Why they fear Theotokos; Athanasius cited

order again, and having come to be in humanity.

So if they say that the one born from the holy virgin is true God — that is, the Word from God the Father united by nature to flesh — why do they fear to confess that the holy virgin is God-bearer?

Their aim is to pretend and say, “Yes, he is also God and Lord and sits with the Father,” while they do not think so in truth. They say the glory of sonship and lordship was given, as a share of grace and by advancement, to a common human like us born from the holy virgin.

But the word God-bearer was already customary even with the holy fathers before us, who are admired for right faith, and still with all under heaven, so to speak. I thought I had to declare that as true.

So that I may not seem to say whatever comes to mind without testing it, I have gathered from the books they wrote in the churches what serves this point, set it beside my case as proof, and will seal my own words into the truth.

So the truly thrice-blessed Athanasius, famous for piety, who was in his time bishop of the church of the Alexandrians, said this about Christ in the treatise on the incarnation: “For we confess,” he says, “that he is Son of God and God according to spirit, son of man according to flesh — not two natures as the one Son, one to be worshiped and one not, but one nature of the God Word enfleshed—