Moreover, God had previously foretold that it would happen, that as the ages passed on, and the end of the world was near at hand, God would gather to Himself from every nation, and people, and place, worshippers much better in obedience and stronger in faith, who would draw from the divine gift that mercy which the Jews had received and lost by despising their religious ordinances. Therefore of this mercy and grace the Word and Son of God is sent as the dispenser and master, who by all the prophets of old was announced as the enlightener and teacher of the human race. He is the power of God, He is the reason, He is His wisdom and glory; He enters into a virgin; being the holy Spirit, He is endued with flesh; God is mingled with man. This is our God, this is Christ, who, as the mediator of the two, puts on man that He may lead them to the Father. What man is, Christ was willing to be, that man also may be what Christ is.
--from Treatise VI

...although from the beginning He had been the Son of God, yet He had to be begotten again according to the flesh.

In the second Psalm: "The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I will give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance, and the bounds of the earth for Thy possession." Also in the Gospel according to Luke: "And it came to pass, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and she was filled with the Holy Ghost, and she cried out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Also Paul to the Galatians: "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent His Son, horn of a woman." Also in the Epistle of John: "Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. But whosoever denies that He is come in the flesh is not of God, but is of the spirit of Antichrist."--from Treatise XII

The prophet takes us to the desert – the wilderness. Life is on the edge. Survival is paramount. Jackals, lions, and ravenous beasts survive, preying on weaker creatures. The heat of the day slows us to a crawl. Shade from the blazing sun is scarce. Water is the missing ingredient – the source of life. The line between life and death is very thin.

Weak creatures, how shall we be saved from the beasts and the sun and the lack of life-giving water? Is there a way? The LORD’s prophet proclaims a day coming when the desert will blossom and be filled with waters and streams. The dry land itself shall break forth in rejoicing. A great highway shall run through the desert. No wild beasts shall threaten the traveler. It shall be called the Holy Way, for only God’s people, the redeemed shall walk there. This Holy Highway leads to Zion, the city of our God, where sorrow and sighing are no more.

The redeemed of the LORD shall come to Zion with singing and everlasting joy. That which the prophet foretold has come to pass and shall surely come to pass. He spoke Truth. Jesus is the Way out of the desert and the source of Life itself. His Way is the Way of the Cross. The death of the desert is no more. Our safe journey to the Heavenly City is assured. No wonder the redeemed leap and sing for joy!

Therefore, following the holy Fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the Fathers has handed down to us.

The Incarnation lies at the heart of the gospel. Any attempt to redefine it is an attempt to replace Christianity with another religion and Jesus with another Christ. For if Jesus Christ is not truly human, then we have in Him no Mediator or Substitute. If He is not a divine Person, then His death was mere martyrdom and no help or value to us who stand in need of atonement. In either case, His salvation is inadequate. We must find another Savior, one more relevant and useful. If Jesus Christ is a man who became God, then other men can become God. Salvation becomes a matter of works, of moral effort or magical manipulation, and its goal is deification. If Christ's two natures are confused or if one is absorbed into the other, then there is no final distinction between Creator and creature. Satan was right: God is fundamentally no different from man, and we are all potentially or actually divine. "Who will play God?" becomes a legitimate question.

The Christology of Chalcedon recognizes an infinite gulf between the being of God and that of His creatures. Man cannot become God; God became a man exactly once, and even there, in the Person of Christ, there is no mixture or confusion of being. Deity remains deity; humanity remains humanity. The political and sociological implications of this doctrine are profound...

Furthermore, the Incarnation means a good creation. The Son of God took to Himself a body "and was united with the Dust and made it glorious forever." He did not abhor the Virgin's womb, nor does He abhor our humanity, our creatureliness. Whereas every other religion tries to rescue man from creation and history, Biblical Christianity says that God came into His creation and united Himself with it forever.

There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first possible and then impossible, even Jesus Christ our Lord. --from the Epistle to the Ephesians

For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. --from the Epistle to the Ephesians

I glorify God, even Jesus Christ, who has given you such wisdom. For I have observed that ye are perfected in an immoveable faith, as if ye were nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, both in the flesh and in the spirit, and are established in love through the blood of Christ, being fully persuaded with respect to our Lord, that He was truly of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Son of God according to the will and power of God; that He was truly born of a virgin, was baptized by John, in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by Him; and was truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, nailed[to the cross] for us in His flesh. Of this fruit we are by His divinely-blessed passion, that He might set up a standard s for all ages, through His resurrection, to all His holy and faithful[followers], whether among Jews or Gentiles, in the one body of His Church. --from the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans

