Letter 211

Isidore of PelusiumUnknown|isidore pelusium
From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk at Pelusium
To: Zosimus the Presbyter
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore on the mystery of the Incarnation — why God became human — and what this reveals about the nature of divine love.

We all greatly marvel at the mystery of the Incarnation — and rightly so. That the one who holds all things in being should become one of the things he holds; that the immortal should take on mortality; that the one who needs nothing should enter into the full experience of human need — this surpasses anything philosophy could have proposed.

But notice what the marvel implies: a love of extraordinary specificity. This was not a general intervention for the benefit of humanity in the abstract. This was God entering, at a particular time and place, into the particular human condition. He did not help humanity from above. He joined it from within.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.