94. “But when the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the Law.” Gal. iv. 4. Note on Gal. iv. 4, cited in § 94.—St. Ambrose has factum where St. Paul originally wrote γενόμενον, rendered “born” in the A.V. St. Paul designedly, perhaps, wrote γενόμενον, not γεννηθέντα, the more usual word for “born.” For γίγνεσθαι is used to denote other modes of beginning to exist, besides that in which animals are brought into life; it is used of inanimate, as well as animate existence—e.g., Mark iv. 37: “There ariseth (γίνεται) a great storm of wind;” and thus we get the impersonal εγένετο, “it came to pass,” simply signifying an order of events. The import, then, of the words factum ex muliere, γενόμενον ἐκ γνναικός, is that Christ, in being born in human form, “in the likeness of men,” subjected Himself to the limits of human existence, “came into being,” that is, in the sensual world. This was his self-emptying (Phil. ii. 7). Jesus, the man, the human person was made—“made man” (Nicene Creed)—was made “man of the substance of His mother” (Athanas. Creed); but by this “making,” St. Ambrose points out, we must understand no more than the taking on of fleshly form. The Son, on the other hand, Who is God, never began to exist, as He will never cease; and even if He had not existed from eternity, He must have been pre-existent, in order to assume a fleshly form so that, in any case, birth of the Virgin does not affect His pre-existence as Son of God, whilst to say that He was ever “made” is to confound that birth with the Son’s generation of the Father, eternity with time, the divine with the human order, the self-existent with the created. “His Son,” observe, not as one of many, not as His in common with another, but His own, and in saying “His Son,” the Apostle showed that it is of the Son’s nature that His generation is eternal. Him the Apostle has affirmed to have been afterwards “made” of a woman, in order that the making might be understood not of the Godhead, but of the putting on of a body—“made of a woman,” then, by taking on of flesh; “made under the Law” through observance of the Law. Howbeit, the former, the spiritual generation is before the Law was, the latter is after the Law.