The Holy Fathers observe that if in the beginning God Himself could take only from Adam another human subject, why wouldn't He be able to take from a woman not a human subject, but only a human nature for Himself as subject? But if then He took in an instant a human subject from Adam--for man needed from the beginning a dialogue partner--now God the Word goes through the entire formation process of His nature, of His formation as man, as a new dialogue partner for man, with the exception of the human initiative for the birth. A human being could only form another human subject out of the immanent human line. St. Maximus the Confessor observes that through this mode of birth it is not only God Who accepts temporality, which does not contradict His eternity, but also the human nature is restored to its original state, being overwhelmed by the divine Spirit through the fortification of the human spirit. For Christ as man comes into existence like Adam, through an act of divine creation, thus unstained with the sin of sensual pleasure. Christ remains in continuity with Adam's descendants as well, who came into existence through natural birth.
In Christ's case, the work of the Holy Spirit is not only a breathing of life as with the creation of the first man. In that case man, as the image of the Logos and as partner in the dialogue with Him, becomes a subject through his strengthening in the divine foundation of existence, or in the divine Word. In the beginning this fact had only the character of a grace, of an intimate relationship with God in which there was the power of his Personal strengthening. This time, human nature is hypostasized in the Word of God Himself through the work of the Holy Spirit. In the case of Adam's descendants, the work of the Holy Spirit at their birth and in their life has only the effect of their formation and strengthening as proper persons, as partners in the dialogue with the Logos. In Christ's case, the very Son of God becomes the subject of human nature through the work of the Holy Spirit. At the constitution of Christ, the divine Spirit as breathing of life is no longer communicated only in part, but wholly, and at the formation of the soul, or of the entire man as image of Christ, the same Spirit is not met by a human initiative that bears in itself the stain of passion. Now it is only the Holy Spirit Who works in the plenitude of His operation. That is why this plenitude of the Spirit working from within the Word of God Who becomes man has a much greater effect than the constitution and strengthening of man as hypostasis per se.
In Christ's case, the breathing of the Spirit does not only effectuate the establishing of a dialogue between man and the Word as between two subjects from unequal planes, but Christ Himself becomes a human partner in the dialogue with God, remaining at the same time the divine partner in this dialogue. If in the case of other human persons, human nature is constituted as hypostasis per se in a relationship with the Hypostasis of the Word, in Christ's case human nature receives God the Word as a direct hypostatic foundation, or as a mode of its subsistence. Not only is the human nature strengthened in the relationship with the divine Word as if with a distinct hypostasis, but it is also received within the hypostatic unity of the divine Word. The dialogue between man and God is taken over by the Son of God Himself.
We mentioned above that Christ remains in a continuity of nature with Adam's descendants. That is why He does not create His human nature out of nothing like at the beginning of creation, but from the Virgin Mary. Thus Christ assumes the nature of Adam's descendants in order to renew it from within. By this He offers a positive appreciation of the way in which they come into existence through birth. He does not eliminate this birth of other human beings but, once they come into existence, He purifies them of what was added to it as sin.
Thus, through His way of coming into existence as man, Christ unites the mode of coming into existence through creation with that of coming into existence through birth. In a way, even Adam's descendants united the mode of their coming into existence through birth with that of coming into existence through creation. For all were born on the basis of their forefathers' creation, and along with them they all received their soul as image of the Word through God's breathing of life, that is to say, through the communication of the Holy Spirit. Together with the soul they also received their placement in connection with God, in a dialogical relation with God the Word.
Christ takes from Adam through creation and from the complete breathing of the Spirit as a Person "the image of God," or His image; He takes from Adam's descendants through birth the blameless passions and the corruptibility as a result of sin, but not sin itself, for His birth is more closely united with Adam's creation and with the operation of the Holy Spirit; Adam, through his origin from God, did not incur sin.
The Holy Spirit, working in this way and contributing as a Person to the realization of the act through which the Son of God becomes the Hypostasis of the human nature, also works upon her who thus becomes Christ's Mother, as does the Word Himself, Who forms His human nature out of her as a Person. But the Spirit's efficacious acting upon someone is in proportion to the purity or to the availability of the one upon whom He works. For purity means unreduced availability for God; it means integral commitment to the dialogue with God in the role of Him Who responds and offers Himself. The Mother of the Lord offers herself fully to the Word, not only by her word, but by putting herself completely at His disposal. Thus the Spirit can entirely overwhelm the natural law of birth in her. He who gives in to sensual pleasure is not pure, is not fully available for God, for the Word, and is not in a state of spiritual lucidity and of responsibility before God. In such a person the power of the Spirit cannot overwhelm the natural law of birth. The Word of God cannot Himself form His body in a sovereign way, but in this case the body is formed through the law of nature and is stamped with sensual pleasure from the beginning of its formation. The Hypostasis of the Word cannot fully appropriate the body that is formed in such a way, and the body does not find its supreme fulfillment or the complete personalization in the Hypostasis of the Word, but remains partly not free, incompletely personalized and incompletely available for spirit.
