Introduction:– The purpose of the book a vindication of Christian doctrine, and especially of the Cross, against the scoffing objection of Gentiles . The effects of this doctrine its main vindication.

Source: About this page Source. Translated by Archibald Robertson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series , Vol. 4. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. ( Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892. )  https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2801.htm.

Part 1

The knowledge of our religion and the truth about reality is self-evident rather than requiring human teachers, for nearly every day it demonstrates itself through actual events and reveals itself more clearly than the sun through the teaching of Christ. Still, since you want to hear about it, Macarius, come and let us set forth a few points about the faith of Christ as best we can. You are capable of discovering it from the divine scriptures yourself, but you generously want to hear from others as well. For although the sacred and divinely inspired Scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth—and there are other works compiled by our blessed teachers for this purpose, which anyone who encounters them will gain some knowledge of how to interpret the Scriptures and be able to learn what he wants to know—still, since we do not have our teachers’ writings at hand right now, we must write to you what we learned from them: namely, the faith of Christ the Savior. This is so no one will treat the teaching among us lightly or consider faith in Christ unreasonable. For this is what the pagans slander and mock, laughing loudly at us and insisting on the single fact of Christ’s Cross. And it is precisely here that one must pity their lack of understanding, because when they slander the Cross of Christ, they fail to see that its power has filled the whole world and that through it the effects of knowing God are made plain to everyone. For they would not have mocked such a fact if they too had been people who genuinely paid attention to His divine nature. On the contrary, they would have recognized this man as Savior of the world and understood that the Cross has been not a disaster but a healing of creation. For if after the Cross all idolatry was overthrown, while every appearance of demons is driven away by this sign, and Christ alone is worshiped and the Father known through Him, and while opponents are put to shame, He daily invisibly wins over the souls of these opponents—how, one might fairly ask them, is it still possible for us to regard this matter as merely human instead of confessing that He who ascended the Cross is the Word of God and Savior of the world? But these people seem to me quite like someone who would slander the sun when it is covered by clouds while still marveling at its light, seeing how all of creation is illuminated by it. For just as light is noble and the sun, the primary cause of light, is nobler still, so since it is a divine thing for the whole world to be filled with knowledge of Him, it follows that the one who ordered and is the primary cause of such an achievement is God and the Word of God. We speak then as best we can, first refuting the ignorance of unbelievers, so that once what is false has been refuted, the truth may then shine forth on its own, and you yourself, friend, may be reassured that you have believed what is true and that in coming to know Christ you have not been deceived. Moreover, I think it is appropriate to speak to you about Christ, as one who loves Christ, since I am sure that you value faith in and knowledge of Him above everything else.

Evil is not part of the essential nature of things. The original creation and constitution of man was in grace and in the knowledge of God.

In the beginning, wickedness did not exist. Nor does it exist even now in those who are holy, nor does it belong to their physis in any way. But later on, people began to devise it and develop it to their own harm. This is also how they invented idols, treating what does not exist as though it did. God, the Maker and King of all, whose existence is beyond all ousia and human discovery, because He is good and supremely noble, made the human race through His own Word, our Savior Jesus Christ, according to His own image. He made man able to see and know realities through this likeness to Himself, giving him even a conception and knowledge of His own eternity, so that by preserving his physis intact, man might never depart from his understanding of God nor withdraw from communion with the holy ones. Instead, possessing the grace of the One who gave it and having God’s own power from the Word of the Father, man might rejoice and have fellowship with the Deity, living the life of immortality unharmed and truly blessed. For having nothing to hinder his knowledge of the Deity, he always beholds through his purity the Image of the Father, God the Word, according to whose image he himself is made. He is filled with awe as he contemplates that Providence which extends through the Word to the universe, being raised above sensory things and every bodily appearance, but clinging to the divine and intellectually perceived things in the heavens by the power of his mind. For when the mind of human beings does not interact with bodies, nor has anything of their lust mixed into it from outside, but is wholly above them, dwelling with itself as it was originally made, then, going beyond sensory things and all human things, it is lifted up on high. And seeing the Word, it sees in Him also the Father of the Word, taking pleasure in contemplating Him and being renewed by its desire toward Him, exactly as the first of created humans, the one called Adam in Hebrew, is described in the Holy Scriptures as having at the beginning directed his mind toward God in a freedom unhindered by shame, and as associating with the holy ones in that contemplation of intellectually perceived things which he enjoyed in the place where he was—the place which holy Moses figuratively called a Garden. So purity of soul is by itself sufficient to reflect God, as the Lord also says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

The decline of humanity from the condition described above happened because people became absorbed in material things.

Thus, as we have said, the Creator fashioned the human race and intended it to remain this way. But people, treating better things lightly and holding back from grasping them, began to prefer things closer to themselves. What was closer to themselves was the body and its senses. So while withdrawing their mind from things perceived by thought, they began to focus on themselves. By doing this—holding to the body and the other objects of sense, and deceived as it were by their own surroundings—they fell into lust for themselves, preferring what was their own to the contemplation of what belonged to God. Having made themselves at home in these things, and not being willing to leave what was so close to them, they entangled their soul with bodily pleasures, troubled and disturbed with all kinds of lusts, while they completely forgot the power they originally had from God. The truth of this can be seen from the first man, according to what the holy Scriptures tell us about him. For he also, as long as he kept his mind on God and the contemplation of God, turned away from contemplation of the body. But when, by the serpent’s counsel, he departed from the consideration of God and began to focus on himself, they not only fell into bodily lust but knew that they were naked, and knowing this, were ashamed. They knew they were naked not so much of clothing as that they had become stripped of the contemplation of divine things, and had transferred their understanding to the opposite things. For having departed from the consideration of the one and the true—namely, God—and from desire of Him, they had from then on embarked in various lusts and in those of the several bodily senses. Next, as tends to happen, having formed a desire for each and every thing, they began to become habituated to these desires, so that they were even afraid to leave them. As a result, the soul became subject to cowardice and alarms, and pleasures and thoughts of mortality. For not being willing to leave her lusts, she fears death and her separation from the body. But again, from lusting and not finding satisfaction, she learned to commit murder and wrong. We are then naturally led to show, as best we can, how she does this.

The gradual lowering of the soul from truth to falsehood through the misuse of her freedom of choice.

Having departed from contemplating the things of thought and fully using the various activities of the body, and being pleased with the contemplation of the body, and seeing that pleasure is good for her, she was misled and abused the name of good, and thought that pleasure was the very essence of good—just as though a person out of his mind and asking for a sword to use against everyone he met were to think that this was soundness of mind. 2. But having fallen in love with pleasure, she began to work it out in various ways. For being by nature mobile, even though she has turned away from what is good, she does not lose her mobility. She moves then, no longer according to virtue or so as to see God, but imagining false things, she makes a novel use of her power, abusing it as a means to the pleasures she has devised, since she is after all made with power over herself. 3. For she is able, on the one hand, to incline toward what is good, and on the other, to reject it. But in rejecting the good she of course entertains the thought of what is opposed to it, for she cannot at all cease from movement, being, as I said before, mobile by nature. And knowing her own power over herself, she sees that she is able to use the members of her body in either direction, both toward what is and toward what is not. 4. But good is, while evil is not. By what is, then, I mean what is good, since it has its pattern in God Who is. But by what is not I mean what is evil, insofar as it consists in a false imagination in the thoughts of men. For though the body has eyes to see creation and by its entirely harmonious construction to recognize the Creator, and ears to listen to the divine oracles and the laws of God, and hands both to perform necessary works and to raise to God in prayer, yet the soul, departing from the contemplation of what is good and from moving in its sphere, wanders away and moves toward its contraries. 5. Then seeing, as I said before, and abusing her power, she has perceived that she can move the members of the body in the opposite way as well. And so, instead of beholding creation, she turns the eye to lusts, showing that she has this power too. And thinking that by the mere fact of moving she is maintaining her own dignity and is doing no sin in doing as she pleases, she does not know that she is made not merely to move, but to move in the right direction. For this is why an apostolic utterance assures us: “All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

Evil, then, consists essentially in choosing what is lower over what is higher.

But human audacity, paying attention not to what is beneficial and fitting, but to what is merely possible for it, began to do the opposite. As a result, redirecting their hands to the contrary purpose, it made them commit murder, and led their hearing away to disobedience, and their other bodily members to adultery instead of to lawful procreation. The tongue was turned from right speaking to slander, insult, and perjury; the hands again to stealing and striking fellow human beings; the sense of smell to many kinds of lascivious odors; the feet to being swift to shed blood; and the belly to drunkenness and insatiable gluttony. All these things are vice and sin of the soul. There is no cause for them at all except the rejection of better things. For just as if a charioteer, having mounted his chariot on the race-course, were to pay no attention to the goal toward which he should be driving, but ignoring this were simply to drive the horse as he could, or as he pleased, often driving against those he met and often down steep places, rushing wherever he was carried by the speed of the team, thinking that by simply running he has not missed the goal—for he regards only the running and does not see that he has passed far wide of the goal—so too the soul, turning from the way toward God and driving the members of the body beyond what is proper, or rather being driven along with them by her own doing, sins and makes mischief for herself, not seeing that she has strayed from the way and has swerved from the goal of truth. The Christ-bearing man, the blessed Paul, was looking toward this goal when he said, “I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14), so that the holy man, making the good his mark, never did what was evil.

Human beings held false views about the nature of evil, namely that evil is something that exists in the nature of things and has substantive existence. (a) Pagan thinkers claimed that evil resides in matter. Their view can be refuted. (b) Heretical teachers promoted Dualism. This can be refuted from Scripture.

Now certain Greek philosophers, having strayed from the right path and not having known Christ, have claimed that evil has substantive and independent existence. In this they make a double mistake: either they deny the Creator is maker of all things, if evil has an independent subsistence and being of its own; or if they mean that He is maker of all things, they will necessarily admit Him to be maker of evil also. For according to them, evil is included among existing things. But this must appear paradoxical and impossible. For evil does not come from good, nor is it in or the result of good, since in that case good would not be good, being mixed in its nature or being a cause of evil. But the heretical sectarians, who have fallen away from the teaching of the Church and made shipwreck concerning the Faith, also wrongly think that evil has substantive existence. They arbitrarily imagine another god besides the true One, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and claim that he is the uncreated producer of evil and the head of wickedness, who is also the creator of the material world. But these men can easily be refuted, not only from the divine Scriptures, but also from human understanding itself, the very source of their insane ideas. To begin with, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ says in His own gospels, confirming the words of Moses: The Lord God is one; and I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. But if God is one, and at the same time Lord of heaven and earth, how could there be another God beside Him? Or what room will there be for the god they suppose, if the one true God fills all things within the bounds of heaven and earth? Or how could there be another creator of that which, according to the Savior’s own words, the God and Father of Christ is Himself Lord of? Unless they would say that these two gods are, so to speak, in an equal balance, and the evil god is capable of defeating the good God. But if they say this, see to what degree of blasphemy they descend. For when powers are equal, one cannot discover which is superior and better. For if each exists even though the other wills it not, both are equally strong and equally weak: strong, because each one’s very existence defeats the other’s will; weak, because what happens is contrary to their wills—for while the good God exists despite the evil one, the evil god exists equally despite the good.

The refutation of dualism comes from reason itself. Two Gods cannot exist. The truth about evil is what the Church teaches: that it originates and resides in the perverted choice of the darkened soul.

More especially, they are exposed to the following reply. If visible things are the work of the evil god, what is the work of the good God? For nothing is to be seen except the work of the Artificer. Or what evidence is there that the good God exists at all, if there are no works of His by which He may be known? For by his works the artificer is known. 2. Or how could two principles exist, contrary to one another? Or what is it that divides them, allowing them to exist apart? For it is impossible for them to exist together, because they are mutually destructive. But neither can the one be included in the other, their nature being unmixed and unlike. Accordingly, that which divides them would evidently be of a third nature, and itself God. But of what nature could this third something be? Good or evil? It will be impossible to determine, for it cannot be of the nature of both. 3. This idea of theirs, then, being evidently rotten, the truth of the Church’s theology must be clear: that evil has not from the beginning been with God or in God, nor has any substantial existence; but that people, lacking the vision of good, began to devise and imagine for themselves what was not, according to their own pleasure. 4. For just as if a man, when the sun is shining and the whole earth illumined by his light, were to shut fast his eyes and imagine darkness where no darkness exists, and then walk wandering as if in darkness, often falling and going down steep places, thinking it was dark and not light—for, imagining that he sees, he does not see at all—so, too, the soul of man, shutting fast her eyes by which she is able to see God, has imagined evil for herself, and moving in it, does not know that, thinking she is doing something, she is doing nothing. For she is imagining what is not, nor is she abiding in her original nature; but what she is, is evidently the product of her own disorder. 5. For she is made to see God and to be enlightened by Him; but of her own accord, in God’s place she has sought corruptible things and darkness, as the Spirit says somewhere in writing, “God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Thus it has been that people from the first discovered and contrived and imagined evil for themselves. But it is now time to say how they came down to the madness of idolatry, that you may know that the invention of idols is wholly due, not to good but to evil. But what has its origin in evil can never be pronounced good in any point—being evil altogether.

The origin of idolatry is similar. The soul, materialized by forgetting God and absorbed in earthly things, makes them into gods. The human race descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition.

Now the soul of mankind, not satisfied with inventing evil, gradually began to venture into what is even worse. Having experienced various pleasures and surrounded by forgetfulness of divine things, delighting in and focusing on the body’s passions and nothing but present things and opinions about them, the soul ceased to think that anything existed beyond what is visible, or that anything was good except temporal and bodily things. So turning away and forgetting that she was made in the image of the good God, she no longer sees by her own power God the Word in whose likeness she is made. Instead, having departed from herself, she imagines and invents what does not exist. 2. For by hiding with the entanglements of bodily lusts the mirror which, so to speak, is in her—by which alone she had the power of seeing the Image of the Father—she no longer sees what a soul ought to see, but is carried about by everything and only sees the things that come through the senses. Therefore, weighed down with all fleshly desire and distracted among the impressions of these things, she imagines that the God Whom her understanding has forgotten is to be found in bodily and sensible things, giving to things seen the name of God and glorifying only those things which she desires and which are pleasant to her eyes. 3. Accordingly, evil is the cause that brings idolatry along with it. For men, having learned to invent evil, which has no reality in itself, in the same way invented for themselves as gods beings that had no real existence. Just as if a man had plunged into the deep and no longer saw the light or what appears by light, because his eyes are turned downward and the water is all above him, and perceiving only the things in the deep thinks that nothing exists besides them and that the things he sees are the only true realities—so men of former times, having lost their reason and plunged into the lusts and imaginations of carnal things and forgotten the knowledge and glory of God, their reasoning being dull or rather following unreason, made gods for themselves out of things seen, glorifying the creature rather than the Creator Romans 1:25 and deifying the works rather than the Master, God, their Cause and Artificer. 4. But just as, according to the simile above, men who plunge into the deep advance into darker and deeper places the deeper they go down, so it is with mankind. For they did not keep to idolatry in a simple form, nor did they remain in that with which they began. But the longer they continued in their first condition, the more new superstitions they invented. Not satisfied with the first evils, they filled themselves again with others, advancing further in utter shamefulness and surpassing themselves in impiety. To this the divine Scripture testifies when it says, When the wicked comes unto the depth of evils, he despises Proverbs 18:3.

The various developments of idolatry: worship of the heavenly bodies, the elements, natural objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, men living and dead. The case of Antinous, and of the deified Emperors.

