From: conan@durban.berkeley.edu (David Cruz-Uribe)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Preaching to the Moderns
Date: 4 Jan 93 03:25:19 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Math. Department.

In the current discussion on the Virgin Birth, someone asked for
references to the Fathers of the Church.  I have leafed through
my breviary and found the following.  Unfortunately I cannot provide
better references.  Also, these quotes may not reflect my own
views, which I hope to articulate in a later post.

Peter Chrysologus:  Sermon

A virgin conceived, bore a son, and yet remained a virgin.  This
is no common occurence, but a sign; no reason here but God's power,
for he is the cause, and not nature.  It is a special event, not
shared by others; it is divine, not human.  Christ's birht was not
necessity, but an expression of omnipotence, a sacrament of 
piety for the redemption of men.  He who made man without generation
from pure clay made man again and was born from a pure body.
The hand that assumed clay to make our flesh deigned to assume
a body for our salvation.  That the Creator is in his creature and
God is in the flesh brings dignity to man without dishonor to him
who made him.


Augustine:  Sermon

My brethren, what miracles! What prodigies!  The laws of nature are
changed in the case of man.  God is born.  A virgin becomes 
pregnant with man.  The Word of God marries the woman who knows 
no man.  She is now at the same time both mother and virgin.  She
becomes a mother yet she remains a virgin.  The virgin bears a
son, yet she does not know man; she remains untouched, yet she
is not barren.  He alone was born without sin, for she bore him
with the embrace of man, not by the concupiscence of the flesh but
by the obedience of the mind.


Leo the Great:  Letter

To speak of our Lord, the son of the blessed Virgin Mary, as true
and perfect man is of no value to us if we do not believe that 
he is descended from the line of ancestors set out in the Gospel.
Matthew's gospel begins by setting out the genealogy of Jesus
Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, and then traces his human
descent by bring his ancestral line down to his mother's husband,
Joseph.  On the other hand, Luke traces his parentage backward
step by step to the actual father of mankind, to show that both the
first and the last Adam share the same nature.

No doubt the Son of God in his omnipotence could have taught and
sanctified men by appearing to them in a semblance of human form
as he did to the patriarchs and prophets, when for instance he
engaged in a wrestling contest or entered into a conversation with
them, or when he accepted their hospitality and even ate
the food set before him.  But these appearances were only types,
signs that mysteriously foretold the coming of one who would take
a true human nature from the stock of the patriarchs who had gone
before him.  No mere figure, then, fulfilled the mystery of our
reconciliation with God, ordained from all eternity.  The Holy
Spirit had not yet come upon a Virgin nor had the power of the
Most High overshadowed her, so that within her spotless womb
Wisdom might build itself a house and the Word become flesh.  The
divine nature and the nature of a servant were to be united in
one person so that the Creator of time might be born in time,
and he through whom all things were made might be brought forth
in their midst.  

For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful
humanity, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless
he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing
the Father's substance and, being free from sin, united our nature to
his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the
dominion of Satan.  The Conqueror's victory would have profited
us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition.
But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone
upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was
conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a
spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the
faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.


I hope these help.

Yours in Christ,

David Cruz-Uribe, SFO