§ 11
God, who has power over all things, was making the race of men through His own Word. And He saw the weakness of their nature: that it was not sufficient of itself to know its Maker, nor to take in any thought of God at all. For He is uncreated, while they were made out of nothing. He is bodiless, while men were fashioned below, in bodies. In every way, what is made falls far short of grasping and knowing the One who made it.
So He took pity once more on the human race, since He is good, and did not leave men destitute of the knowledge of Himself, lest even their existence should be without profit. For what profit is there for creatures who do not know their own Maker? Or how could they be rational, without knowing the Word of the Father, in whom they came to be? They would differ in nothing from the irrational animals, if they recognized nothing beyond the things of earth. And why should God have made them at all, if He did not wish to be known by them?
So that this should not happen, being good, He gives them a share in His own Image, our Lord Jesus Christ, and makes them after His own image and likeness. Thus by such grace they might perceive the Image, that is, the Word of the Father; and through Him they might be able to take in the thought of the Father; and knowing their Maker, they might live the happy and truly blessed life.
But men once again in their folly set at nought the grace that had been given them. They turned away from God so completely, and so muddied their own soul, that they not only forgot the thought of God, but even fashioned for themselves one invention after another. They carved idols for themselves instead of the truth, and honored things that are not above the God who is, serving the creature rather than the Creator. Worst of all, they transferred the honor due to God to wood and stones and every kind of material, and to men; and they did more than this, as was said in the earlier work.
So far did their impiety go that from then on they even worshipped demons, and proclaimed them gods, satisfying their own desires. As was said before, they carried out sacrifices of irrational animals, and the slaughter of men, as the proper due of those demons, binding themselves all the faster under their maddening frenzies. For this reason magic arts were taught among them, and oracles in one place and another led men astray, and all men ascribed the causes of their birth and their being to the stars and to everything in the heavens, reckoning nothing beyond what is seen.
And, in a word, everything was full of impiety and lawlessness. God alone went unrecognized, and His Word with Him. Yet He had not hidden Himself out of men's sight, nor given them the knowledge of Himself in one way only. He had unfolded it to them in many forms, and through many things.
§ 12
For the grace of being after the image was in itself sufficient to make known God the Word, and through Him the Father. But God knew the weakness of men, and made provision for their carelessness as well. If they would not trouble to know God by themselves, they might still not be ignorant of the Maker, through the works of creation.
But the carelessness of men descends little by little to what is worse. So God made provision again for this weakness of theirs. He sent a law, and prophets, men whom they already knew, so that even if they shrank from looking up to heaven and knowing their Maker, they might have their teaching from those close at hand. For men can learn about higher things more readily from men.
It was open to them, then, to look up to the greatness of heaven, and to perceive the harmony of creation, and so to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father. By His own providence over all things He makes the Father known to all, and to this end He moves the whole, so that through Him all may know God. Or if this was too much trouble for them, they could at least have met with the holy men, and learned from them of God, the Maker of all things, the Father of Christ, and learned that the worship of idols is godlessness, and full of every impiety.
It was open to them also, by coming to know the law, to leave off all lawlessness and to live a life of virtue. For the law was not for the Jews alone, nor were the prophets sent for them only. They were sent to the Jews, and persecuted by the Jews; but they were a holy school for the whole world, of the knowledge of God and of the conduct of the soul.
So great, then, was the goodness of God and His love for mankind. Yet men were overcome by the pleasures of the moment, and by the illusions and deceits that came from demons, and they did not lift their heads toward the truth. They filled themselves instead with more evils and more sins, until they no longer seemed rational, but from their ways were reckoned to be without reason.
§ 13
So then, men had been made brutish, and the deceit of demons overshadowed every place and hid the knowledge of the true God. What was God to do? Keep silence at so great a thing, and let men be led astray by demons and not know God? And what was the use of man's being made after the image of God at the beginning? It would have been better for him simply to have been made a brute, than, once made rational, to live the life of the brutes. And what need was there for him to receive any thought of God at the beginning? For if he is not worthy to receive it even now, it would have been better that it were never given him at the first.
And what profit is there for God who made them, or what glory could there be for Him, if the men He made do not worship Him, but think that others are their makers? For then God is found to have made them for others, and not for Himself. Consider a king who is only a man. He does not let the lands he has settled be handed over to serve others, or go over to other men. He reminds them by letters, and often writes to them through friends; and if there is need, he comes in person, to shame them at last by his presence, only so that they may not serve others, and his own work be spent for nothing.
Will not God much more spare His own creatures, that they should not be led astray from Him and serve things that are not? And all the more, since such straying becomes for them the cause of ruin and of vanishing away. It was not right that those who had once shared in the image of God should perish.
What, then, was God to do? What was to be done, but to renew again what was after the image, so that through it men might once more be able to know Him? And how could this have come to pass, except by the coming of the very Image of God, our Saviour Jesus Christ? It could not be done through men, since they themselves are only made after the image. Nor could it be done through angels, for they are not images either. So the Word of God came in His own person, that as the Image of the Father He might be able to create afresh the man who is after the image.