For now the understanding of mankind leaped away from God. Going lower in their ideas and imaginations, they gave the honor due to God first to the heaven and the sun and moon and the stars, thinking them to be not only gods but also the causes of the other gods lower than themselves. Then, going even lower in their dark imaginations, they gave the name of gods to the upper air and the atmosphere and the things in the air. Next, advancing further in evil, they came to worship as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed: heat and cold, dryness and wetness. 2. But just as those who have fallen flat creep in the slime like land snails, so the most impious of mankind, having fallen lower and lower from the idea of God, then set up as gods men and the forms of men—some still living, others even after their death. Moreover, devising and imagining worse things still, they transferred the divine and supernatural name of God at last even to stones and blocks of wood, and creeping things both of land and water, and irrational wild beasts, awarding to them every divine honor, and turning from the true and only real God, the Father of Christ. 3. But if only the audacity of these foolish men had stopped there, and they had not gone further yet in impious self-confusion. For some have fallen to such a depth in their understanding, to such darkness of mind, that they have even devised for themselves and made gods of things that have no existence at all, nor any place among things created. For mixing up the rational with the irrational, and combining things unlike in nature, they worship the result as gods, such as the dog-headed and snake-headed and donkey-headed gods among the Egyptians, and the ram-headed Ammon among the Libyans. While others, dividing apart the portions of men’s bodies—head, shoulder, hand, and foot—have set up each as gods and deified them, as though their religion were not satisfied with the whole body in its integrity. 4. But others, pushing impiety to the utmost, have deified the motive of the invention of these things and of their own wickedness—namely, pleasure and lust—and worship them, such as their Eros and the Aphrodite at Paphos. While some of them, as if competing with them in depravity, have ventured to erect into gods their rulers or even their sons, either out of honor for their princes or from fear of their tyranny, such as the Cretan Zeus, so renowned among them, and the Arcadian Hermes; and among the Indians Dionysus, among the Egyptians Isis and Osiris and Horus, and in our own time Antinous, favorite of Hadrian, Emperor of the Romans. Although men know he was a mere man, and not a respectable man but on the contrary full of licentiousness, yet they worship him for fear of the one who commanded it. For Hadrian, having come to stay in the land of Egypt when Antinous the minister of his pleasure died, ordered him to be worshipped. He was indeed himself in love with the youth even after his death, but for all that he offered a convincing exposure of himself and a proof against all idolatry—that it was invented among men for no other reason than because of the lust of those who imagined it. As the wisdom of God testifies beforehand when it says, The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication. 5. And do not wonder, nor think what we are saying hard to believe, since it is not long ago—even if it is not still the case—that the Roman Senate votes to those emperors who have ever ruled them from the beginning, either all of them or such as they wish and decide, a place among the gods, and decrees them to be worshipped. For those to whom they are hostile, they treat as enemies and call men, admitting their real nature, while those who are popular with them they order to be worshipped on account of their virtue, as though they had it in their own power to make gods, though they are themselves men and do not claim to be other than mortal. 6. Whereas if they are to make gods, they ought to be gods themselves, for that which makes must necessarily be better than that which it makes, and he that judges is of necessity in authority over him that is judged, while he that gives at any rate that which he has confers a favor, just as, of course, every king, in giving as a favor what he has to give, is greater and in a higher position than those who receive. If then they decree whomever they please to be gods, they ought first to be gods themselves. But the strange thing is this, that they themselves by dying as men expose the falsehood of their own vote concerning those deified by them.

Similar human origin of the Greek gods, by decree of Theseus. The process by which mortals became deified.

But this custom is not new, nor did it begin with the Roman Senate. On the contrary, it has existed from ancient times and was formerly practiced to create idols. For the gods famous among the Greeks from long ago—Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hephaestus, Hermes, and among females, Hera and Demeter and Athena and Artemis—were given the title of gods by decree of Theseus, as Greek history tells us. And so the men who pass such decrees die like men and are mourned, while those in whose favor they are passed are worshiped as gods. What extreme inconsistency and madness! Knowing who passed the decree, they pay greater honor to those who are the subjects of it. 2. And if only their idolatrous madness had stopped with males, and they had not brought the title of deity down to females as well. For even women, whom it is not safe to admit to deliberations about public affairs, they worship and serve with the honor due to God—such as those decreed by Theseus as mentioned above, and among the Egyptians Isis and the Maid and the Younger one, and among others Aphrodite. For I do not consider it modest even to mention the names of the others, which are full of all kinds of grotesqueness. 3. For many people, not only in ancient times but also in our own, having lost their loved ones—brothers and relatives and wives—and many women who had lost their husbands, all of whom nature proved to be mortal men, made representations of them and devised sacrifices and consecrated them. Later generations, moved by the figure and the brilliance of the artist, worshiped them as gods, thus falling into inconsistency with nature. For whereas their parents had mourned for them, not regarding them as gods (for had they known them to be gods they would not have lamented them as if they had perished; this was why they represented them in an image—not because they thought them gods, but because they did not believe they existed at all anymore, and so that the sight of their form in the image might console them for their being no more), yet the foolish people pray to them as gods and give them the honor due to the true God. 4. For example, in Egypt even to this day, the death-dirge is celebrated for Osiris and Horus and Typho and the others. And the caldrons at Dodona and the Corybantes in Crete prove that Zeus is not a god but a man, and a man born of a cannibal father. And, strange to say, even Plato, the sage admired among the Greeks, with all his boasted understanding about God, goes down with Socrates to Piraeus to worship Artemis, a product of human art.

The actions of pagan deities, and especially those of Zeus.

But Scripture taught us long ago about these inventions and others like them that come from the madness of idolatry, when it said: The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them, the corruption of life. For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be forever. For the vainglory of men they entered into the world, and therefore shall they come shortly to an end. For a father afflicted with untimely mourning, when he made an image of his child soon taken away, now honored him as a god which was then a dead man, and delivered to those under him ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus in the course of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law. And graven images were worshipped by the commands of kings. Whom men could not honor in person because they lived far away, they took the counterfeit of his appearance from afar, and made an exact image of the king whom they honored, so that by this their eagerness they might flatter him who was absent as if he were present. Also the exceptional skill of the craftsman helped to lead the ignorant forward into greater superstition. For he, perhaps wanting to please someone in authority, applied all his skill to make the resemblance of the best quality, and so the multitude, attracted by the beauty of the work, took him now for a god who a little before was only honored as a man. And this was an occasion to deceive the world, for men serving either calamity or tyranny ascribed to stones and wooden blocks the incommunicable Name. Since the beginning and devising of the invention of idols has been, as Scripture witnesses, of such a kind, it is now time to show you the refutation of it by proofs drawn not so much from outside sources as from these people’s own opinions about the idols. For to begin at the lowest point, if someone were to examine the actions of those they call gods, one would find that they were not only not gods, but had been even among men the most contemptable. For what a thing it is to see the loves and immoral actions of Zeus in the poets! What a thing to hear of him, on the one hand carrying off Ganymede and committing secret adulteries, on the other in panic and alarm lest the walls of the Trojans should be destroyed against his wishes! What a thing to see him in grief at the death of his son Sarpedon, and wanting to rescue him without being able to do so, and, when plotted against by the other so-called gods, namely Athena and Hera and Poseidon, rescued by Thetis, a woman, and by Aegaeon of the hundred hands, and overcome by pleasures, a slave to women, and for their sakes undertaking adventures in disguises consisting of wild animals and reptiles and birds; and again, in hiding because of his father’s designs against him, or Cronos bound by him, or him again mutilating his father! Why, is it appropriate to regard as a god one who has committed such deeds and who stands accused of things which not even the public laws of the Romans allow those who are merely men to do?

Other shameful actions are attributed to pagan deities. All of these prove that they were merely human beings from earlier times, and not even good people at that.

For, to mention a few instances out of many to avoid being too lengthy, anyone who saw his lawless and corrupt conduct toward Semele, Leda, Alcmene, Artemis, Leto, Maia, Europe, Danae, and Antiope, or what he dared to do with his own sister by having the same woman as both wife and sister, would despise him and declare him deserving of death. For he not only committed adultery, but he also deified and raised to heaven those born from his adulteries, using their deification as a cover for his lawlessness—such as Dionysus, Heracles, the Dioscuri, Hermes, Perseus, and Soteira. Who, seeing the so-called gods in irreconcilable conflict among themselves at Troy over the Greeks and Trojans, will fail to recognize their weakness, since because of their mutual jealousies they even incited mortals to fight? Who, seeing Ares and Aphrodite wounded by Diomedes, or Hera and Hades from below the earth—whom they call a god—wounded by Heracles, Dionysus by Perseus, Athena by Arcas, and Hephaestus thrown down and left limping, will not recognize their true nature, and, while refusing to call them gods, be convinced (when he hears that they are corruptible and subject to suffering) that they are nothing but men, and weak men at that, and admire those who inflicted the wounds rather than the wounded? Or who, seeing the adultery of Ares with Aphrodite, and Hephaestus devising a trap for the two, and the other so-called gods summoned by Hephaestus to witness the adultery, and coming and seeing their licentiousness, would not laugh and recognize their worthless character? Or who would not laugh at seeing the drunken folly and misconduct of Heracles toward Omphale? As for their acts of pleasure, their shameless loves, and their divine images in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, we need not seriously refute them with argument, since the facts are shameful in themselves and are sufficient on their own to provide proof of the deception, so that one’s primary feeling is pity for those deceived about them. For, while hating the adulterer who violates their own wife, they are not ashamed to deify the teachers of adultery; and while refraining from incest themselves, they worship those who practice it; and while admitting that corrupting children is evil, they serve those who are accused of it and do not blush to attribute to those they call gods things that the laws forbid to exist even among men.

The foolishness of worshipping images and the disgrace it brings to art.

Again, in worshipping things of wood and stone, they do not see that they tread under foot and burn materials that are no different from what they call gods. What they used a little while ago, they carve and worship in their foolishness, not seeing or considering at all that they are worshipping not gods, but the carver’s art. For as long as the stone is uncut and the wood unworked, they walk on one and frequently use the other for their own purposes, even for dishonorable ones. But when the artist has shaped them according to his own skill and impressed upon the material the form of a man or woman, then, thanking the artist, they proceed to worship them as gods, having bought them from the carver at a price. Often, moreover, the image-maker, as if forgetting the work he has done himself, prays to his own productions and calls gods what he was just paring and chipping. It would be better, if there is a need to admire these things, to credit the art of the skilled workman, and not to honor the productions over their producer. For it is not the material that has adorned the art, but the art that has adorned and deified the material. It would be much more just, then, for them to worship the artist than his productions, both because his existence came before that of the gods produced by art, and because they have come into being in the form he chose to give them. But as it is, setting justice aside and dishonoring skill and art, they worship the products of skill and art, and when the man who made them is dead, they honor his works as immortal, whereas if they did not receive daily attention they would certainly in time come to a natural end. Or how could one fail to pity them in this also, that seeing, they worship things that cannot see, and hearing, they pray to things that cannot hear, and though born with life and reason, they—being human—call gods things that do not move at all and do not even have life, and strangest of all, they serve as their masters beings whom they themselves keep under their own power? Do not imagine that this is a mere statement of mine, or that I am slandering them; for the proof of all this is visible, and whoever wishes may see the same thing.

Image worship condemned by Scripture.

But better testimony about all this is furnished by Holy Scripture, which tells us beforehand when it says, “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. Eyes have they and will not see; a mouth have they and will not speak; ears have they and will not hear; noses have they and will not smell; hands have they and will not handle; feet have they and will not walk; they will not speak through their throat. Like unto them be they that make them.” Nor have they escaped prophetic censure, for there also is their refutation, where the Spirit says, “They shall be ashamed that have formed a god, and carved all of them that which is vain: and all by whom they were made are dried up: and let the deaf ones among men all assemble and stand up together, and let them be confounded and put to shame together; for the carpenter sharpened iron, and worked it with an adze, and fashioned it with an auger, and set it up with the arm of his strength: and he shall hunger and be faint, and drink no water. For the carpenter chose out wood, and set it by a rule, and fashioned it with glue, and made it as the form of a man and as the beauty of man, and set it up in his house, wood which he had cut from the grove and which the Lord planted, and the rain gave it growth that it might be for men to burn, and that he might take thereof and warm himself, and kindle, and bake bread upon it, but the residue they made into gods, and worshipped them, the half whereof they had burned in the fire. And upon the half thereof he roasted flesh and ate and was filled, and was warmed and said: ‘It is pleasant to me, because I am warmed and have seen the fire.’ But the residue thereof he worshipped, saying, ‘Deliver me for you are my god.’ They knew not nor understood, because their eyes were dimmed that they could not see, nor perceive with their heart; nor did he consider in his heart nor know in his understanding that he had burned half thereof in the fire, and baked bread upon the coals thereof, and roasted flesh and eaten it, and made the residue thereof an abomination, and they worship it. Know that their heart is dust and they are deceived, and none can deliver his soul. Behold and will you not say, ‘There is a lie in my right hand?'” How then can they fail to be judged godless by all, who even by the divine Scripture are accused of impiety? Or how can they be anything but miserable, who are thus openly convicted of worshipping dead things instead of the truth? Or what kind of hope have they? Or what kind of excuse could be made for them, trusting in things without sense or movement, which they reverence in place of the true God?

The details about the gods that are conveyed through the representations made by poets and artists show that these gods are lifeless, and that they are neither gods at all nor even respectable men and women.

I wish the artists would at least make the gods without any physical features, so they wouldn’t be so obviously exposed as senseless. They might have deceived simple people into thinking the idols had real senses, if they didn’t give them the outward signs of senses—eyes, noses, ears, hands, and mouths—without any actual ability to perceive or grasp sensory objects. But as it is, these idols have these features and yet don’t have them, they stand and yet don’t stand, they sit and yet don’t sit. They lack the real function of these things, but simply remain motionless however their maker chose to position them, showing no sign of being a god, but obviously just lifeless objects placed there by human skill. Or I wish the heralds and prophets of these false gods—by which I mean the poets and writers—had simply written that they were gods, without also recording their actions that expose their godlessness and scandalous lives. By the mere title of divinity they might have stolen the truth away, or rather caused most people to stray from the truth. But as things stand, by telling stories about Zeus’s love affairs and immoral acts, the other gods’ corruption of young men, the lustful jealousies of the goddesses, and their fears, cowardly deeds, and other wickedness, they merely prove that they are writing not about gods at all, not even about decent men, but rather telling stories about shameful persons far removed from anything honorable.

Would that the craftsman would make the gods without any form at all, so they would not be exposed so clearly as lacking perception. They might have deceived simple people into thinking the idols had senses if they did not have the features of the senses—eyes and noses and ears and hands and mouth, for example—without any actual ability to perceive or move.

Pagan arguments that try to excuse what was said above include this one: “The poets are responsible for these disgraceful stories.” But are the names and existence of the gods any better proven? Both stand or fall together. Either the actions must be defended or the divine status of the gods must be given up. And the heroes are not said to have done things inconsistent with their nature, as the gods are according to this excuse.