For He took upon Him the flesh in which we have sinned that by wearing our flesh He might forgive sins; a flesh which He shares with us by wearing it, not by sinning in it. He blotted out through death the sentence of death, that by a new creation of our race in Himself He might sweep away the penalty appointed by the former Law. He let them nail Him to the cross that He might nail to the curse of the cross and abolish all the curses to which the world is condemned. He suffered as man to the utmost that He might put powers to shame. For Scripture had foretold that He Who is God should die; that the victory and triumph of them that trust in Him lay in the fact that He, Who is immortal and cannot be overcome by death, was to die that mortals might gain eternity. These deeds of God, wrought in a manner beyond our comprehension, cannot, I repeat, be understood by our natural faculties, for the work of the Infinite and Eternal can only be grasped by an infinite intelligence. Hence, just as the truths that God became man, that the Immortal died, that the Eternal was buried, do not belong to the rational order but are an unique work of power, so on the other hand it is an effect not of intellect but of omnipotence that He Who is man is also God, that He Who died is immortal, that He Who was buried is eternal. We, then, are raised together by God in Christ through His death.

Do you wish then to know in what manner the Word of God, who was again the Son of God, as He was of old the Word, communicated His revelations to the blessed prophets in former times? Well, as the Word shows His compassion and His denial of all respect of persons by all the saints, He enlightens them and adapts them to that which is advantageous for us, like a skilful physician, understanding the weakness of men. And the ignorant He loves to teach, and the erring He turns again to His own true way. And by those who live by faith He is easily found; and to those of pure eye and holy heart, who desire to knock at the door, He opens immediately. For He casts away none of His servants as unworthy of the divine mysteries. He does not esteem the rich man more highly than the poor, nor does He despise the poor man for his poverty. He does not disdain the barbarian, nor does He set the eunuch aside as no man. He does not hate the female on account of the woman's act of disobedience in the beginning, nor does He reject the male on account of the man's transgression. But He seeks all, and desires to save all, wishing to make all the children of God, and calling all the saints unto one perfect man. For there is also one Son (or Servant) of God, by whom we too, receiving the regeneration through the Holy Spirit, desire to come all unto one perfect and heavenly man.

For whereas the Word of God was without flesh, He took upon Himself the holy flesh by the holy Virgin, and prepared a robe which He wove for Himself, like a bridegroom, in the sufferings of the cross, in order that by uniting His own power with our mortal body, and by mixing the incorruptible with the corruptible, and the strong with the weak, He might save perishing man.

The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father, took man's nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.

The Article then affirms that Jesus was born of a Virgin. Since He is the eternal Son of God, His birth in Bethlehem at a particular time in history was not the beginning of His exist­ence but only his entry into human life. From the Virgin Mary He received His human nature without the intervention of a human father. Various attempts have been made to cast doubts on this belief, mainly on the grounds that it is not well authenticated in the New Testament, and may have been derived from similar legends in other religions. But the silence of St. Mark and St. Paul may be due to natural reticence to discuss such an intimate matter. Possible allusions to it have been found in three of the Gospels. St. Luke has been proved to be an accurate writer, and it is incredible that he should have deliberately given a false account of the Nativity after saying that he had accurately traced all things from the very first, and wrote ‘that thou mightest know the certainty of those things’. The alleged parallels in other religions are not so impressive when examined. Even though human life normally comes into existence by the union of male and female, it does not follow that the Son of God (Who existed before Creation) could enter human life only by means of such a union. Belief in the Virgin Birth was widely accepted by the time of Ignatius (c. A.D. 110) and ‘everything we know of the dogmatics of the early part of the 2nd century agrees with the belief that at that period the virginity of Mary was a part of the formulated Christian belief.’ In addition to the evidence of Ignatius and the Gospel allusions already mention­ed, the clause on the supernatural birth is found in the earliest form of the Apostles’ Creed – the Old Roman Creed – which was probably a statement of belief required of candidates for Baptism and dates from about the middle of the second century.

In this way there were joined in the Person of Christ two natures, the human derived from the Virgin Mother and the divine by the action of the Spirit; it was an indissoluble union; the natures were ‘never to be divided’. With this conjunction of the divine and human the final work of redemption has begun; now the Seed of the woman is about to bruise the serpent’s head. The Incarnation is the essential condition of salvation. Only by uniting Himself with the object of redemption, humanity, could the Redeemer effect His purpose. And further, although St. Paul thinks of Christ primarily as Saviour, He is also regarded as Consummator; the entire creation, ‘the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth’, is to be summed up in Him. In what way is this conceivable except by His Incarnation?

For if man's creation, his present condition, and future hope are all bound up with the divine grace which is Christ, it will not do to think of Christ as a good man or a very good man, an inspired man or a very inspired man, an important or a very important example of divine grace. It will not do to explain the Incarnation as a union of wills dependent upon the essentially transitory and fragile responsiveness of the human subject in Christ. Grace cannot depend upon anything, least of all upon the waverings of the best even of human wills. Grace must be unconditional and the Incarnation a binding of the Son of God with man in a union stronger than, because more basic than, any human act or choice.