And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.
All Commentaries on Luke 2:51 Go To Luke 2
John of Damascus
AD 749
He is said to have progressed in wisdom and age and grace, because he did increase in age and by this increase in age brought more into evidence the wisdom inherent in him further. By making what is ours altogether his own, he made his own the progress of people in wisdom and grace, as well as the fulfillment of the Father’s will, which is to say, people’s knowledge of God and their salvation. Now, those who say that he progressed in wisdom and grace in the sense of receiving an increase in these are saying that the union was not made from the first instant of the flesh’s existence. Neither are they holding the hypostatic union, but, misled by the emptyheaded Nestorius, they are talking falsely of a relative union and simple indwelling, “understanding neither the things they say, nor whereof they affirm.” For, if from the first instant of its existence the flesh was truly united to God the Word—rather, had existence in him and identity of person with him—how did it not enjoy perfectly all wisdom and grace? It did not share the grace, and neither did it participate by grace in the things of the Word. Rather, because the human and divine things had become proper to the one Christ by the hypostatic union, then, since the same was at once God and man, it gushed forth with the grace and the wisdom and the fullness of all good things for the world.