But perhaps, regarding all this, the impious will appeal to the distinctive style of poets, saying that it is characteristic of poets to invent what is not real and, for the pleasure of their audiences, to tell made-up stories, and that for this reason they have composed these tales about gods. But this excuse of theirs, even more than any other, will appear superficial based on what they themselves think and claim about these matters. For if what is said in the poets is made-up and false, even the names Zeus, Cronos, Hera, Ares and the rest must be false. For perhaps, as they say, even the names are fictitious, and while no such being exists as Zeus, Cronos, or Ares, the poets invent their existence to deceive their audiences. But if the poets invent the existence of unreal beings, how is it that they worship them as though they existed? Or perhaps, once again, they will say that while the names are not fictitious, they attribute to them fictitious actions. But even this is equally weak as a defense. For if they made up the actions, doubtless they also made up the names to which they attributed the actions. Or if they tell the truth about the names, it follows that they tell the truth about the actions too. In particular, they who have said in their tales that these are gods certainly know how gods ought to act, and would never attribute to gods the characteristics of men, any more than one would attribute to water the properties of fire; for fire burns, whereas the physis of water on the contrary is cold. If then the actions are worthy of gods, they that do them must be gods; but if they are actions of men, and of disreputable men, such as adultery and the acts mentioned above, they that act in such ways must be men and not gods. For their deeds must correspond to their natures, so that at once the actor may be recognized by his act, and the action may be known from his nature. So that just as a man discussing water and fire, and declaring their action, would not say that water burned and fire cooled, nor, if a man were discussing the sun and the earth, would he say the earth gave light while the sun was sown with herbs and fruits, but if he were to say so would reach the utmost height of madness, so neither would their writers, and especially the most distinguished poet of all, if they really knew that Zeus and the others were gods, credit them with such actions as show them to be not gods, but rather men, and not respectable men. Or if, as poets, they told lies, and you are defending them, why did they not also tell lies about the courage of the heroes, and invent weakness in the place of courage, and courage in place of weakness? For they ought in that case, as with Zeus and Hera, so also to falsely accuse Achilles of lack of courage, and to celebrate the might of Thersites, and, while charging Odysseus with dullness, to make out Nestor a reckless person, and to narrate effeminate actions of Diomed and Hector, and manly deeds of Hecuba. For the fiction and falsehood they ascribe to the poets ought to extend to all cases. But in fact, they kept the truth for their men, while not being ashamed to tell falsehoods about their so-called gods. And as some of them might argue, that they are telling falsehoods about their immoral actions, but that in their praises, when they speak of Zeus as father of gods, and as the highest, and the Olympian, and as reigning in heaven, they are not inventing but speaking truthfully; this is a plea which not only myself, but anybody can refute. For the truth will be clear, in opposition to them, if we recall our previous proofs. For while their actions prove them to be men, the praises given to them go beyond the physis of men. The two things then are mutually inconsistent; for neither is it the physis of heavenly beings to act in such ways, nor can anyone suppose that persons so acting are gods.

The truth is probably this: the shameful stories are actually true, while the divine attributes assigned to them come from the flattery of the poets.

What conclusion can we draw from this, except that the praise is false and flattering, while the stories about their actions are true? This can be verified by common practice. No one who praises someone simultaneously accuses their conduct. Instead, when people’s actions are disgraceful, they praise them with elaborate speeches precisely because those actions are scandalous, hoping through exaggerated praise to deceive their listeners and hide the misconduct of others. Just as someone who must deliver a speech of praise but cannot find any material in the person’s conduct or character because of the scandal attached to these things will instead praise them in another way, flattering them with qualities that don’t actually belong to them, so too these celebrated poets, embarrassed by the scandalous actions of their so-called gods, have attached superhuman titles to them. They don’t realize that their superhuman inventions cannot hide the human actions, but will instead demonstrate through the human failings that the attributes of God do not fit them. I’m inclined to think they recorded the passions and actions of the gods even against their own wishes. Because they were attempting to give what Scripture calls the incommunicable name and honor of God to those who are not gods but mortal men, and because this undertaking of theirs was great and impious, for this reason they were forced by truth, even against their will, to describe the passions of these people, so that their passions, recorded in the writings about them, might serve as evidence for all future generations proving they were not gods.

The pagan defense continues. (2) ‘The gods are worshipped because they invented the arts of life.’ But this is a human and natural achievement, not a divine one. And if this is the principle, why aren’t all inventors made into gods?

What defense, then, what proof that these are real gods, can they offer who hold this superstition? For, by what has been said just above, our argument has demonstrated them to be men, and not respectable men. But perhaps they will turn to another argument and proudly appeal to the useful things for life they discovered, saying that the reason they regard them as gods is that they have been useful to mankind. For Zeus is said to have possessed the skill of molding clay, Poseidon that of the ship pilot, Hephaestus the smith’s craft, Athena that of weaving, Apollo that of music, Artemis that of hunting, Hera dressmaking, Demeter agriculture, and others other crafts, as those who inform us about them have reported. But people ought to attribute these and similar crafts not to the gods alone but to the common physis of mankind, for by observing nature people discover the crafts. For even common speech calls craft an imitation of nature. If then they have been skilled in the crafts they pursued, that is no reason for thinking them gods, but rather for thinking them men; for the crafts were not their creation, but in them they, like others, imitated nature. For since people have a natural capacity for knowledge according to the definition laid down concerning them, there is nothing to surprise us if by human intelligence and by looking at themselves and their own nature and coming to know it, they have discovered the crafts. Or if they say that the discovery of the crafts entitles them to be proclaimed as gods, it is high time to proclaim as gods the discoverers of the other crafts on the same grounds as the former were thought worthy of such a title. For the Phoenicians invented letters, Homer epic poetry, Zeno of Elea dialectic, Corax of Syracuse rhetoric, Aristaeus beekeeping, Triptolemus the sowing of grain, Lycurgus of Sparta and Solon of Athens laws; while Palamedes discovered the arrangement of letters, and numbers, and measures and weights. And others contributed various other things useful for the life of mankind, according to the testimony of our historians. If then the crafts make gods, and because of them carved gods exist, it follows, on their showing, that those who at a later date discovered the other crafts must be gods. Or if they do not deem these worthy of divine honor, but recognize that they are men, it would only be consistent not to give even the name of gods to Zeus, Hera, and the others, but to believe that they too have been human beings, and all the more so, since they were not even respectable in their day; just as by the very fact of sculpturing their form in statues they show that they are nothing else but men.

The inconsistency of worshiping images. Arguments offered in defense: (1) The divine nature must be expressed in a visible sign. (2) The image serves as a means for supernatural communications to people through angels.

What other form do they give their sculptures but those of men and women, lower creatures and irrational beings—all kinds of birds, tame and wild animals, and creeping things that land, sea, and the whole watery realm produce? For people have fallen into the irrationality of their passions and pleasures, and are unable to see anything beyond physical pleasures and lusts. Because they keep their minds focused on these irrational things, they imagined the divine principle to be in irrational things, and carved numerous gods to match the variety of their passions. 2. For they have images of beasts, creeping things, and birds, as the interpreter of divine and true religion says: “They became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things, wherefore God gave them up unto vile passions.” For having first infected their soul, as I said above, with the irrationality of pleasures, they then descended to this making of gods. Once fallen, and thereafter as though abandoned in their rejection of God, they wallow in these things and portray God, the Father of the Word, in irrational shapes. 3. Greek philosophers and scholars, while forced to admit that their visible gods are the forms and figures of men and irrational objects, say in defense that they have such things so that through them the deity may answer them and be made manifest, because otherwise they could not know the invisible God except through such statues and rites. 4. Those who claim to give even deeper and more philosophical reasons than these say that idols are prepared and fashioned for the invocation and manifestation of divine angels and powers, so that by appearing through these means they may teach people about the knowledge of God. They claim these serve as letters for people, by which they may learn to understand God through the manifestation of divine angels accomplished by these means. Such then is their mythology—for far be it from us to call it a theology. But if one examines the argument carefully, he will find that the opinion of these people, no less than those previously mentioned, is false.

But where does this supposed virtue of the image reside? In the material, or in the form, or in the maker’s skill? None of these options can be defended.

Someone might respond to them, bringing the case before the tribunal of truth: How does God make answer or become known through such objects? Is it because of the material they’re made from, or because of the form they have? If it’s because of the material, why is the form necessary? Why didn’t God simply manifest Himself through all matter everywhere before these things were even made? They’ve built their temples in vain to enclose a single stone, piece of wood, or bit of gold, when the whole world is full of these substances. If the form added on top is the cause of the divine manifestation, why is the material—gold and the rest—necessary? Why doesn’t God manifest Himself through the actual living animals that the images represent? On the same principle, people’s understanding of God would be nobler if He manifested Himself through living animals, whether rational or irrational, instead of being sought in lifeless, motionless things. In this they commit the most serious impiety against themselves. While they despise and turn away from real animals—beasts, birds, and crawling creatures—either because they’re fierce or because they’re dirty, they carve their forms in stone, wood, or gold and make them gods. It would be better for them to worship the living creatures themselves rather than to worship their stone figures. But perhaps neither is the case. Perhaps neither the material nor the form causes the divine presence, but only skillful art summons the deity, since art is an imitation of nature. But if the deity communicates with the worshipers because of the art, why is the material needed again, since the art resides in human beings? If God manifests Himself solely because of the art, and if the images are worshiped as gods for this reason, then it would be right to worship and serve the people who are masters of the art, since they’re also rational and possess the skill within themselves.

The idea of communications through angels involves even wilder inconsistency, and even if it were true, it still would not justify the worship of the image.

But regarding their second and supposedly more profound defense, one might reasonably respond as follows. If these things are made by you Greeks not for the sake of God Himself manifesting Himself, but for the sake of a presence of angels there, why do you rank the images through which you invoke the powers as superior and above the powers invoked? For you carve the figures for the sake of apprehending God, as you say, but you give the actual images the honor and title of God, thus placing yourselves in a profane position. For while you confess that the power of God transcends the smallness of the images, and for that reason you do not venture to invoke God through them but only the lesser powers, you yourselves leap over these lesser powers and have given to blocks of wood and stones the title of Him whose presence you feared, and you call them gods instead of stones and human handiwork, and you worship them. For even supposing they serve you, as you falsely claim, as letters for contemplating God, it is not right to give the signs greater honor than what they signify. For if a man were to write the emperor’s name, it would not be without risk to give the writing more honor than the emperor; on the contrary, such a man faces the penalty of death, while the writing is fashioned by the writer’s skill. So also you yourselves, if you had your reasoning power at full strength, would not reduce such a great revelation of the Godhead to matter, nor would you have given the image greater honor than the man who carved it. For if there is any truth in the claim that, as letters, they indicate the manifestation of God and are therefore, as indications of God, worthy to be deified, yet it would be far more right to deify the artist who carved and engraved them, as being far more powerful and divine than they are, since they were cut and fashioned according to his will. If then the letters are worthy of admiration, much more does the writer exceed them in marvel, because of his art and the skill of his mind. If then it is not fitting to think they are gods for this reason, one must again question them about the madness concerning the idols, demanding from them the justification for their being in such a form.

The image cannot represent the true form of God, otherwise God would be corruptible.

If the reason they are fashioned this way is that the Deity has human form, why do they also give it the forms of non-rational creatures? Or if its form is that of the latter, why do they also embody it in the images of rational creatures? Or if it is both at once, and they conceive God to be a combination of the two—that is, having the forms both of rational and non-rational beings—why do they separate what is joined together and keep the images of beasts and humans apart, instead of always carving them as both kinds together, like the fictional creatures in the myths: Scylla, Charybdis, the Hippocentaur, and the dog-headed Anubis of the Egyptians? For they ought either to represent them only as having two natures in this way, or, if they have a single form, not to falsely represent them in the other form as well. And again, if their forms are male, why do they also give them female shapes? Or if they are female, why do they also falsify their forms as though they were male? Or if again they are a mixture of both, they ought not to be divided, but both should be combined and follow the pattern of the so-called hermaphrodites, so that their superstition should provide onlookers with a spectacle not only of impiety and slander, but of ridicule as well. And in general, if they conceive the Deity to be corporeal, so that they fashion for it and depict belly and hands and feet, and also neck and breasts and the other organs that make up a human being, see to what impiety and godlessness their mind has descended, to have such ideas of the Deity. For it follows that it must be capable of all other bodily afflictions as well, of being cut and divided, and even of perishing altogether. But these and similar things are not properties of God, but rather of earthly bodies. For while God is incorporeal and incorruptible and immortal, needing nothing for any purpose, these are both corruptible and are shapes of bodies and need bodily services, as we said before. For we often see images that have grown old being renewed, and those which time or rain or some animal of the earth has damaged being restored. In connection with this one must condemn their folly, in that they proclaim as gods things of which they themselves are the makers, and themselves ask salvation from objects which they themselves adorn with their arts to preserve them from corruption, and beg that their own needs may be supplied by beings which they well know need attention from themselves, and are not ashamed to call lords of heaven and all the earth creatures whom they shut up in small chambers.

The variety of idolatrous cults proves that they are false.

But one can recognize their godlessness not only from these points but also from their conflicting opinions about the idols themselves. For if these are gods according to their claims and theories, to which of them should one give allegiance, and which of them should one judge to be higher, so that a person might either worship God with confidence or, as they say, recognize the Deity through them without confusion? For the same beings are not called gods among all people. On the contrary, almost every nation has imagined a separate god. And there are cases of a single region and a single city having internal disagreement about the superstition of their idols. 2. For example, the Phoenicians do not know those called gods among the Egyptians, nor do the Egyptians worship the same idols that the Phoenicians have. And while the Scythians reject the gods of the Persians, the Persians reject those of the Syrians. But the Pelasgians also repudiate the gods in Thrace, while the Thracians do not know those of Thebes. The Indians moreover differ from the Arabs, the Arabs from the Ethiopians, and the Ethiopians from the Arabs in their idols. And the Syrians do not worship the idols of the Cilicians, while the Cappadocian nation calls gods beings different from these. And while the Bithynians have adopted others, the Armenians have imagined still others. And why should I multiply examples? The people on the continent worship different gods than the islanders, while these islanders serve different gods than those of the mainlands. 3. And in general, every city and village, not knowing the gods of its neighbors, prefers its own and considers these alone to be gods. For concerning the abominations in Egypt there is no need even to speak, since they are before everyone’s eyes: how the cities have religions that are opposite and incompatible, and neighbors always make a point of worshipping the opposite of those next to them—so much so that the crocodile, prayed to by some, is held in abomination by their neighbors, while the lion, worshipped as a god by others, is not worshipped by their neighbors but is killed as a wild beast if they find it; and the fish, consecrated by some people, is used as food in another place. And thus fights and riots and frequent occasions of bloodshed arise, along with every indulgence of the passions among them. 4. And strangely, according to the statements of historians, the very Pelasgians who learned from the Egyptians the names of the gods do not know the gods of Egypt but worship others instead. And speaking generally, all the nations that are infatuated with idols have different opinions and religions, and consistency is not to be found in any single case. Nor is this surprising. 5. For having fallen from the contemplation of the one God, they have descended to many and diverse objects; and having turned from the Word of the Father, Christ the Savior of all, they naturally have their understanding wandering in many directions. And just as people who have turned from the sun and have come into dark places go around by many pathless ways, and do not see those who are present while they imagine those to be there who are not, and seeing do not see—so those who have turned from God and whose soul is darkened have their mind in a roving state, and like people who are drunk and cannot see, they imagine what is not true.

The so-called gods of one place are used as sacrificial victims in another.

This, then, is no small proof of their actual godlessness. Since the gods of every city and country are many and different, and one destroys the god of another, all of them are destroyed by all. For those who are regarded as gods by some are offered as sacrifices and drink offerings to the so-called gods of others, and the victims of some are in turn the gods of others. The Egyptians worship the ox and Apis, a calf, while others sacrifice these animals to Zeus. Even if they do not sacrifice the exact animals that others have consecrated, by sacrificing their fellow creatures they seem to offer the same thing. The Libyans have as their god a sheep they call Ammon, but in other nations this animal is killed as a victim to many gods. The Indians worship Dionysus, using the name as a symbol for wine, while others pour out wine as an offering to the other gods. Others honor rivers and springs, and especially the Egyptians pay particular honor to water, calling them gods. Yet others, including even the Egyptians who worship the waters, use them to wash away dirt from others and from themselves, and disgracefully throw away what has been used. Meanwhile, nearly the entire Egyptian system of idols consists of what are victims to the gods of other nations, so that they are scorned even by those others for deifying what are not gods, but are instead propitiatory offerings and victims both among others and even among themselves.