And again, it could not have come to pass unless death and corruption were done away. So He fittingly took a mortal body, that in it death might at last be done away, and that men who are after the image might be made new again. For this need, then, no other was sufficient, but only the Image of the Father.
§ 14
It is as when a likeness painted on a panel has been blotted out by stains from without. The one whose likeness it is must come again, so that the portrait may be renewed in the same material. For the sake of his picture, even the bare wood on which it is painted is not thrown away, but the outline is renewed upon it.
In the same way the all-holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our own region, to renew the man who had been made after Him, and to find him, since he was lost, through the forgiveness of sins. So He says Himself in the Gospels: "I came to find and to save that which was lost." And for this reason He said to His own: "Unless a man be born again." He did not mean birth from women, as they supposed, but the soul born anew and created afresh in the image.
But the madness of idols and godlessness held the whole world, and the knowledge of God was hidden. Whose part, then, was it to teach the world about the Father? A man's, someone might say. But it was not in men's power to go everywhere under the sun. They had not the strength by nature to run so far; nor could they be believed in such a matter; nor were they able of themselves to withstand the deceit and illusion of the demons. For all men were stricken and confused in soul by the deceit of demons and the emptiness of idols. How, then, could a man win over the soul and the mind of men, when he cannot even see them? And how can anyone teach afresh what he does not see?
But perhaps someone will say that creation was enough. Yet if creation were enough, such great evils would never have come to pass. Creation was already there, and none the less men were rolling about in the same error concerning God. Who, then, was needed once more, but the Word of God, who sees both soul and mind, and who moves all things in creation, and through them makes the Father known? For He who by His own providence and ordering of the universe was teaching men about the Father, He it was whose part it was to renew that same teaching.
How, then, could this have been done? Perhaps someone might say that the same means were open as before, and that He could show the truth about the Father once more through the works of creation. But this was no longer safe. Far from it. Men had overlooked creation before, and no longer had their eyes turned upward, but downward.
So it was fitting that, willing to help men, He should come and dwell among us as man, taking to Himself a body like theirs, and working from below, that is, through the works of the body. Thus those who would not know Him from His providence and His rule over all things might at least, from the works done through His own body, know the Word of God who is in the body, and through Him the Father.
§ 15
A good teacher who cares for his own pupils comes down to simpler lessons for those who cannot profit from higher ones, and so teaches them. This is what the Word of God also did. As Paul says: "Since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe."
For men had turned away from the contemplation of God, and, as though sunk in the deep, kept their eyes downward. They looked for God in the created order and in things of sense, fashioning gods for themselves out of mortal men and out of demons. For this reason the Word of God, who loves mankind and is the common Saviour of all, takes to Himself a body, and lives as man among men, and meets the senses of all men. Thus those who think that God is bodily might perceive the truth from what the Lord works through the body, and through Him take account of the Father.
Being men, and thinking in human ways about everything, wherever they turned their senses they found themselves met there, and taught the truth from every side. If they stood in awe of creation, they saw creation confessing Christ as Lord. If their mind had been taken up with men, so as to think them gods, then from the works of the Saviour, when they compared them, the Saviour alone among men appeared as the Son of God. For there were no such works among the rest as those done by the Word of God.
If they had been taken up with demons, then, seeing the demons driven out by the Lord, they knew that He alone was the Word of God, and that the demons were not gods. And if their mind had already sunk to the dead, so that they worshipped heroes and the gods spoken of by the poets, then, seeing the Saviour's resurrection, they confessed those to be false, and the Lord alone to be true, the Word of the Father, who is Lord even of death.
For this cause He was born, and appeared as man, and died, and rose again. By His own works He blunted and cast into the shade the works of all the men who had ever been, so that from wherever men had been led away, from there He might bring them back, and teach them of His own true Father. As He Himself says: "I came to save and to find that which was lost."
§ 16
For the mind of men had fallen once for all to things of sense. So the Word submitted to appear through a body, in order to bring men over to Himself as man, and to turn their senses toward Himself. Then, seeing Him from that time as man, they might be persuaded by the works He did that He is not man only, but also God, and the Word and Wisdom of the true God.
This too is what Paul wishes to point out when he says: "Being rooted and grounded in love, may you have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God." For the Word spread Himself out everywhere: above and below, into the depth and into the breadth. Above, in creation; below, in becoming man; in the depth, in Hades; in the breadth, in the world. And so all things have been filled with the knowledge of God.
For this reason also He did not accomplish the sacrifice on behalf of all as soon as He came, giving the body over to death and raising it up again. Had He done that, He would have made Himself unseen. Instead He made Himself visible through the body, remaining in it, doing such works and giving such signs that men knew Him no longer as man, but as God the Word.
For by becoming man the Saviour worked both deeds of love. He made death vanish from among us, and renewed us again. And, being unseen and invisible, He showed Himself through His works, and made Himself known to be the Word of the Father, the Ruler and King of the universe.
§ 17
For He was not shut up within the body. He was not present in the body in such a way as to be absent elsewhere. Nor, while He moved the body, was the universe left empty of His working and His providence. This is the most astonishing thing of all: being the Word, He was not contained by anything, but rather Himself contained all things.
