In His determination to free man from
such dishonor and to restore him to his divine inheritance, the Word who
created human nature truly became man, taking His human nature from men, and
for our sake was bodily born yet without sin, and He who is God by
essence and the Son of God by nature was baptized for our sake, voluntarily
subjecting Himself to the spiritual birth of adoption, so that bodily birth
might be abolished.
Seeing then that the Son and word of
God, who created us, and who alone is who in divinity and glory with the Father
and the Spirit, for our sake truly became man like us; and seeing that He who
is God by nature was born bodily yet without sin and for our sake
accepted the birth of baptism unto spiritual adoption. I believe that for this
reason the teacher connected the birth of baptism with the Incarnation, [1348C]
so that baptism might be considered as the abolition and release from bodily birth.
For the very thing which Adam freely rejected (I mean the birth by the Spirit
leading to divinization), and for which he was condemned to bodily birth amid
corruption, is exactly what the Word assumed willingly, out of His goodness and
love for mankind, and, by becoming man in accordance with our fallen state,
willingly subjecting Himself to our condemnation (though He alone is free and
sinless), and consenting to a bodily birth, in which lay the power of our
condemnation, He mystically restored birth in the Spirit; and so for our sake,
having dissolved in Himself the bounds of bodily birth, He granted,
through birth in the Spirit, to those who believe in His name the power to
become children of God instead of [1348D] flesh and blood. On
account of my condemnation, the Lord first submitted Himself to Incarnation and
bodily birth, after which came the birth of baptism received in the Spirit, to
which He consented for the sake of my salvation and restoration by grace or, to
put it more precisely, my re-recreation. (Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua to
John: Ambiguum 42, in On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua,
2 vols. [trans. Nicholas Constas; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014], 2:183, 185)