Human sacrifice: its absurdity, its prevalence, and its disastrous consequences.

But some people have reached such a level of irreligion and foolishness that they actually kill and sacrifice real human beings to their false gods—human beings whose shapes and forms these gods themselves bear. These wretched people don’t realize that the victims they are killing are modeled after the very gods they make and worship, and to whom they are offering these people. They are, one might say, offering equals to equals, or rather, the superior to the inferior. They are offering living creatures to the dead, and rational beings to lifeless things. 2. The Scythians called Taurians sacrifice survivors from shipwrecks and any Greeks they capture to their Virgin, as they call her. In this way they reach the extreme of impiety against people of their own race, and reveal the savagery of their gods—because those whom Providence has rescued from danger and from the sea, they kill, almost fighting against Providence itself, since they frustrate the kindness of Providence through their own brutal character. Others, when they return victorious from war, divide their prisoners into groups of a hundred, take one man from each group, and sacrifice the man they have selected from each hundred to Ares. 3. It’s not only Scythians who commit these abominations because of the ferocity natural to them as barbarians. On the contrary, this practice is a direct result of the wickedness associated with idols and false gods. The Egyptians used to offer victims of this kind to Hera, and the Phoenicians and Cretans used to propitiate Cronos with child sacrifices. Even the ancient Romans used to worship Jupiter Latiarius, as he was called, with human sacrifices. Some did it one way, others another way, but all without exception committed these acts and incurred the pollution. They incurred it by the mere perpetration of these murderous deeds, while they polluted their own temples by filling them with the smoke of such sacrifices. 4. This, then, was the ready source of countless evils for mankind. Seeing that their false gods were pleased with these things, people immediately imitated their gods with similar misdeeds, thinking that imitating superior beings, as they considered them, was to their credit. As a result, mankind was reduced by murders of adults and children, and by every kind of license. Nearly every city is full of licentiousness of all kinds, the result of the savage character of its gods. There is not one person of sober life in the temples of idols, except for the one whose licentiousness is attested to by all of them.

The moral corruptions of Paganism all admittedly originated with the gods.

Women, for example, used to sit in the temples of Phoenicia in ancient times, consecrating to the gods the wages of their bodies, believing they were propitiating their goddess through fornication and that they would gain her favor this way. Meanwhile, men denied their nature and no longer wished to be male, taking on the appearance of women, under the belief that they were thereby gratifying and honoring the Mother of their so-called gods. But all live alongside the most degraded people and compete with the worst among themselves, and as Paul said, the holy minister of Christ: “For their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness.” But by acting in this way and in similar ways, they acknowledge and prove that the life of their so-called gods was of the same kind. For from Zeus they have learned the corruption of youth and adultery, from Aphrodite fornication, from Rhea licentiousness, from Ares murders, and from other gods other such things, which the laws punish and from which every sober person turns away. Does it then remain appropriate to consider them gods who do such things, instead of regarding them, because of the licentiousness of their behavior, as more irrational than the brutes? Is it appropriate to consider their worshippers human beings, instead of pitying them as more irrational than the brutes and more soul-less than inanimate objects? For if they had considered the intellectual part of their soul, they would not have plunged headlong into these things, nor would they have denied the true God, the Father of Christ.

Since we have conclusively refuted popular paganism, we now turn to the more elevated form of nature worship. We will examine how nature testifies to God through the mutual dependence of all her parts, which prevents us from thinking of any single one of them as the supreme God. This will be demonstrated in detail.

But perhaps those who have moved beyond these things and stand in awe of Creation, being shamed by these exposures of abominations, will join in rejecting what is readily condemned and refuted on all sides. Yet they will think they have a well-founded and unanswerable opinion, namely, the worship of the universe and of the parts of the universe. They will boast that they worship and serve, not mere pieces of wood and stones and forms of men and irrational birds and creeping things and beasts, but the sun and moon and all the heavenly universe, and the earth again, and the entire realm of water. They will say that no one can show that these at least are not of divine nature, since it is evident to all that they lack neither life nor reason, but transcend even the nature of mankind, inasmuch as some inhabit the heavens and others the earth. It is worth looking into and examining these points also, for here too our argument will find that its proof against them holds true. But before we look or begin our demonstration, it is enough that Creation almost raises its voice against them and points to God as its Maker and Artificer, Who reigns over Creation and over all things, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The would-be philosophers turn from Him to worship and deify the Creation which proceeded from Him, which yet itself worships and confesses the Lord Whom they deny on its account. For if people are so awestruck at the parts of Creation and think that they are gods, they might well be rebuked by the mutual dependence of those parts, which moreover makes known and witnesses to the Father of the Word, Who is the Lord and Maker of these parts also, by the unbroken law of their obedience to Him, as the divine law also says: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. But the proof of all this is not obscure; it is clear enough in all conscience to those whose eyes of understanding are not wholly disabled. For if a man takes the parts of Creation separately and considers each by itself—as for example the sun by itself alone, and the moon apart, and again earth and air, and heat and cold, and the essence of wet and of dry, separating them from their mutual conjunction—he will certainly find that not one is sufficient for itself but all are in need of one another’s assistance, and subsist by their mutual help. For the sun is carried round along with and is contained in the whole heaven, and can never go beyond its own orbit, while the moon and other stars testify to the assistance given them by the sun. The earth again evidently does not yield her crops without rains, which in their turn would not descend to earth without the assistance of the clouds. But not even would the clouds ever appear of themselves and subsist without the air. And the air is warmed by the upper air, but illuminated and made bright by the sun, not by itself. And wells again and rivers will never exist without the earth, but the earth is not supported upon itself; it is set upon the realm of the waters, while this again is kept in its place, being bound fast at the center of the universe. And the sea and the great ocean that flows outside round the whole earth is moved and borne by winds wherever the force of the winds drives it. And the winds in their turn originate not in themselves but, according to those who have written on the subject, in the air, from the burning heat and high temperature of the upper air compared with the lower air, and blow everywhere through the latter. For as to the four elements of which the nature of bodies is composed—heat, that is, and cold, wet and dry—who is so perverted in his understanding as not to know that these things exist indeed in combination, but if separated and taken alone they tend to destroy even one another according to the prevailing power of the more abundant element? For heat is destroyed by cold if it is present in greater quantity, and cold again is put away by the power of heat, and what is dry again is moistened by wet, and the latter dried by the former.

But the cosmic organism cannot be God either. For that would make God composed of dissimilar parts and subject Him to the possibility of dissolution.

How then can these things be gods, seeing that they need one another’s assistance? Or how is it proper to ask anything of them when they too ask help for themselves from one another? For if it is an admitted truth about God that He stands in need of nothing, but is self-sufficient and self-contained, and that in Him all things have their being, and that He ministers to all rather than they to Him, how is it right to proclaim as gods the sun and moon and other parts of creation, which are not like this, but which even stand in need of one another’s help? 2. But perhaps, if divided and taken by themselves, our opponents themselves will admit that they are dependent, since the demonstration can be seen with the eyes. But they will combine all things together, as making up a single body, and will say that the whole is God. For once the whole is put together, they will claim it no longer needs external help, but the whole will be sufficient for itself and independent in all respects. So at least the would-be philosophers will tell us, only to be refuted here once more. 3. Now this argument, no less than those previously dealt with, will demonstrate their impiety coupled with great ignorance. For if the combination of the parts makes up the whole, and the whole is combined out of the parts, then the whole consists of the parts, and each of them is a portion of the whole. But this is very far removed from the conception of God. For God is a whole and not a collection of parts, and does not consist of diverse elements, but is Himself the Maker of the system of the universe. For see what impiety they speak against the Deity when they say this. For if He consists of parts, then it will certainly follow that He is unlike Himself, and made up of unlike parts. For if He is sun, He is not moon, and if He is moon, He is not earth, and if He is earth, He cannot be sea—and so on, taking the parts one by one, one may discover the absurdity of this theory of theirs. 4. But the following point, drawn from the observation of our human body, is enough to refute them. For just as the eye is not the sense of hearing, nor is the latter a hand, nor is the belly the breast, nor again is the neck a foot, but each of these has its own function, and a single body is composed of these distinct parts—having its parts combined for use, but destined to be divided in time when nature, which brought them together, shall divide them at the will of God, Who so ordered it—thus (but may He who is above pardon the argument), if they combine the parts of creation into one body and proclaim it God, it follows, firstly, that He is unlike Himself, as shown above; secondly, that He is destined to be divided again, in accordance with the natural tendency of the parts to separation.

The balance of powers in Nature shows that it is not God, either collectively or in parts.

And in yet another way one may refute their godlessness by the light of truth. For if God is incorporeal and invisible and intangible by nature, how do they imagine God to be a body, and worship with divine honor things which we both see with our eyes and touch with our hands? 2. And again, if what is said of God is true, namely, that He is almighty, and that while nothing has power over Him, He has power and rule over all, how can they who deify creation fail to see that it does not satisfy this definition of God? For when the sun is under the earth, the earth’s shadow makes his light invisible, while by day the sun hides the moon by the brilliance of his light. And hail often injures the fruits of the earth, while fire is put out if water overflows. And spring makes winter give way, while summer will not allow spring to exceed its proper limits, and it in its turn is constrained by autumn not to overstep its own season. 3. If then they were gods, they ought not to be defeated and obscured by one another, but always to coexist, and to discharge their respective functions simultaneously. Both by night and by day the sun and the moon and the rest of the band of stars ought to shine equally together, and give their light to all, so that all things might be illumined by them. Spring and summer and autumn and winter ought to go on without alteration, and together. The sea ought to mingle with the springs, and furnish their drink to man in common. Calms and windy blasts ought to take place at the same time. Fire and water together ought to furnish the same service to man. For no one would take any harm from them, if they are gods, as our opponents say, and do nothing for harm, but rather all things for good. 4. But if none of these things are possible, because of their mutual incompatibility, how does it remain possible to give to these things, mutually incompatible and at strife, and unable to combine, the name of gods, or to worship them with the honors due to God? How could things naturally discordant give peace to others who pray to them, and become to them authors of concord? It is not then likely that the sun or the moon, or any other part of creation, still less statues in stone, gold, or other material, or Zeus, Apollo, and the rest, who are the subject of the poets’ fables, are true gods: this our argument has shown. But some of these are parts of creation, others have no life, others have been mere mortal men. Therefore their worship and deification is no part of religion, but the bringing in of godlessness and of all impiety, and a sign of a wide departure from the knowledge of the one true God, namely the Father of Christ. 5. Since then this is thus proved, and the idolatry of the Greeks is shown to be full of all ungodliness, and that its introduction has been not for the good, but for the ruin, of human life—come now, as our argument promised at the outset, let us, after having refuted error, travel the way of truth, and behold the Leader and Artificer of the Universe, the Word of the Father, in order that through Him we may apprehend the Father, and that the Greeks may know how far they have separated themselves from the truth.

Part 2

The soul of a human being, since it is intellectual, is able to know God by itself, provided it remains true to its own nature.

The teachings we have been discussing have been proven to be nothing more than a false guide for life. But the way of truth aims at reaching the real and true God. For knowledge of Him and accurate understanding, we need nothing other than ourselves. Since God Himself is above all, the road to Him is neither far away nor outside ourselves. Instead, it is within us, and it is possible to find it from ourselves in the first place, just as Moses taught when he said: “The word of faith is within your heart.” The Savior Himself declared and confirmed this same thing when He said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Having faith and the kingdom of God within ourselves, we will be able quickly to see and perceive the King of the Universe, the saving Word of the Father. Let not the Greeks who worship idols make excuses, nor let anyone else simply deceive himself by claiming to have no such road and therefore finding an excuse for his godlessness. For we have all set foot upon it and possess it, even if not all are willing to travel by it, but rather to turn away from it and go astray because of the pleasures of life that attract them from outside. If someone were to ask what this road is, I say that it is the soul of each one of us and the intelligence that lives there. For by it alone can God be contemplated and perceived. Unless, just as they have denied God, these impious men will also deny having a soul—which indeed would be more believable than the rest of what they say, since it is unlike men who possess an intellect to deny God, their Maker and Craftsman. Therefore, for the sake of the simple-minded, it is necessary to show briefly that each human being has a soul, and that this soul is rational. This is especially important since certain sectarians also deny this, thinking that a human being is nothing more than the visible form of the body. Once this point is proven, they will have in their own persons a clearer proof against the idols.

31. Proof of the existence of the rational soul

(1) The difference between humans and animals. (2) The human capacity for objective thought. Thought relates to sense perception as a musician relates to his instrument. The phenomena of dreams confirm this.

First, then, the rational nature of the soul is strongly confirmed by its difference from non-rational creatures. This is why common usage gives them that name, because the human race is rational. Second, it is no small proof that man alone thinks about things outside himself, reasons about things not actually present, exercises reflection, and chooses by judgment the better of alternative arguments. Non-rational animals see only what is present and are driven solely by what meets their eye, even if the consequences are harmful to them, while man is not driven merely by what he sees but judges by thought what he sees with his eyes. Often, for example, his impulses are mastered by reasoning, and his reasoning is subject to further reflection. And everyone, if he is a friend of truth, perceives that the intelligence of mankind is distinct from the bodily senses. Hence, because it is distinct, it acts as judge of the senses, and while they grasp their objects, the intelligence distinguishes, remembers, and shows them what is best. For the sole function of the eye is to see, of the ears to hear, of the mouth to taste, of the nostrils to detect smells, and of the hands to touch. But what one ought to see and hear, what one ought to touch, taste, and smell is a question beyond the senses and belonging to the soul and to the intelligence which resides in it. Why, the hand is able to grasp a sword blade, and the mouth to taste poison, but neither knows that these are harmful unless the intellect decides. And the case, to look at it with the aid of a comparison, is like that of a well-made lyre in the hands of a skilled musician. For just as the strings of the lyre each have their proper note—high, low, or in between, sharp or otherwise—yet their scale is indistinguishable and their timing cannot be recognized without the artist. For only then is the scale clear and the timing right, when the one holding the lyre strikes the strings and touches each in tune. In the same way, the senses being arranged in the body like a lyre, when the skilled intelligence presides over them, then too the soul distinguishes and knows what it is doing and how it is acting. But this alone is peculiar to mankind, and this is what is rational in the soul of mankind, by means of which it differs from the animals and shows that it is truly distinct from what is seen in the body. Often, for example, when the body is lying on the earth, man imagines and contemplates what is in the heavens. Often when the body is quiet, at rest and asleep, man moves inwardly and observes what is outside himself, traveling to other countries, walking about, meeting his acquaintances, and often by these means divining and predicting the actions of the day. But to what can this be due except to the rational soul, in which man thinks of and perceives things beyond himself?

The body cannot be the source of such phenomena. In fact, the activity of the rational soul is observed in its control over the instincts of the bodily organs.

