Whether Christ's Mother Was a Virgin in His Birth?
Objection 1: It would seem that Christ's Mother was not a virgin in
His Birth. For Ambrose says on Luke 2:23: "He who sanctified a
strange womb, for the birth of a prophet, He it is who opened His
Mother's womb, that He might go forth unspotted." But opening of the
womb excludes virginity. Therefore Christ's Mother was not a virgin
in His Birth.
Obj. 2: Further, nothing should have taken place in the mystery of
Christ, which would make His body to seem unreal. Now it seems to
pertain not to a true but to an unreal body, to be able to go through
a closed passage; since two bodies cannot be in one place at the same
time. It was therefore unfitting that Christ's body should come forth
from His Mother's closed womb: and consequently that she should
remain a virgin in giving birth to Him.
Obj. 3: Further, as Gregory says in the Homily for the octave of
Easter [*xxvi in Evang.], that by entering after His Resurrection
where the disciples were gathered, the doors being shut, our Lord
"showed that His body was the same in nature but differed in glory":
so that it seems that to go through a closed passage pertains to a
glorified body. But Christ's body was not glorified in its
conception, but was passible, having "the likeness of sinful flesh,"
as the Apostle says (Rom. 8:3). Therefore He did not come forth
through the closed womb of the Virgin.
_On the contrary,_ In a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (P. III,
Cap. ix) it is said: "After giving birth, nature knows not a virgin:
but grace enhances her fruitfulness, and effects her motherhood,
while in no way does it injure her virginity." Therefore Christ's
Mother was a virgin also in giving birth to Him.
_I answer that,_ Without any doubt whatever we must assert that the
Mother of Christ was a virgin even in His Birth: for the prophet says
not only: "Behold a virgin shall conceive," but adds: "and shall bear
a son." This indeed was befitting for three reasons. First, because
this was in keeping with a property of Him whose Birth is in
question, for He is the Word of God. For the word is not only
conceived in the mind without corruption, but also proceeds from the
mind without corruption. Wherefore in order to show that body to be
the body of the very Word of God, it was fitting that it should be
born of a virgin incorrupt. Whence in the sermon of the Council of
Ephesus (quoted above) we read: "Whosoever brings forth mere flesh,
ceases to be a virgin. But since she gave birth to the Word made
flesh, God safeguarded her virginity so as to manifest His Word, by
which Word He thus manifested Himself: for neither does our word,
when brought forth, corrupt the mind; nor does God, the substantial
Word, deigning to be born, destroy virginity."
Secondly, this is fitting as regards the effect of Christ's
Incarnation: since He came for this purpose, that He might take away
our corruption. Wherefore it is unfitting that in His Birth He should
corrupt His Mother's virginity. Thus Augustine says in a sermon on
the Nativity of Our Lord: "It was not right that He who came to heal
corruption, should by His advent violate integrity."
Thirdly, it was fitting that He Who commanded us to honor our father
and mother should not in His Birth lessen the honor due to His Mother.
Reply Obj. 1: Ambrose says this in expounding the evangelist's
quotation from the Law: "Every male opening the womb shall be called
holy to the Lord." This, says Bede, "is said in regard to the wonted
manner of birth; not that we are to believe that our Lord in coming
forth violated the abode of her sacred womb, which His entrance
therein had hallowed." Wherefore the opening here spoken of does not
imply the unlocking of the enclosure of virginal purity; but the mere
coming forth of the infant from the maternal womb.
Reply Obj. 2: Christ wished so to show the reality of His body, as to
manifest His Godhead at the same time. For this reason He mingled
wondrous with lowly things. Wherefore, to show that His body was
real, He was born of a woman. But in order to manifest His Godhead,
He was born of a virgin, for "such a Birth befits a God," as Ambrose
says in the Christmas hymn.
Reply Obj. 3: Some have held that Christ, in His Birth, assumed the
gift of "subtlety," when He came forth from the closed womb of a
virgin; and that He assumed the gift of "agility" when with dry feet
He walked on the sea. But this is not consistent with what has been
decided above (Q. 14). For these gifts of a glorified body result
from an overflow of the soul's glory on to the body, as we shall
explain further on, in treating of glorified bodies (Suppl., Q. 82):
and it has been said above (Q. 13, A. 3, ad 1; Q. 16, A. 1, ad 2)
that before His Passion Christ "allowed His flesh to do and to suffer
what was proper to it" (Damascene, De Fide Orth. iii): nor was there
such an overflow of glory from His soul on to His body.
We must therefore say that all these things took place miraculously
by Divine power. Whence Augustine says (Sup. Joan. Tract. 121): "To
the substance of a body in which was the Godhead closed doors were no
obstacle. For truly He had power to enter in by doors not open, in
Whose Birth His Mother's virginity remained inviolate." And Dionysius
says in an epistle (Ad Caium iv) that "Christ excelled man in doing
that which is proper to man: this is shown in His supernatural
conception, of a virgin, and in the unstable waters bearing the
weight of earthly feet."
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