§4. Our creation and God’s
Incarnation most intimately connected. As by the Word man was called from
non-existence into being, and further received the grace of a divine life, so
by the one fault which forfeited that life they again incurred corruption and
untold sin and misery filled the world.
You are wondering, perhaps, for
what possible reason, having proposed to speak of the Incarnation of the Word,
we are at present treating of the origin of mankind. But this, too, properly
belongs to the aim of our treatise. For in speaking of the appearance of the
Saviour amongst us, we must needs speak also of the origin of men, that you may
know that the reason of His coming down was because of us, and that our
transgression called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, that the
Lord should both make haste to help us and appear among men.
For of His
becoming Incarnate we were the object, and for our salvation He dealt so
lovingly as to appear and be born even in a human body. Thus, then, God has
made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having
despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil
for themselves (as was said in the former treatise), received the condemnation of
death with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer
remained as they were made, but were being corrupted according to their devices; and
death had the mastery over them as king.
For transgression of the commandment was turning them
back to their natural state, so that just as they have had their being out of
nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into
nothing in the course of time. For if, out of a former normal state of
non-existence, they were called into being by the Presence and loving-kindness
of the Word, it followed naturally that when men were bereft of the knowledge of
God and were turned back to what was not (for what is evil is not, but what is
good is), they should, since they derive their being from God who IS, be
everlastingly bereft even of being; in other words, that they should be
disintegrated and abide in death and corruption.
For man is by nature
mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not; but by reason of his
likeness to Him that is (and if he still preserved this likeness by keeping Him
in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption, and remain incorrupt;
as Wisdom says: "The taking heed to His laws is the assurance
of immortality;" but being incorrupt, he would live henceforth as God, to
which I suppose the divine Scripture refers, when it says: "I have said ye are gods, and ye are all sons of the most
Highest; but ye die like men, and fall as one of the princes."
For God has not only made us
out of nothing; but He gave us freely, by the Grace of the Word, a life in
correspondence with God. But men, having rejected things eternal, and, by counsel
of the devil, turned to the things of corruption, became the cause of their own corruption in death, being, as I said
before, by nature corruptible, but destined, by the grace following from
partaking of the Word, to have escaped their natural state, had they remained
good.
For because of the Word dwelling
with them, even their natural corruption did not come near them, as Wisdom also
says: "God made man for incorruption, and as an image of
His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death came into the world." But
when this was come to pass, men began to die, while corruption thence-forward
prevailed against them, gaining even more than its natural power over the whole
race, inasmuch as it had, owing to the transgression of the commandment, the
threat of the Deity as a further advantage against them.
For even in their misdeeds men
had not stopped short at any set limits; but gradually pressing forward, have
passed on beyond all measure: having to begin with been inventors of wickedness
and called down upon themselves death and corruption; while later on, having
turned aside to wrong and exceeding all lawlessness, and stopping at no one
evil but devising all manner of new evils in succession, they have become
insatiable in sinning.
For there were adulteries
everywhere and thefts, and the whole earth was full of murders and plunderings.
And as to corruption and wrong, no heed was paid to law, but all crimes were
being practised everywhere, both individually and jointly. Cities were at war
with cities, and nations were rising up against nations; and the whole earth
was rent with civil commotions and battles; each man vying with his fellows in
lawless deeds.
Nor were even crimes against
nature far from them, but, as the Apostle and witness of Christ says: "For
their1 women changed the natural use into that which is against
nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned
in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and
receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet."
§6. The human race then was wasting, God's image was being effaced,
and His work ruined. Either, then, God must forego His spoken word by which man
had incurred ruin; or that which had shared in the being of the Word must sink
back again into destruction, in which case God's design would be defeated. What
then? was God's goodness to suffer this? But if so, why had man been made? It
could have been weakness, not goodness on God's part.
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