We add another point to complete our argument for those who shamelessly take refuge in denying reason. How is it that while the body is mortal by nature, a human being thinks about things of immortality, and often, when virtue demands it, willingly faces death? Or how is it that, though the body lasts only for a time, a human being thinks about eternal things, so that he despises what is right in front of him and desires what is beyond? The body could not have such thoughts about itself on its own, nor could it think about what is outside itself. For it is mortal and lasts only for a time. It follows that whatever thinks what is opposed to the body and contrary to its nature must be different in kind. What can this be except a rational and immortal soul? For it introduces the echo of higher things, not outside but within the body, just as the musician does with his lyre. Or again, though the eye is naturally designed to see and the ear to hear, how do they turn away from some objects and choose others? For who turns the eye away from seeing? Or who blocks the ear from hearing, its natural function? Or who often stops the palate, which naturally tastes things, from its natural impulse? Or who holds back the hand from its natural activity of touching something, or turns aside the sense of smell from its normal exercise? Who acts against the natural instincts of the body in this way? Or how does the body, turned from its natural course, turn to the guidance of another and allow itself to be directed at that other’s command? These things prove simply this: that the rational soul rules over the body. For the body is not even able to drive itself, but is carried by the will of another, just as a horse does not harness himself but is driven by his master. This is why there are laws for human beings to practice what is good and to avoid doing evil, while for animals evil remains unthought of and unrecognized, because they exist outside rationality and the process of understanding. I think, then, that what we have said proves the existence of a rational soul in human beings.

The soul is immortal. This is proved by (1) its being distinct from the body, (2) its being the source of motion, (3) its power to go beyond the body in imagination and thought.

But that the soul is made immortal is a further point in the Church’s teaching which you must know, to show how the idols are to be overthrown. But we shall more directly arrive at a knowledge of this from what we know of the body, and from the difference between the body and the soul. For if our argument has proved it to be distinct from the body, while the body is by nature mortal, it follows that the soul is immortal, because it is not like the body. 2. And again, if as we have shown, the soul moves the body and is not moved by other things, it follows that the movement of the soul is spontaneous, and that this spontaneous movement continues after the body is laid aside in the earth. If the soul were moved by the body, it would follow that the separation from what moves it would involve its death. But if the soul moves the body, it follows all the more that it moves itself. But if it moves itself, it follows that it outlives the body. 3. For the movement of the soul is the same thing as its life, just as, of course, we call the body alive when it moves, and say that its death takes place when it ceases moving. But this can be made clearer once and for all from the action of the soul in the body. For if even when united and joined with the body it is not shut in or limited by the small dimensions of the body, but often, when the body lies in bed not moving but in death-like sleep, the soul keeps awake by virtue of its own power and transcends the natural power of the body, and as though traveling away from the body while remaining in it, imagines and sees things above the earth, and often even holds conversation with the saints and angels who are above earthly and bodily existence, and approaches them in the confidence of the purity of its intelligence—shall it not all the more, when separated from the body at the time appointed by God Who joined them together, have its knowledge of immortality more clear? For if even when joined with the body it lived a life outside the body, much more shall its life continue after the death of the body, and live without ceasing by reason of God Who made it thus by His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. 4. For this is the reason why the soul thinks of and bears in mind things immortal and eternal, namely, because it is itself immortal. And just as, the body being mortal, its senses also have mortal things as their objects, so, since the soul contemplates and sees immortal things, it follows that it is immortal and lives forever. For ideas and thoughts about immortality never leave the soul, but abide in it, and are as it were the fuel in it which ensures its immortality. This then is why the soul has the capacity for seeing God, and is its own way to Him, receiving not from outside but from herself the knowledge and understanding of the Word of God.

The soul, then, if only it gets rid of the stains of sin, is able to know God directly, since its own rational nature images back the Word of God, after whose image it was created. But even if it cannot pierce through the cloud that sin draws over its vision, it is confronted by the witness of creation to God.

We repeat then what we said before: just as people denied God and worship lifeless things, so also in thinking they do not have a rational soul, they receive at once the punishment of their foolishness, namely, to be counted among irrational creatures. And so, since they superstitiously worship soulless gods as though they themselves lacked a soul, they deserve pity and guidance. 2. But if they claim to have a soul and pride themselves on rational thought, and rightly so, why do they act as though they had no soul, daring to go against reason and not thinking as they should, but making themselves out to be higher even than God? For having a soul that is immortal and invisible to them, they make a likeness of God in things visible and mortal. Or why, just as they have departed from God, do they not return to Him again? For they are able, just as they turned their understanding away from God and falsely made gods out of things that were not, in the same way to ascend with the intelligence of their soul and turn back to God again. 3. But they can turn back if they lay aside the filth of all lust which they have put on, and wash it away persistently, until they have removed all the foreign matter that has affected their soul and can show it in its simplicity as it was made, so that they may be able by it to behold the Word of the Father after Whose likeness they were originally made. For the soul is made after the image and likeness of God, as divine Scripture also shows when it says in the person of God: Let us make man after our Image and likeness. Therefore when it removes all the filth of sin which covers it and retains only the likeness of the Image in its purity, then surely when this latter is thoroughly brightened, the soul beholds as in a mirror the Image of the Father, even the Word, and through Him reaches the idea of the Father, Whose Image the Savior is. 4. Or, if the soul’s own teaching is insufficient because of the external things which cloud its intelligence and prevent its seeing what is higher, yet it is still possible to attain to the knowledge of God from the things which are seen, since Creation, as though in written characters, declares in a loud voice, by its order and harmony, its own Lord and Creator.

Part 3

Creation is a revelation of God, especially in the order and harmony that pervades the whole.

For God, being good and loving toward humanity and caring for the souls He made—since He is by nature invisible and incomprehensible, having His being beyond all created existence, and for this reason the human race was likely to miss the way to knowing Him, since they are made out of nothing while He is unmade—for this reason God through His own Word gave the universe the order it has, so that since He is by nature invisible, people might be able to know Him at least by His works. For often the artist, even when not seen, is known by his works. And as people say of Phidias the sculptor that his works of art, by their symmetry and by the proportion of their parts, reveal Phidias to those who see them even though he is not there, so by the order of the universe one ought to perceive God its maker and craftsman, even though He is not seen with bodily eyes. For God did not rely on His invisible nature (let no one use that as an excuse) and leave Himself utterly unknown to people; but as I said above, He so ordered creation that although He is by nature invisible He may still be known by His works. And I do not say this on my own authority, but on the strength of what I learned from those who have spoken of God, among them Paul, who writes to the Romans: “For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made”; while to the Lycaonians he speaks out and says: “We also are men of like passions with you, and bring you good news, to turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who in the generations gone by allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. And yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.” For who that sees the circle of heaven and the course of the sun and the moon, and the positions and movements of the other stars, as they take place in opposite and different directions, while yet in their difference all together observe a consistent order, can resist the conclusion that these are not ordered by themselves, but have a maker distinct from themselves who orders them? Or who that sees the sun rising by day and the moon shining by night, waxing and waning without variation exactly according to the same number of days, and some of the stars running their courses with orbits various and complex, while others move without wandering, can fail to perceive that they certainly have a creator to guide them?

This becomes even more remarkable when we consider the opposing forces from which this order is produced.

Anyone who sees things of opposite nature combined and in harmonious agreement—for example, fire mixed with cold, and dry with wet, and these not in mutual conflict but forming a single body that is, as it were, uniform—can they resist concluding that there is One outside these things who has united them? Anyone who sees winter giving way to spring and spring to summer and summer to autumn, and that these seasons are opposite by nature (for one chills, another burns, one nourishes, another destroys), yet all produce a balanced result beneficial to humanity—can they fail to perceive that there is One higher than they who balances and guides them all, even if they do not see Him? Anyone who sees the clouds suspended in air, and the weight of the waters held up in the clouds, can they not perceive Him who holds them up and has arranged these things this way? Or anyone who sees the earth, heaviest of all things by nature, fixed upon the waters and remaining unmoved upon what is by nature mobile, will they fail to understand that there is One who has made and ordered it, even God? Anyone who sees the earth bringing forth fruits in their proper season, and the rains from heaven, and the flow of rivers, and the springing up of wells, and the birth of animals from unlike parents, and that these things take place not at all times but at specific seasons—and in general, among things mutually unlike and opposite, the balanced and uniform order to which they conform—can they resist concluding that there is one Power which orders and administers them, arranging things well as it sees fit? For left to themselves they could not exist or ever be able to appear, because of their mutual opposition of nature. For water is by nature heavy and tends to flow downward, while the clouds are light and belong to the class of things that tend to rise and mount upward. And yet we see water, heavy as it is, carried aloft in the clouds. And again, earth is very heavy, while water on the other hand is relatively light; and yet the heavier is supported upon the lighter, and the earth does not sink but remains unmovable. And male and female are not the same, while yet they unite as one, and the result is the generation from both of an animal like them. And to be brief, cold is opposite to heat, and wet fights with dry, and yet they come together and are not at variance, but they agree and produce as their result a single body and the birth of everything.

The same subject continued.

Things with conflicting and opposite natures would not have reconciled themselves if there were not One higher and Lord over them to unite them—One to whom even the elements themselves yield obedience as slaves obey a master. Instead of each element regarding only its own nature and fighting with its neighbor, they recognize the Lord who has united them and are at peace with one another, being opposed by nature but in harmony by the will of Him who guides them. If their mingling into one were not due to a higher authority, how could the heavy mingle and combine with the light, the wet with the dry, the round with the straight, fire with cold, or sea with earth, or the sun with the moon, or the stars with the heaven, and the air with the clouds—when the physis of each is dissimilar to that of the other? There would be great strife among them, the one burning while the other gives cold; the heavy dragging downward while the light moves in the contrary direction upward; the sun giving light while the air spreads darkness; yes, even the stars would have been at discord with one another, since some have their position above and others beneath, and night would have refused to make way for day but would have persisted in remaining to fight and struggle against it. But if this were so, we would consequently see not an ordered universe but disorder, not arrangement but anarchy, not a system but everything out of system, not proportion but disproportion. For in the general strife and conflict either all things would be destroyed, or only the prevailing element would appear. And even that one would show the disorder of the whole, for left alone and deprived of the help of the others, it would throw the whole out of balance, just as if a single hand and foot were left alone, that would not preserve the body in its integrity. For what sort of universe would it be if only the sun appeared, or only the moon went her course, or there were only night or always day? Or what sort of harmony would it be if the heaven existed alone without the stars, or the stars without the heaven? Or what benefit would there be if there were only sea, or if the earth were there alone without waters and without the other parts of creation? Or how could man, or any animal, have appeared upon earth if the elements were mutually at strife, or if there were one that prevailed, and that one insufficient for the composition of bodies? For nothing in the world could have been composed of heat, or cold, or wet, or dry alone, but all would have been without arrangement or combination. But not even the one element which appeared to prevail would have been able to subsist without the assistance of the rest, for that is how each subsists now.

The Unity of God shown by the Harmony of the order of Nature

Because of this harmony, hot things do not fight with cold ones, nor moist things with dry ones. Instead, what would naturally be opposed comes together to form one body, like a musical instrument playing a single tune. Anyone watching this must recognize that there is Someone ruling over creation, Someone in Whom even these opposing elements find unity. If there were no Ruler and Master holding creation together, everything would have fallen into disorder long ago, and the universe would have been torn apart by the conflict of opposite elements. But since we see that no such disorder exists, and that all things remain in harmony with one another, it is clear that there is One God, the Creator of all things, Who has bound all things together and brought them into unity with Himself.

Since there is order everywhere rather than disorder, proportion rather than disproportion, arrangement rather than disarray, and all of this in perfectly harmonious order, we must necessarily infer and be led to perceive the Master who put all things together, compacted them, and produced harmony in them. For even though He is not seen with the eyes, it is possible to perceive their Ruler, Arranger, and King from the order and harmony of things that are contrary to one another. 2. For example, if we saw a city consisting of many diverse people—great and small, rich and poor, old and young, male and female—in an orderly condition, and its inhabitants, while different from one another, yet unified among themselves, with the rich not set against the poor, the great not against the small, nor the young against the old, but all at peace in the enjoyment of equal rights—if we saw this, we would surely infer that the presence of a ruler enforces concord, even if we do not see him. For disorder is a sign of the absence of rule, while order shows the governing authority. When we see the mutual harmony of the members in the body—that the eye does not strive with the hearing, nor is the hand at variance with the foot, but each accomplishes its service without conflict—we perceive from this that there is certainly a soul in the body that governs these members, though we do not see it. In the same way, in the order and harmony of the universe, we must perceive God as the governor of it all, and that He is one and not many. 3. So then this order of arrangement and the concordant harmony of all things shows that the Word, its Ruler and Governor, is not many but One. For if there were more than one Ruler of Creation, such universal order would not be maintained, but all things would fall into confusion because of their plurality, with each one biasing the whole to his own will and striving with the other. For just as we said that polytheism was atheism, so it follows that the rule of more than one is the rule of none. For each one would cancel the rule of the other, and none would appear as ruler, but there would be anarchy everywhere. But where there is no ruler, disorder naturally follows. 4. And conversely, the single order and concord of the many and diverse shows that the ruler too is one. For just as if someone were to hear from a distance a lyre composed of many diverse strings and marvel at the concord of its symphony—in that its sound is composed neither of low notes exclusively, nor high nor intermediate only, but all combine their sounds in equal balance—they would not fail to perceive from this that the lyre was not playing itself, nor even being struck by more than one person, but that there was one musician, even if they did not see him, who by his skill combined the sound of each string into the tuneful symphony. So too, since the order of the whole universe is perfectly harmonious, and there is no strife of the higher against the lower or the lower against the higher, and all things make up one order, it is consistent to think that the Ruler and King of all Creation is one and not many, Who by His own light illumines and gives movement to all.

Since there is order everywhere and not disorder, proportion and not disproportion, arrangement and not disarray—all in a perfectly harmonious order—we must necessarily infer and come to perceive the Master who put together and compacted all things and produced harmony in them. For though He is not seen with the eyes, it is still possible from the order and harmony of contrary things to perceive Him.

For we must not think there is more than one ruler and maker of creation, but it belongs to correct and true religion to believe that its creator is one, while creation herself clearly points to this. The fact that there is only one universe and not more is conclusive proof that its maker is one. For if there were a plurality of gods, there would necessarily be more than one universe as well. It would not be reasonable for more than one God to make a single universe, nor for the one universe to be made by more than one, because of the absurdities that would result from this. 2. First, if the one universe were made by a plurality of gods, that would mean weakness on the part of those who made it, because many contributed to a single result—which would be strong proof of the imperfect creative skill of each. For if one were sufficient, the many would not need to supplement each other’s deficiency. But to say there is any deficiency in God is not only impious, but even beyond all sacrilege. For even among men one would not call a workman perfect if he were unable to finish his work, a single piece, by himself and without the help of several others. 3. But if, although each one was able to accomplish the whole, yet all worked at it in order to claim a share in the result, we have the laughable conclusion that each worked for reputation, lest he should be suspected of inability. But again, it is most absurd to ascribe vainglory to gods. 4. Again, if each one were sufficient for the creation of the whole, what need would there be of more than one, when one is self-sufficient for the universe? Moreover it would be clearly impious and absurd to make the thing created one, while the creators were many and different, since it is a maxim of science that what is one and complete is higher than things that are diverse. 5. And you must know that if the universe had been made by a plurality of gods, its movements would be diverse and inconsistent. For having regard to each one of its makers, its movements would be correspondingly different. But such difference again, as was said before, would involve disarray and general disorder; for not even a ship will sail properly if she is steered by many, unless one pilot holds the tiller, nor will a lyre struck by many produce a tuneful sound, unless there is one artist who strikes it. 6. Creation, then, being one, and the universe one, and its order one, we must perceive that its king and creator also is one. This is why the creator himself made the whole universe one, lest by the coexistence of more than one a plurality of makers should be supposed; but so that as the work is one, its maker also may be believed to be one. Nor does it follow from the unity of the maker that the universe must be one, for God might have made others as well. But because the universe that has been made is one, it is necessary to believe that its maker also is one.

