Chapter 202 — On the error of Photinus about the Incarnation of the Son of God

So far as he could, Photinus made void this mystery of the divine Incarnation. Following Ebion, Cerinthus, and Paul of Samosata, he asserted that our Lord Jesus Christ was no more than a man and that he did not exist before the Virgin Mary, but earned the glory of divinity by the merit of a blessed life and by patiently enduring death; and thus he was called God, not on account of his nature, but by the grace of adoption. In this event no union of God with man would have been effected, but a man would be deified by grace. Elevation of this sort is not peculiar to Christ, but is common to all the saints, although some may be considered more highly endowed with such grace than others.

This error contradicts the authority of Sacred Scripture. In John 1:1 we read: In the beginning was the Word. Shortly after the Evangelist adds: and the Word was made flesh. Hence the Word that in the beginning was with God assumed flesh—not that a man who did not exist beforehand was deified by the grace of adoption. Likewise, in John 6:38 the Lord says: I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. According to the error of Photinus, Christ could not have come down from heaven, but could only have gone up to heaven. Against him is the Apostle, who says in Ephesians 4:9: In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? This enables us to understand clearly that the Ascension would have no place in Christ unless his descent from heaven had preceded.