“He raises up nature to himself, making it another mystery”

“The one who is eternally beyond being is not less overflowing with transcendent being”: for having become man he is not subject to nature, rather on the contrary he raises up nature to himself, making it another mystery, for he himself remains completely incomprehensible, and shows his own Incarnation, which has been granted a generation beyond being, to be more incomprehensible than any mystery. The more he becomes incomprehensible through it, so much the more through it is he known to be incomprehensible. “For he is hidden after his revelation,” the teacher says, “or, to speak more divinely, also in his revelation. And this mystery of Jesus in itself remains hidden, and can be drawn out by no reason, by no intellect, but when spoken of it remains ineffable, and when understood unknown” [Dionysius the Areopagite]. What could do more to demonstrate the proof of the divine transcendence of being than this: revelation shows that it is hidden, reason that it is unspeakable, and intellect that it is transcendently unknowable, and further, its assumption of being that it is beyond being?

St Maximus the Confessor