The rationality and order of the Universe prove that it is the work of the Reason or Word of God.

Who then might this Maker be? This is a most necessary point to make clear, so that through ignorance about him a person should not suppose the wrong maker and fall once more into the same old godless error. But I think no one is really in doubt about it. For if our argument has proved that the gods of the poets are not gods, and has convicted those who deify creation of error, and in general has shown that the idolatry of the pagans is godlessness and impiety, it strictly follows from the elimination of these that the true religion is with us, and that the God we worship and preach is the only true One, Who is Lord of Creation and Maker of all existence. 2. Who then is this, except the Father of Christ, most holy and above all created existence, Who like an excellent pilot, by His own Wisdom and His own Word, our Lord and Savior Christ, steers and preserves and orders all things, and does as seems to Him best? But that is best which has been done, and which we see taking place, since that is what He wills; and this a person can hardly refuse to believe. 3. For if the movement of creation were irrational, and the universe were carried along without plan, a person might fairly disbelieve what we say. But if it exists in reason and wisdom and skill, and is perfectly ordered throughout, it follows that He who is over it and has ordered it is none other than the Word of God. 4. But by Word I mean, not that which is involved and inherent in all things created, which some are accustomed to call the seminal principle, which is without soul and has no power of reason or thought, but only works by external art, according to the skill of him who applies it—nor such a word as belongs to rational beings and which consists of syllables, and has the air as its vehicle of expression—but I mean the living and powerful Word of the good God, the God of the Universe, the very Word which is God, Who while different from things that are made, and from all Creation, is the One own Word of the good Father, Who by His own providence ordered and illumines this Universe. 5. For being the good Word of the Good Father He produced the order of all things, combining one with another things contrary, and reducing them to one harmonious order. He being the Power of God and Wisdom of God causes the heaven to revolve, and has suspended the earth, and made it fast, though resting upon nothing, by His own nod. Illumined by Him, the sun gives light to the world, and the moon has her measured period of shining. By reason of Him the water is suspended in the clouds; the rains shower upon the earth, and the sea is kept within bounds, while the earth bears grasses and is clothed with all manner of plants. 6. And if a person were incredulously to ask, as regards what we are saying, if there is a Word of God at all, such a one would indeed be mad to doubt concerning the Word of God, but yet demonstration is possible from what is seen, because all things exist by the Word and Wisdom of God, nor would any created thing have had a fixed existence had it not been made by reason, and that reason the Word of God, as we have said.

The Presence of the Word in nature is necessary, not only for its original Creation, but also for its permanence.

But though He is Word, He is not, as we said, like human words made up of syllables. Rather, He is the unchanging Image of His own Father. For human beings, composed of parts and made out of nothing, have speech that is composite and divisible. But God possesses true existence and is not composite, and therefore His Word also has true existence and is not composite, but is the one and only-begotten God, Who proceeds in His goodness from the Father as from a good Fountain, and orders all things and holds them together. 2. But the reason why the Word, the Word of God, has united Himself with created things is truly wonderful, and teaches us that the present order of things could not be otherwise than it is fitting to be. For the nature (physis) of created things, since it is brought into being out of nothing, is fleeting, weak, and mortal when considered by itself alone. But the God of all is good and supremely noble by nature (physis)—and therefore is kind. For one who is good can begrudge nothing. For this reason He does not begrudge even existence, but desires all things to exist as objects for His loving-kindness. 3. Seeing then that all created nature (physis), according to its own inherent laws, is fleeting and subject to dissolution, lest it should come to this and lest the Universe should break up again into nothingness, for this reason He made all things by His own eternal Word and gave substantive existence to Creation. Moreover, He did not leave it to be tossed about in a tempest by the course of its own nature (physis), lest it should run the risk of once more dropping out of existence. But because He is good, He guides and settles the whole Creation by His own Word, Who is Himself also God, so that by the governance and providence and ordering action of the Word, Creation may have light and be enabled to abide always securely. For it partakes of the Word Who derives true existence from the Father, and is helped by Him so as to exist, lest what would have happened without the Word’s maintenance should come to it—namely, dissolution—for He is the Image of the invisible God, the first-born of all Creation, for through Him and in Him all things consist, things visible and things invisible, and He is the Head of the Church, as the ministers of truth teach in their holy writings.

I notice that the text provided appears to be just a section heading or chapter number (42) with a brief title, but no actual paragraph content to rewrite.

The text reads: “42. This function of the Word described at length .”

There is no paragraph content following this heading for me to rewrite in modern English. Could you please provide the actual paragraph text that follows this heading?

The holy Word of the Father, then, almighty and all-perfect, uniting with the universe and having everywhere unfolded His own powers, and having illumined all things, both things seen and things invisible, holds them together and binds them to Himself. He has left nothing void of His own power, but on the contrary quickens and sustains all things everywhere, each individually and all collectively. He mingles into one the principles of all sensible existence—namely heat and cold, wet and dry—and causes them not to conflict, but to make up one harmonious whole. Because of Him and His power, fire does not fight with cold nor wet with dry, but principles mutually opposed, as if friendly and brotherly, combine together and give life to the things we see, and form the principles by which bodies exist. Obeying Him, even God the Word, things on earth have life and things in heaven have their order. Because of Him all the sea and the great ocean move within their proper bounds, while, as we said above, the dry land grows grasses and is clothed with all manner of diverse plants. And, not to spend time listing particulars where the truth is obvious, there is nothing that exists and takes place but has been made and stands by Him and through Him, as also the Divine John says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made.” For just as a musician, having tuned a lyre and by his art adjusted the high notes to the low and the intermediate notes to the rest, produces a single tune as the result, so also the Wisdom of God, handling the universe as a lyre and adjusting things in the air to things on the earth, and things in heaven to things in the air, and combining parts into wholes and moving them all by His command and will, produces well and fittingly, as the result, the unity of the universe and of its order. He Himself remains unmoved with the Father while He moves all things by His organizing action, as seems good for each to His own Father. For what is surprising in His godhead is this: by one and the same act of will He moves all things simultaneously, not at intervals, but all collectively—both straight and curved, things above and beneath and intermediate, wet, cold, warm, seen and invisible—and orders them according to their several natures. For simultaneously at His single command what is straight moves as straight, what is curved also, and what is intermediate follows its own movement; what is warm receives warmth, what is dry dryness, and all things according to their several natures are quickened and organized by Him, and He produces as the result a marvelous and truly divine harmony.

The Word unites with the whole of things and does not separate Himself from the Father. To illustrate this, we can use three examples. A teacher often speaks to his students, yet this does not mean he has left his own teacher. A son does not abandon his father even when he embraces and consoles his own children. The light and radiance of the sun illuminates the whole world, yet the radiance is not separated from the sun itself but remains joined to it by nature. In the same way, the Word is not separated from the Father even as He extends throughout all creation, for the Father’s nature and the Son’s nature are one, and the radiance belongs to the light.

And to help such a great matter be understood through an example, let what we are describing be compared to a large chorus. Just as a chorus is made up of different people—children, women, old men, and those who are still young—and when one person, namely the conductor, gives the signal, each person produces sound according to his nature and ability, the man as a man, the child as a child, the old man as an old man, and the young man as a young man, while all together create a single harmony; or as our soul at one time activates our various senses according to the proper function of each, so that when some object is present all are set in motion at once, and the eye sees, the ear hears, the hand touches, the sense of smell detects odor, and the palate tastes—and often the other parts of the body act as well, for instance when the feet walk; or, to make our meaning clear with yet a third example, it is as though a very large city were built and governed under the presence of the ruler and king who has built it; for when he is present and gives orders and watches over everything, all obey: some occupy themselves with farming, others hurry to the aqueducts for water, another goes out to obtain food—one goes to the senate, another enters the assembly, the judge goes to the bench, and the magistrate to his court. The craftsman likewise applies himself to his trade, the sailor goes down to the sea, the carpenter to his workshop, the physician to his treatment, the architect to his building; and while one is going to the countryside, another is returning from the countryside, and while some walk about the city others are going out of the city and returning to it again: but all this activity is taking place and is organized by the presence of the one Ruler and by his direction; in the same way, then, we must think of the whole of Creation, even though the example is inadequate, but with an enlarged understanding. For with the single impulse of a nod, as it were, of the Word of God, all things simultaneously fall into order, and each carries out its proper function, and a single order is composed by all of them together.

The comparisons apply to the entire universe, both visible and invisible.

For by a nod and by the power of the Divine Word of the Father who governs and presides over all things, the heaven revolves, the stars move, the sun shines, the moon follows her course, and the air receives the sun’s light and the aether his heat, and the winds blow. Mountains rise up high, the sea churns with waves and the living creatures in it grow, the earth remains fixed and bears fruit, and human beings are formed, live, and die again, and all things have their life and movement. Fire burns, water cools, fountains spring up, rivers flow, seasons and hours come around, rains fall, clouds gather, hail forms, snow and ice freeze, birds fly, crawling creatures move along, water animals swim, the sea is navigated, the earth is sown and produces crops in their proper season, plants grow—some are young, some are ripening, while others in their growth become old and decay, and while some things are vanishing, others are being born and are coming into existence. 2. But all these things, and many more which we cannot mention because of their number, are moved and ordered by His own nod through the wonder-working and marvel-making Word of God, who gives light and life, making the universe one. Nor does He leave out even the invisible powers, for including these also in the universe since He is their maker too, He holds them together and gives them life by His nod and by His providence. And there can be no excuse for disbelieving this. 3. For just as by His own providence bodies grow and the rational soul moves and has life and thought—and this needs little proof, for we see what takes place—so again the same Word of God with one simple nod by His own power moves and holds together both the visible universe and the invisible powers, assigning to each its proper function, so that the divine powers move in a more divine way, while visible things move as we see them do. But He Himself, being over all as both Governor and King and organizing power, does all things for the glory and knowledge of His own Father, so that almost by the very works He brings to pass He teaches us and says, By the greatness and beauty of the creatures, their maker is seen in proportion.

Chapter 45: Conclusion – The Doctrine of Scripture on the Subject of Part I

By a nod and the power of the Divine Word of the Father—who governs and presides over all things—the heaven revolves, the stars move, the sun shines, the moon completes her circuit, the air receives the sun’s light, the æther receives his heat, and the winds blow. The mountains rise up high, the sea churns with waves and the living creatures in it grow, the earth remains fixed and bears fruit, and…

For just as by looking up to heaven and seeing its order and the light of the stars, it is possible to infer the Word who ordered these things, so by seeing the Word of God, one must also see God His Father, from whom He proceeds and from whom He is rightly called His Father’s Interpreter and Messenger. And this we can see from our own experience. For when a word proceeds from people, we infer that the mind is its source, and by thinking about the word, we see with our reason the mind it reveals. By far greater evidence and incomparably more, when we see the power of the Word, we receive knowledge also of His good Father, as the Savior Himself says, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). But all inspired Scripture also teaches this more plainly and with more authority, so that we in turn write boldly to you as we do, and you, if you refer to them, will be able to verify what we say. For an argument when confirmed by higher authority is irresistibly proven. From the beginning, then, the divine Word firmly taught the Jewish people about the abolition of idols when it said (Exodus 20:4): “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or in the earth beneath.” But the reason for their abolition another writer declares, saying: “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, the works of men’s hands: a mouth have they and will not speak, eyes have they and will not see, ears have they and will not hear, noses have they and will not smell, hands have they and will not handle, feet have they and will not walk.” Nor has it passed over in silence the teaching about creation. But knowing well its beauty, lest anyone attending solely to this beauty should worship things as if they were gods, instead of God’s works, it firmly teaches people in advance when it says (Deuteronomy 4:19): “And when you look up with your eyes and see the sun and moon and all the host of heaven, do not go astray and worship them, which the Lord your God has given to all nations under heaven.” But He gave them, not to be their gods, but so that through them the Gentiles should know, as we have said, God the Maker of them all. For the people of the Jews in ancient times had abundant teaching, in that they had knowledge of God not only from the works of creation, but also from the divine Scriptures. And in general, to draw people away from the error and irrational imagination of idols, He says (Exodus 20:3): “You shall have no other gods but me.” Not as if there were other gods does He forbid them to have them, but lest anyone, turning from the true God, should begin to make for himself gods of what were not, such as those who in the poets and writers are called gods, though they are none. And the language itself shows that they are not gods, when it says, “You shall have no other gods,” which refers only to the future. But what is referred to the future does not exist at the time of speaking.

Doctrine of Scripture on the subject of Part 3.

Has the divine teaching, which abolished the godlessness of the heathen and their idols, passed over this in silence and left the human race entirely without knowledge of God? Not at all. Rather, it addresses their understanding when it says: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God; and again, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength; and again, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve, and shall cleave to Him. 2. But that the providence and ordering power of the Word over all things and toward all things is attested by all inspired Scripture, this passage is enough to confirm our argument, where those who speak of God say: You have laid the foundation of the earth and it abides. The day continues according to Your ordinance. And again: Sing to our God upon the harp, who covers the heaven with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth, who brings forth grass upon the mountains and green herb for the service of man, and gives food to the cattle. 3. But through whom does He give it, except through Him through whom all things were made? For providence over all things naturally belongs to Him by whom they were made; and who is this except the Word of God, concerning whom in another psalm he says: By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the Breath of His mouth. For he tells us that all things were made in Him and through Him. 4. Therefore He also persuades us and says, He spoke and they were made, He commanded and they were created; as the illustrious Moses also confirms what we say at the beginning of his account of Creation in his narrative, saying: and God said, let us make man in our image and after our likeness. For also when He was carrying out the creation of the heaven and earth and all things, the Father said to Him, Let the heaven be made, and let the waters be gathered together and let the dry land appear, and let the earth bring forth herb and every green thing. So one must convict the Jews also of not genuinely paying attention to the Scriptures. 5. For one might ask them: to whom was God speaking when He used the imperative mood? If He were commanding and addressing the things He was creating, the statement would be pointless, for they did not yet exist but were about to be made. But no one speaks to what does not exist, nor gives a command to be made to what is not yet made. For if God were giving a command to the things that were to be, He would have said, Be made, heaven, and be made, earth, and come forth, green herb, and be created, O man. But in fact He did not do so. Instead, He gives the command thus: Let us make man, and let the green herb come forth. By this God is proved to be speaking about them to someone at hand. It follows then that someone was with Him to whom He spoke when He made all things. 6. Who then could it be, except His Word? For to whom could God be said to speak, except His Word? Or who was with Him when He made all created Existence, except His Wisdom, which says: When He was making the heaven and the earth I was present with Him? But in the mention of heaven and earth, all created things in heaven and earth are included as well. 7. But being present with Him as His Wisdom and His Word, looking at the Father He fashioned the Universe and organized it and gave it order. And, as He is the power of the Father, He gave all things strength to be, as the Savior says: Whatever things I see the Father doing, I also do in like manner. And His holy disciples teach that all things were made through Him and unto Him. 8. And, being the good Offspring of Him that is good and true Son, He is the Father’s Power and Wisdom and Word, not being so by participation, nor as if these qualities were given to Him from outside, as they are to those who partake of Him and are made wise by Him and receive power and reason in Him. But He is the very Wisdom, very Word, and very own Power of the Father, very Light, very Truth, very Righteousness, very Virtue, and in truth His express Image and Brightness and Resemblance. And to sum it all up, He is the wholly perfect Fruit of the Father, and is alone the Son and unchanging Image of the Father.

Since our nature fell into corruption and needed one who could restore it, just as when we were first made we needed one who would create us, there was a need for the Word of God to become present in our nature. The Word had to unite himself to it so that, while uniting himself to what is human, he might restore it to that divine state by which humanity was originally made in accordance with the image. In no other way could what is mortal have become immortal, or what is corruptible incorruptible, unless the Word—who is by physis life and incorruptibility—had been united to what is mortal and corruptible.

