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SECOND ARTICLE [III, Q. 28, Art. 2]

Whether Christ's Mother Was a Virgin in His Birth?

Objection 1: It would seem that Christ's Mother was not a virgin in
His Birth. For Ambrose says on Luke 2:23: "He who sanctified a
strange womb, for the birth of a prophet, He it is who opened His
Mother's womb, that He might go forth unspotted." But opening of the
womb excludes virginity. Therefore Christ's Mother was not a virgin
in His Birth.

Obj. 2: Further, nothing should have taken place in the mystery of
Christ, which would make His body to seem unreal. Now it seems to
pertain not to a true but to an unreal body, to be able to go through
a closed passage; since two bodies cannot be in one place at the same
time. It was therefore unfitting that Christ's body should come forth
from His Mother's closed womb: and consequently that she should
remain a virgin in giving birth to Him.

Obj. 3: Further, as Gregory says in the Homily for the octave of
Easter [*xxvi in Evang.], that by entering after His Resurrection
where the disciples were gathered, the doors being shut, our Lord
"showed that His body was the same in nature but differed in glory":
so that it seems that to go through a closed passage pertains to a
glorified body. But Christ's body was not glorified in its
conception, but was passible, having "the likeness of sinful flesh,"
as the Apostle says (Rom. 8:3). Therefore He did not come forth
through the closed womb of the Virgin.

_On the contrary,_ In a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (P. III,
Cap. ix) it is said: "After giving birth, nature knows not a virgin:
but grace enhances her fruitfulness, and effects her motherhood,
while in no way does it injure her virginity." Therefore Christ's
Mother was a virgin also in giving birth to Him.

_I answer that,_ Without any doubt whatever we must assert that the
Mother of Christ was a virgin even in His Birth: for the prophet says
not only: "Behold a virgin shall conceive," but adds: "and shall bear
a son." This indeed was befitting for three reasons. First, because
this was in keeping with a property of Him whose Birth is in
question, for He is the Word of God. For the word is not only
conceived in the mind without corruption, but also proceeds from the
mind without corruption. Wherefore in order to show that body to be
the body of the very Word of God, it was fitting that it should be
born of a virgin incorrupt. Whence in the sermon of the Council of
Ephesus (quo