The person who does not do everything, on his part, for purity, cannot be sanctified and overwhelmed by the Spirit. He who does not offer himself entirely to God in a complete liberation from passions cannot receive God as a Person in order to find complete personalization in God. Leontius of Byzantium observes that the mothers of other prophets were also sanctified by the Spirit, and through this so were the prophets sanctified within their wombs (Jeremiah, John the Baptist, etc.) "But only the Birthgiver of God is particularly the one who had the Spirit Himself, Who overshadowed and dwelt within her, and she gave birth to the one conceived as the Hypostasis of the body taken from her. For she did not give birth to someone sanctified, but to the Holy One Who, by being born of her, also sanctified her."
Through the descent of Christ as Hypostasis within her and as He began to form the body from her with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit as a whole Person, her body, which was kept by her in the purity of virginity and in the purity of total availability for God, is cleansed also of the original sin, so that the divine Hypostasis may not take His Body from a body still under this sin and under the natural law of birth in sensual pleasure.
That is why the Mother of Him Who formed His human nature from her, and upon whom He could work for the enhypostatization in Himself, as in God the Word, of the human nature that was being formed in her, had to be a virgin before conception, during conception, and at His birth. Mary's identity as Birthgiver of God and her virginity go hand in hand. If such a miracle happened to her, it was impossible for her not to remain afterwards completely dedicated to God, namely a virgin. The one who held in her arms the Son of God as man and who partook of His purity, as she partook of the liberation from the original sin in the moment of His dwelling within her, could not remain but a virgin at His conception as man.
If the Virgin Mary was able, through her purity, to bring a contribution to the Incarnation of the Son of God as man, to His assuming the human nature in Himself as Hypostasis, this is due to the fact that she alone fulfilled a power that God from the beginning "has planted in man against sin." Through this "she covered the whole evil of men and showed them worthy of union with God and the earth worthy of God's walking on it." She, too, had the original sin, but in and through her "the human being showed vigorously the power implanted in him against sin, avoiding all sin from the beginning until the end through attentive thought, correct decision, and greatness of wisdom." "Through her beauty she showed God the common beauty of human nature" and she "moved Him toward love for humans." Properly speaking, she completely opened herself to God, and thus she was united with Him even before He perfected His union with her by forming His human nature out of hers. "Through her deeds she showed Him whom she later was to clothe with a body from her own body and thus to present Him to the eyes of all." Humanity contributed, through her, to the "fullness of the time" of which St. Paul speaks, thus becoming apt for this insertion of God among the human persons through the assuming of our nature in His Hypostasis in view of its deification.
Nevertheless, His birth from a woman at this "fullness of the time" occurred under the law to redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption (cf. Gal. 4:4-6). Namely, the Son of God became man not only through creation, but also through birth, thus taking from our nature the innocent passions and the corruptibility resulting from sin, but without the sin. This has placed Him under the law of these consequences in order to overcome them and to liberate all His brothers and sisters under the law, or rather to change them from slaves of the law into free children of God. In this way He made the kenosis of accepting sufferings a means of liberation from them and of our adoption and deification.
In this sense and rejecting the affirmation of the Nestorians that Christ was brought into the temple forty days after His birth for His purification according to the law, because He was a simple man, Leontius of Byzantium declares that it was not He Who needed the fulfillment of this law, but His brothers and sisters, whom He represented. For He Himself was the true purification of sin, and He took away the power of the law. "Due to the weakness of the law, which was weak on account of the body, God has sent His Son in the likeness of the sinful body; not only did He destroy the sin, but He also condemned it in His bod. Having the strength of purity in His body woven with God, Christ fulfills all the righteousness of the bodily law in order to free the body's nature from the punishment of the law and from curse and to show it worthy of the spiritual existence which He gave to it." Christ fulfills the law and eliminates it, as a painful consequence, by obeying it through kenosis and, therefore, also through birth in a body subjected to innocent passions and corruptibility. For He does not want to eliminate what in essence the law says, namely the fulfillment of God's will and of the order established by God in nature, to artificially and inorganically escape the law and the painful consequence of not fulfilling it. But He wants to escape that painful consequence represented by the law by fulfilling what God wants with it. Only through this fulfillment of the law can one escape in reality the law and the painful consequence of not fulfilling it. Leontius says that Christ did not seek to fulfill a law that He would not have fulfilled before and in such a case could not have fulfilled on account of the weakness of the body, which, according to this hypothesis, would have made Him break it.
"If He fulfills the law without having the need to do that (for the righteous have no need of repentance), evidently He does this to fulfill all the righteousness of His oikonomia according to the body and to show His divinity in the very act of fulfilling the law; once the bodily nature was lacking the power to fulfill the law, only the divine nature could fulfill it completely. Evidently, it is not about the fulfillment of the law in the sense of an external satisfaction offered to God, but about the fulfillment of God's will and of the requirements of human nature through a life that brings back this nature to its true condition by its union with God.
In this way, between the Son of God's kenosis and His incarnation or the identity of the Virgin Mary as Birthgiver of God, there is an internal connection, as in fact between all the implications of the Incarnation of the union of the two natures in one Hypostasis. Leontius of Byzantium strongly connects the Son of God's kenosis and the deification of His human nature to His birth from the Virgin Mary or to her identity as the Birthgiver of God. It is only because the One born of the Virgin was God that He has received our sufferings, overcoming them, and was able to rise again.
The Experience of God - Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: The Person of Jesus Christ as God and Savior by Saint Dumitru Stăniloae
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