Who can describe the Father by counting, so as to discover the powers of His Word? For just as He is the Father’s Word and Wisdom, so too, condescending to created things, He becomes—to impart the knowledge and understanding of Him who begot Him—His very Brightness and very Life, and the Door, and the Shepherd, and the Way, and King and Governor, and Savior over all, and Light, and Giver of Life, and Providence over all. Having such a Son begotten of Himself, good and Creator, the Father did not hide Him from the sight of His creatures, but even day by day reveals Him to all through the organization and life of all things, which is His work. But in and through Him He reveals Himself also, as the Savior says: “I in the Father and the Father in Me,” so that it follows that the Word is in Him who begot Him, and that He who is begotten lives eternally with the Father. But this being so, and nothing being outside Him, but both heaven and earth and all that is in them being dependent on Him, yet people in their foolishness have set aside the knowledge and service of Him, and honored things that are not instead of things that are. Instead of the real and true God, they deified things that were not, serving the creature rather than the Creator, thus involving themselves in foolishness and impiety. For it is just as if someone were to admire the works more than the workman, and being awestruck at the public works in the city, were to make light of their builder, or as if someone were to praise a musical instrument but despise the person who made and tuned it. Foolish and sadly disabled in eyesight! For how else would they have known the building, or ship, or lyre, had not the shipbuilder made it, the architect built it, or the musician fashioned it? As then the one who reasons in such a way is mad and beyond all madness, even so affected in mind, I think, are those who do not recognize God or worship His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior of all, through whom the Father orders and holds together all things and exercises providence over the universe. Having faith and piety toward Him, my Christ-loving friend, be of good cheer and of good hope, because immortality and the kingdom of heaven is the fruit of faith and devotion toward Him, if only the soul is adorned according to His laws. For just as for those who walk after His example the prize is life everlasting, so for those who walk the opposite way and not that of virtue, there is great shame and peril without pardon in the day of judgment, because although they knew the way of truth, their acts were contrary to their knowledge.

Source: About this page Source. Translated by Archibald Robertson. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series , Vol. 4. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. ( Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892. ) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can’t reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.

1. Introductory.– The subject of this treatise: the humiliation and incarnation of the Word. Presupposes the doctrine of Creation, and that by the Word. The Father has saved the world by Him through Whom he first made it .

In the previous sections we have set out—selecting a few points from many—a sufficient account of the error of the pagans concerning idols and the worship of idols, and how these originally came to be invented: namely, how out of wickedness people devised for themselves the worship of idols. And by God’s grace we have also noted something of the divinity of the Word of the Father, and of His universal Providence and power, and that the good Father through Him orders all things, and all things are moved by Him, and in Him are quickened. Come now, Macarius (worthy of that name), and true lover of Christ, let us follow up the faith of our religion and set forth also what relates to the Word’s becoming human and to His divine appearing among us, which Jews slander and Greeks ridicule, but we worship. In this way, all the more because of the seeming lowly condition of the Word, your piety toward Him may be increased and multiplied. For the more He is mocked among the unbelieving, the more witness does He give of His own Godhead, inasmuch as He not only Himself demonstrates as possible what people mistakenly think impossible, but what people deride as unseemly, this by His own goodness He clothes with seemliness, and what people in their conceit of wisdom laugh at as merely human, He by His own power demonstrates to be divine, subduing the pretensions of idols by His supposed humiliation—by the Cross—and invisibly winning over those who mock and disbelieve to recognize His divinity and power. But to treat this subject it is necessary to recall what has been previously said, so that you may neither fail to know the cause of the bodily appearing of the Word of the Father, so high and so great, nor think it a consequence of His own nature that the Savior has worn a body, but that being incorporeal by nature, and Word from the beginning, He has yet of the loving-kindness and goodness of His own Father been manifested to us in a human body for our salvation. It is, then, proper for us to begin the treatment of this subject by speaking of the creation of the universe and of God its Artificer, so that it may be duly perceived that the renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning. For it will appear not inconsistent for the Father to have accomplished its salvation in Him by whose means He made it.

2. Erroneous views of Creation rejected. (1) Epicurean (fortuitous generation). But diversity of bodies and parts argues a creating intellect. (2.) Platonists (pre-existent matter.) But this subjects God to human limitations, making Him not a creator but a mechanic. (3) Gnostics (an alien Demiurge). Rejected from Scripture .

Many people have held different views about the making of the universe and the creation of all things, and each person has stated what they please. For example, some say that all things have come into being by themselves and by chance, such as the Epicureans, who in their self-contempt say that universal providence does not exist, speaking directly against obvious fact and experience. For if, as they claim, everything has begun by itself and without purpose, it would follow that everything would have come into mere existence in such a way as to be identical and not distinct. Because of the unity of body, it would follow that everything would be sun or moon, and in the case of human beings, that the whole would be hand, or eye, or foot. But this is not the case. Instead, we see a distinction between sun, moon, and earth, and likewise in human bodies between foot, hand, and head. Now, such distinct arrangement tells us not that they came into being by themselves, but shows that a cause preceded them, from which cause it is possible to understand God also as the Maker and Orderer of all things.

However, others, including Plato, who is held in such high regard among the Greeks, argue that God made the world out of previously existing matter that had no beginning. They say that God could not have made anything if the material had not already existed, just as wood must be available beforehand for a carpenter to be able to work at all.

But in saying this, they do not realize that they are attributing weakness to God. For if He is not Himself the cause of the material, but makes things only out of previously existing material, He proves to be weak, because He cannot produce anything He makes without the material, just as it is certainly a weakness of the carpenter not to be able to make anything he needs without his timber. For, according to their theory, if the material had not existed, God would not have made anything. And how could He be called Maker and Artificer if He owes His ability to make to some other source, namely to the material? So if this is true, then according to their theory God will be only a Mechanic, and not a Creator out of nothing, if He works with existing material but is not Himself the cause of the material. For He could not in any sense be called Creator unless He is Creator of the material from which the things created have in their turn been made.

But the sectaries imagine for themselves a different creator of all things, other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, showing deep blindness even regarding the words they use.

For the Lord says to the Jews: “Have you not read that from the beginning, He who created them made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall become one flesh’?” And then, referring to the Creator, He says, “What, therefore, God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” So how can these people claim that the creation is independent of the Father? Or if, in the words of John, who makes no exception when he says, “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made,” how could the artificer be someone else, distinct from the Father of Christ?

3. The true doctrine. Creation out of nothing, of God’s lavish bounty of being. Man created above the rest, but incapable of independent perseverance. Hence the exceptional and supra-natural gift of being in God’s Image, with the promise of bliss conditionally upon his perseverance in grace.

Thus they speculate in vain. But godly teaching and the faith according to Christ marks their foolish language as godlessness. For it knows that the universe came to exist not spontaneously, because forethought is not absent, nor from existing matter, because God is not weak, but that out of nothing, and without any previous existence, God made the universe exist through His word. He says this firstly through Moses: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Secondly, in the most edifying book of the Shepherd: First of all believe that God is one, who created and framed all things, and made them exist out of nothing. Paul also refers to this when he says, By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which do appear. For God is good, or rather is essentially the source of goodness. No one who is good could be stingy with anything. Therefore, grudging existence to no one, He has made all things out of nothing by His own Word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Among these things, having taken special pity above all things on earth upon the race of men, and having perceived their inability by virtue of the condition of their origin to continue in one state, He gave them a further gift. He did not merely create man as He did all the irrational creatures on the earth, but made them after His own image, giving them a portion even of the power of His own Word. So having as it were a kind of reflection of the Word and being made rational, they might be able to remain forever in blessedness, living the true life which belongs to the saints in paradise. But knowing once more how the will of man could sway to either side, He secured in anticipation the grace given them by a law and by the place where He put them. For He brought them into His own garden and gave them a law, so that if they kept the grace and remained good, they might still keep the life in paradise without sorrow or pain or care, besides having the promise of incorruption in heaven. But if they transgressed and turned back and became evil, they would know that they were incurring that corruption in death which was theirs by nature—no longer to live in paradise, but cast out of it from that time forth to die and to remain in death and in corruption. Now this is what Holy Scripture also warns, saying in the Person of God: Of every tree that is in the garden, you shall eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, but on the day that you eat, dying you shall die. But by dying you shall die, what else could be meant than not merely dying, but also remaining forever in the corruption of death?

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 sinand misery filled the world.

You may be wondering why, having set out to speak about the Incarnation of the Word, we are now discussing the origin of humanity. But this too properly belongs to the purpose of our treatise. For in speaking about the appearance of the Savior among us, we must also speak about the origin of human beings, so that you may know that the reason for His coming down was because of us, and that our transgression called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, so that the Lord would both hasten to help us and appear among human beings. For we were the object of His becoming Incarnate, and for our salvation He acted so lovingly as to appear and be born even in a human body. God made humanity in this way and willed that human beings should remain in incorruption. But human beings, 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. From that point forward they no longer remained as they were made, but were being corrupted according to their schemes, and death ruled over them as king. For transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that just as they came into being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they could look forward to 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 naturally followed that when human beings were deprived 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 deprived even of being. In other words, they should be disintegrated and remain in death and corruption. For a human being is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not. But by reason of his likeness to Him who IS (and if he still preserved this likeness by keeping Him in his knowledge) he would halt 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 you are gods, and you are all sons of the most Highest; but you die like men, and fall as one of the princes.

5. 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 gracefollowing from partaking of the Word, to have escaped their natural state, had they remained good.

Because the Word was 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 happened, men began to die, while corruption from that point forward prevailed against them, gaining even more than its natural power over the whole race, since it had, because of the transgression of the commandment, the threat of the Deity as an additional advantage against them.

Even in their wrongdoing, people had not stopped at any fixed boundaries. Instead, they gradually pressed forward and went beyond all measure. At first they became inventors of wickedness and brought upon themselves death and corruption. Later, having turned to wrong and exceeded all lawlessness, and not stopping at any single evil but devising all kinds of new evils one after another, they became insatiable in sinning. Adulteries were everywhere, along with thefts, and the whole earth was full of murders and robberies. As for corruption and injustice, no attention was paid to law, but all crimes were being committed everywhere, both by individuals and by groups. Cities were at war with cities, and nations were rising up against nations. The whole earth was torn apart by civil conflicts and battles, with each person competing with his fellows in lawless acts. Even crimes against nature were not far from them. As the Apostle and witness of Christ says: “For their 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.

For this reason, then, with death having gained power over human beings, and corruption remaining upon them, the human race was perishing; the rational human being made in God’s image was disappearing, and the handiwork of God was in the process of dissolution. Secondly, death, as I said above, gained from that time forward a legal hold over us, and it was impossible to evade the law, since it had been established by God because of the transgression, and the result was truly both monstrous and unseemly. Thirdly, it would be monstrous, first of all, that God, having spoken, should prove false—that is, when He had once decreed that man, if he transgressed the commandment, should die the death, after the transgression man should not die, but God’s word should be broken. For God would not be true if, when He had said we should die, man did not die. Again, it would be unseemly that creatures once made rational, and having partaken of the Word, should go to ruin and turn back toward non-existence by way of corruption. For it would not be worthy of God’s goodness that the things He had made should waste away because of the deceit practiced on human beings by the devil. Especially it was unseemly to the highest degree that God’s handiwork among human beings should be done away with, either because of their own carelessness or because of the deceitfulness of evil spirits.

So, as rational creatures were wasting away and such works were in the course of ruin, what was God in His goodness to do? Should He allow corruption to prevail against them and death to hold them fast? And where would be the benefit of their having been made in the first place? For it would have been better that they not be made at all than, once made, to be left to neglect and ruin. For neglect reveals weakness, and not goodness on God’s part—if, that is, He allows His own work to be ruined once He had made it—even more so than if He had never made man at all. For if He had not made them, no one could accuse Him of weakness; but once He had made them, and created them out of nothing, it would be utterly monstrous for the work to be ruined, and that before the eyes of the Maker. It was, then, out of the question to leave men to the current of corruption, because this would be unseemly and unworthy of God’s goodness.

7. On the other hand there was the consistency of God’s nature, not to be sacrificed for our profit. Were men, then, to be called upon to repent? But repentance cannot avert the execution of a law; still less can it remedy a fallen nature. We have incurred corruption and need to be restored to the Grace of God’s Image. None could renew but He Who had created. He alone could (1) recreate all, (2) suffer for all, (3) represent all to the Father.

But just as this consequence must necessarily hold, so too the just claims of God stand against it: that God should appear true to the law He had established concerning death. For it would be monstrous for God, the Father of truth, to appear a liar for our profit and preservation. So here, once more, what possible course was God to take? To demand repentance of men for their transgression? For this one might say is worthy of God, as though, just as men became set toward corruption through transgression, so through repentance they might once more be set in the way of incorruption. But repentance would, first, fail to uphold the just claim of God. For He would still be no more true if men did not remain in the grasp of death; nor, second, does repentance call men back from what is their nature—it merely stops them from acts of sin. Now, if there were merely a wrong action in question, and not a resulting corruption, repentance would be sufficient. But if, once transgression had gained a foothold, men became trapped in that corruption which was their nature, and were stripped of the grace which they had, being in the image of God, what further step was needed? Or what was required for such grace and such restoration, but the Word of God, who had also in the beginning made everything out of nothing? For it was His task once more both to bring the corruptible to incorruption, and to preserve intact the just claim of the Father upon all. For being Word of the Father, and above all, He alone by natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father.

8. The Word, then, visited that earth in which He was yet always present ; and saw all these evils. He takes a body of our Nature, and that of a spotless Virgin, in whose womb He makes it His own, wherein to reveal Himself, conquer death, and restore life.

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes to our realm, though he was not far from us before. For no part of Creation is left empty of Him: He has filled all things everywhere, while remaining present with His own Father. But He comes by lowering himself to show loving-kindness to us, and to visit us. And seeing the race of rational creatures on the way to destruction, and death ruling over them through corruption; seeing also that the threat against transgression gave a firm grip to the corruption that was upon us, and that it was absurd that before the law was fulfilled it should collapse; seeing further the indecency of what had happened—that the things He Himself had made were passing away; seeing also the extreme wickedness of human beings, and how little by little they had increased it to an unbearable level against themselves; and seeing finally how all people were under the penalty of death: He took pity on our race, and had mercy on our weakness, and descended to our corruption, and, unable to bear that death should have the mastery—lest the creature should perish, and His Father’s handiwork in human beings be wasted—He takes to Himself a body, and that of no different kind from ours. For He did not simply wish to become embodied, or wish merely to appear. For if He wished merely to appear, He could have accomplished His divine appearance by some other and greater means as well. But He takes a body of our kind, and not merely so, but from a spotless and stainless virgin who had not known a man, a body clean and truly pure from sexual intercourse. For being Himself mighty, and Maker of everything, He prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple for Himself, and makes it His very own as an instrument, being revealed in it and dwelling in it. And thus taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the corruption of death, He handed it over to death in place of all, and offered it to the Father—doing this, moreover, out of His loving-kindness, so that, first, since all were considered to have died in Him, the law involving the destruction of human beings might be abolished (since its power was fully exhausted in the Lord’s body, and had no longer any hold against human beings, his peers), and second, since human beings had turned toward corruption, He might turn them back toward incorruption, and give them life from death by the taking on of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, driving death away from them like straw from fire.

9. The Word, since death alone could stay the plague, took a mortal body which, united with Him, should avail for all, and by partaking of His immortalitystay the corruption of the Race. By being above all, He made His Flesh an offering for our souls; by being one with us all, he clothed us with immortality. Simile to illustrate this.