Consider how He is present in all creation, and yet is outside the whole in His essence, while present in all things by His own powers. He orders all things, and unfolds His providence over each and over all, and gives life to each thing and to all together. He contains the whole and is not contained, but is wholly and in every way in His own Father alone.
In the same way, while present in a human body and Himself giving it life, He was without inconsistency giving life to the universe as well. He was in all things, and He was outside all things. And while He was known from the body by His works, He was no less manifest from His working in the universe.
Now it is the work of the soul to behold by its thoughts even what lies outside its own body; but not to work outside its own body, or to move by its presence what is far from it. A man who thinks of distant things does not thereby move them or carry them away. If a man sits in his own house and reasons about the heavenly bodies, he does not thereby move the sun or turn the heaven around. He sees that they move and that they exist, but he is not able to work upon them.
Such was not the Word of God in the Man. He was not bound together with the body; rather He Himself held it fast. So He was both in it and in all things at once. He was outside all that exists, and rested in the Father alone. And this was the wonder: that He lived His life as man, and as the Word gave life to all things, and as the Son was with the Father. So He suffered nothing when the Virgin bore Him, nor was He defiled by being in a body. Rather He sanctified the body.
For not even by being in all things does He take a share of the nature of all things. Rather all things are given life and sustained by Him. Consider the sun, which He made and which we see. It travels through the heaven, and is not stained by touching bodies on earth, nor is it put out by darkness; rather it lights them and cleanses them. How much less, then, was the all-holy Word of God, the Maker and Lord of the sun, stained by being made known in a body. Being incorruptible, He rather gave life to the body and cleansed it, mortal though it was. For it is said of Him: "He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth."
§ 18
When, then, those who write of Him as inspired men say that He ate and drank and was born, know that the body, as body, was born, and was nourished with food suited to it. But He Himself, God the Word, who was united with the body and orders all things, made known by what He did in the body that He was not man, but God the Word. These things are said of Him because the body that ate and was born and suffered belonged to no one else, but to the Lord. And since He had become man, it was fitting that these things should be said of Him as of a man, so that He might be seen to have a body truly, and not in appearance.
But just as from these things He was known to be present bodily, so from the works He did through the body He made Himself known as the Son of God. So He cried out to the unbelieving Jews: "If I do not the works of My Father, do not believe Me. But if I do them, then though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father."
For as, being invisible, He is known from the works of creation, so, having become man and being unseen in the body, He may be known from His works: that He who does these things is not man, but the Power and Word of God. For His commanding the demons, and their being driven out, is no human work, but divine.
Or who, seeing Him healing the diseases to which the race of men is subject, would still think Him man and not God? For He cleansed lepers, made the lame to walk, opened the hearing of the deaf, gave sight again to the blind, and simply drove away from men every disease and every infirmity. From these acts even the most ordinary man could behold His Godhead.
Who, seeing Him give back what was lacking to those whom birth had left in need, and open the eyes of the man blind from birth, would not have perceived that the very nature of men was subject to Him, and that He was its Maker and Fashioner? For He who gave back what a man had never had from birth is surely shown to be the Lord of men's birth as well.
For this reason too, even at the beginning, when He was coming down to us, He fashioned His body for Himself from a Virgin, so as to give to all no small token of His Godhead: that He who formed this is also the Maker of everything else. For who, seeing a body brought forth from a Virgin alone, without a man, would not consider that He who appears in it is the Maker and Lord of other bodies too?
Or who, seeing the substance of water changed and turned into wine, does not perceive that He who did this is the Lord and Creator of the substance of all waters? For this reason He walked upon the sea as its Master, and went over it as over dry land, giving to those who saw it a token of His lordship over all things. And when He fed so great a multitude from little, and Himself made plenty where there was none, so that five thousand were satisfied from five loaves, and as much again was left over, did He not show Himself to be none other than the Lord whose providence is over all things?
§ 19
All this it seemed good to the Saviour to do. Men had failed to know His providence which is in all things, and had not perceived His Godhead shown through creation. So He willed that they might at least look up again from the works done through His body, and receive through Him the knowledge of the Father, reasoning, as I said before, from what is partial to His providence over the whole.
For who, seeing His authority over demons, or who, seeing the demons confess that He is their Lord, will still hold his mind in doubt whether this is the Son of God, and the Wisdom, and the Power? He did not even let creation itself keep silence. This is the marvel: at His death, or rather at the very trophy over death, I mean the Cross, all creation was confessing that He who was made known and suffered in the body was not simply man, but the Son of God and the Saviour of all.
For the sun turned away, and the earth shook, and the mountains were rent, and all men were struck with fear. These things showed that Christ upon the Cross was God, and that all creation was His servant, bearing witness in fear to the presence of its Master.
In this way, then, God the Word showed Himself to men through His works. And it follows that we should now tell of the end of His life in the body and of His going about among us, and say what kind of death the death of His body was. For this above all is the chief point of our faith, and all men without exception speak of it. So you may know that from this too, no less than from the rest, Christ is known to be God and the Son of God.