The Word understood that the corruption of humanity could only be undone through death as a necessary condition, but it was impossible for the Word to suffer death, being immortal and Son of the Father. For this reason He takes to Himself a body capable of death, so that this body, by partaking of the Word Who is above all, might be worthy to die in place of all, and might remain incorruptible because of the Word who had come to dwell in it, and so that from then on corruption might be stopped for all by the grace of the Resurrection. Therefore, by offering to death the body He Himself had taken as an offering and sacrifice free from any stain, He immediately removed death from all His peers by the offering of an equivalent. Since He is over all, the Word of God naturally satisfied the debt by His death through offering His own temple and bodily instrument for the life of all. And so He, the incorruptible Son of God, being joined with all by a shared physis, naturally clothed all with incorruptibility through the promise of the resurrection. For the actual corruption in death no longer has any hold over humanity because of the Word, who through His one body has come to dwell among them. It is like when a great king has entered a large city and taken up residence in one of its houses—that city is certainly held worthy of high honor, and no enemy or bandit any longer descends upon it and conquers it. On the contrary, it is considered entitled to every care because the king has taken up residence in a single house there. So it has been with the Monarch of all. Now that He has come to our realm and taken up residence in one body among His peers, from this point forward the whole conspiracy of the enemy against humanity is stopped, and the corruption of death which was previously prevailing against them is done away with. For the human race would have gone to ruin had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to meet the end of death.

10. By a like simile, the reasonableness of the work of redemption is shown. How Christ wiped away our ruin, and provided its antidote by His own teaching. Scripture proofs of the Incarnation of the Word, and of the Sacrifice He wrought.

Now in truth this great work was especially suited to God’s goodness. 1. For if a king, having founded a house or city, does not neglect it when it is attacked by bandits because of the carelessness of its inhabitants, but instead avenges and reclaims it as his own work, paying attention not to the carelessness of the inhabitants but to what is fitting for himself; how much more did God the Word of the all-good Father not neglect the human race, His work, as it went to corruption. Instead, while He wiped out the death that had resulted by offering His own body, He corrected their neglect by His own teaching, restoring everything that belonged to humanity by His own power. 2. One can be assured of this from the Saviour’s own inspired writers, if one reads their writings, where they say: For the love of Christ constrains us; because we judge this, that if one died for all, then all died, and He died for all so that we should no longer live for ourselves, but for Him Who died and rose again for our sakes, our Lord Jesus Christ. And, again: But we see Him Who was made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He should taste death for everyone. 3. Then He also points out the reason why it was necessary for none other than God the Word Himself to become incarnate, as follows: For it was fitting for Him, for Whom are all things, and through Whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. By these words He means that it belonged to none other to bring humanity back from the corruption which had begun, than the Word of God, Who had also made them from the beginning. 4. And that it was for the sacrifice of bodies such as His own that the Word Himself also took on a body, to this also they refer in these words: Therefore, since the children share in blood and flesh, He also Himself in the same way partook of the same, so that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might free those who, through fear of death, were all their lives subject to bondage. 5. For by the sacrifice of His own body, He both put an end to the law which was against us, and made a new beginning of life for us, by the hope of resurrection which He has given us. For since it was from a man that death prevailed over humanity, for this reason conversely, through the Word of God being made man has come about the destruction of death and the resurrection of life; as the man who bore Christ says: For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive: and so forth. For we no longer die as those subject to condemnation; but as people who rise from the dead we await the general resurrection of all, which in its own times He shall show, even God, Who has also accomplished it, and granted it to us. 6. This then is the first reason for the Saviour’s being made man. But one might also see from the following reasons that His gracious coming among us was fitting to have taken place.

11. Second reason for the Incarnation. God, knowing that man was not by nature sufficient to knowHim, gave him, in order that he might have some profit in being, a knowledge of Himself. He made them in the Image of the Word, that thus they might knowthe Word, and through Him the Father. Yet man, despising this, fell into idolatry, leaving the unseen God for magic and astrology; and all this in spite of God’s manifold revelation of Himself.

God, who has power over all things, when he was creating the human race through his own Word, saw the weakness of their nature—that it was not sufficient by itself to know its Maker or to get any idea at all of God. For while he was uncreated, the creatures had been made from nothing, and while he was incorporeal, human beings had been fashioned in a lower way in the body, and because in every way created things fell far short of being able to comprehend and know their Maker—taking pity, I say, on the human race, since he is good, he did not leave them without knowledge of himself, lest they should find no benefit in existing at all. For what benefit would there be to creatures if they did not know their Maker? Or how could they be rational without knowing the Word (and Reason) of the Father, in whom they received their very being? For there would be nothing to distinguish them even from brute animals if they had knowledge of nothing but earthly things. Indeed, why would God have made them at all, if he did not wish to be known by them? Therefore, to prevent this from being so, being good, he gives them a share in his own Image, our Lord Jesus Christ, and makes them according to his own Image and according to his likeness, so that by such grace, perceiving the Image—that is, the Word of the Father—they may be able through him to get an idea of the Father, and knowing their Maker, live the happy and truly blessed life. But human beings once more in their perversity, having set at nothing, in spite of all this, the grace given them, so completely rejected God and so darkened their soul that they not merely forgot their idea of God but also fashioned for themselves one invention after another. For not only did they carve idols for themselves instead of the truth and honor things that did not exist before the living God and serve the creature rather than the Creator, but worst of all, they transferred the honor of God even to logs and stones and to every material object and to human beings, and went even further than this, as we have said in the former treatise. So far indeed did their impiety go that they proceeded to worship demons and proclaimed them as gods, fulfilling their own lusts. For they performed, as was said above, offerings of brute animals and sacrifices of human beings, as was fitting for them, binding themselves down all the more firmly under their maddening inspirations. For this reason magic arts were also taught among them, and oracles in various places led people astray, and all people attributed the influences of their birth and existence to the stars and to all the heavenly bodies, having no thought of anything beyond what was visible. And in a word, everything was full of irreligion and lawlessness, and God alone, and his Word, was unknown, although he had not hidden himself from human sight or given the knowledge of himself in one way only, but had, on the contrary, unfolded it to them in many forms and by many ways.

12. For though man was created in grace, God, foreseeing his forgetfulness, provided also the works of creation to remind man of him. Yet further, He ordained a Law and Prophets, whose ministry was meant for all the world. Yet men heeded only their own lusts.

The grace of the Divine Image was in itself enough to reveal God the Word, and through Him the Father. But God, knowing human weakness, made provision even for their negligence. If people did not care to know God by themselves, they could still avoid ignorance of the Maker through the works of creation. Since human carelessness gradually descends to lower things, God made provision once again for this weakness by sending a law and prophets, people whom they knew, so that even if they were not ready to look up to heaven and know their Creator, they could receive instruction from those close at hand. People can learn about higher things more directly from other people. It was therefore possible for them to look into the height of heaven and perceive the harmony of creation, and thus know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, who by His own providence over all things makes the Father known to all and moves all things to this end, so that through Him all may know God. Or if this was too much for them, they could at least meet the holy men and through them learn about God, the Maker of all things, the Father of Christ, and learn that the worship of idols is godlessness and full of all impiety. Or they could simply know the law and cease from all lawlessness and live a virtuous life. For the law was not only for the Jews, nor were the prophets sent only for them. Though they were sent to the Jews and persecuted by the Jews, they were for all the world a holy school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the soul. Despite God’s goodness and loving-kindness being so great, people nevertheless, overcome by the pleasures of the moment and by the illusions and deceits sent by demons, did not raise their heads toward the truth. Instead they loaded themselves even more with evils and sins, so that they no longer seemed rational but were, judging from their ways, considered void of reason.

13. Here again, was God to keep silence? To allow to false gods the worship He made us to render to Himself? A king whose subjects had revolted would, after sending letters and messages, go to them in person. How much more shall God restore in us the grace of His image. This men, themselves but copies, could not do. Hence the WordHimself must come (1) to recreate, (2) to destroy death in the Body.

So then, since human beings had become like brute beasts in this way, and since demonic deception was covering every place and hiding the knowledge of the true God, what was God to do? Should He remain silent about such a great matter and allow people to be led astray by demons and not know God? And what would be the point of human beings having been originally made in God’s image? For it would have been better for them to have been made simply like a brute animal than, having once been made rational, to live the life of brutes. Or where was there any necessity at all for them to receive the idea of God in the first place? For if they are not fit to receive it even now, it would have been better if it had not been given to them at first. Or what benefit to God who made them, or what glory to Him could there be, if human beings, made by Him, do not worship Him but think that others are their makers? For in this case God proves to have made them for others instead of for Himself. Once again, even a human king does not allow the lands he has colonized to pass to others to serve them, nor permit them to go over to other people; but he warns them by letters, and often sends messengers to them by friends, or, if necessary, he comes in person to rebuke them as a last resort by his presence, just so that they may not serve others and his own work be wasted. Shall not God much more spare His own creatures, so that they not be led astray from Him and serve things that are nothing? Especially since such going astray proves to be the cause of their ruin and destruction, and since it was unfitting that those who had once been partakers of God’s image should perish. What then was God to do? Or what was to be done except the renewing of that which was in God’s image, so that through it people might once more be able to know Him? But how could this have come to pass except by the presence of the very Image of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? For it was impossible through human means, since they are only made after an image; nor through angels either, for not even they are God’s images. Therefore the Word of God came in His own person, so that, as He was the Image of the Father, He might be able to create afresh the human being after the image. But again, this could not otherwise have taken place unless death and corruption had been done away with. Therefore He took, in natural fitness, a mortal body, so that while death might in it be done away with once and for all, human beings made after His Image might once more be renewed. No other was sufficient for this need, except the Image of the Father.

14. A portrait once effaced must be restored from the original. Thus the Son of the Father came to seek, save, and regenerate. No other way was possible. Blinded himself, man could not see to heal. The witness of creation had failed to preserve him, and could not bring him back. The Word alone could do so. But how? Only by revealing Himself as Man.

When a portrait painted on a wooden panel has been damaged by stains from outside, the person whose likeness it is must come again so the portrait can be restored on the same wood. For the sake of the picture, even the wood itself on which it is painted is not discarded, but the image is renewed on it. In the same way, the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew humanity once made in His likeness, and to find us as lost people through the forgiveness of sins, just as He says in the Gospels: I came to find and to save the lost. This is why He also said to the Jews: Unless a person is born again—not meaning, as they thought, physical birth from a woman, but speaking of the soul born and created anew in the likeness of God’s image. But since wild idolatry and godlessness had taken over the world, and the knowledge of God was hidden, whose role was it to teach the world about the Father? Should we say humanity’s? But it was not within human power to reach everywhere under the sun, for people did not have the physical strength to travel so far, nor would they be able to gain belief in this matter, nor were they capable by themselves to resist the deception and tricks of evil spirits. For when everyone was struck and confused in soul by demonic deception and the emptiness of idols, how could they possibly win over the human soul and human mind when they cannot even see them? Or how can someone change what he cannot see? Perhaps one might say that creation was enough, but if creation were enough, these terrible evils would never have happened. For creation was already there, and yet people were still wallowing in the same error about God. Who, then, was needed except the Word of God, who sees both soul and mind, who gives movement to all things in creation, and through them makes the Father known? For He who by His own Providence and ordering of all things was teaching people about the Father was the same one who could renew this teaching as well. How, then, could this have been done? Perhaps one might say that the same methods were available as before, for Him to reveal the truth about the Father once again through the work of creation. But this was no longer a reliable method. Quite the opposite, for people had already failed to see this before and had turned their eyes no longer upward but downward. Therefore, naturally wishing to benefit humanity, He dwells here as a human being, taking to Himself a body like the others, and from earthly things, that is through the works of His body, He teaches them, so that those who would not recognize Him from His Providence and rule over all things may even from the works done by His actual body come to know the Word of God who is in the body, and through Him the Father.

15. Thus the Word condescended to man’s engrossment in corporeal things, by even taking a body. All man’s superstitions He met halfway; whether men were inclined to worship Nature, Man, Demons, or the dead, He showed Himself Lord of all these.

For just as a kind teacher who cares for his students, if some of them cannot benefit from more advanced subjects, comes down to their level and teaches them at least through simpler courses, so also did the Word of God. As Paul also says: For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the word preached to save those who believe. For seeing that men, having rejected the contemplation of God and with their eyes downward, as though sunk in the deep, were searching for God in nature and in the world of sense, making up gods for themselves out of mortal men and demons, to this end the loving and universal Savior of all, the Word of God, takes to himself a body, and as a man walks among men and meets the senses of all men halfway, so that those who think that God is corporeal may perceive the truth from what the Lord accomplishes through his body, and through him recognize the Father. So, being human as they were and thinking human thoughts in all things, on whatever objects they focused their senses, there they saw themselves met halfway and taught the truth from every side. For if they looked with awe upon creation, yet they saw how she confessed Christ as Lord; or if their mind was drawn toward men, so as to consider them gods, yet from the Savior’s works, if they compared them, the Savior alone among men appeared to be the Son of God, for there were no such works done among the rest as have been done by the Word of God. Or if they were inclined toward evil spirits, even so, yet seeing them cast out by the Word, they were to know that he alone, the Word of God, was God, and that the spirits were nothing. Or if their mind had already sunk even to the dead, so as to worship heroes and the gods spoken of in the poets, yet, seeing the Savior’s resurrection, they were to confess them to be false gods, and that the Lord alone is true, the Word of the Father, who was Lord even of death. For this reason he was both born and appeared as a man, and died, and rose again, outshining and casting into the shade the works of all former men by his own, so that in whatever direction the inclination of men might be, from there he might call 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. He came then to attract man’s sense-bound attention to Himself as man, and so to lead him on to knowHim as God.

Since humanity’s mind had completely fallen into the world of physical things, the Word disguised himself by appearing in a body. His purpose was to transfer people to himself as a man, to focus their senses on himself, and to persuade them—once they saw him as a man—through the works he performed that he is not only a man, but also God, and the Word and Wisdom of the true God. This is also what Paul is pointing out when he says: That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God. For by the Word revealing himself everywhere—both above and below, and in the depth and in the breadth: above, in creation; below, in becoming man; in the depth, in Hades; and in the breadth, in the world—all things have been filled with the knowledge of God. For this reason, he did not immediately accomplish his sacrifice on behalf of all when he came by offering his body to death and raising it again, because by doing so he would have made himself invisible. Instead, he made himself sufficiently visible through what he did, remaining present and performing such works and showing such signs that he became known no longer as a man, but as God the Word. For by becoming a man, the Savior was to accomplish both works of love: first, removing death from us and renewing us again; second, though unseen and invisible in himself, manifesting and making himself known through his works to be the Word of the Father, and the Ruler and King of the universe.

17. How the Incarnation did not limit the ubiquity of the Word, nor diminish His Purity. (Simile of the Sun.)

For He was not, as one might imagine, confined within the body, nor was He absent from other places while present in the body; nor was the universe left without His activity and Providence while He moved the body. Rather—and this is most marvelous—being the Word, far from being contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. Just as He is present in all of creation while remaining distinct in being from the universe, and present in all things by His own power—giving order to all things and revealing His own providence over all and in all, and giving life to each thing and all things, encompassing the whole without being encompassed by it, but existing wholly and in every respect in His own Father alone—in the same way, even while present in a human body and giving it life, He was, without contradiction, giving life to the universe as well. He was active in every natural process, and was outside the whole, and while He was known through the body by His works, He was no less evident through the activity of the universe as well. Now, it is the function of the soul to perceive even what is outside its own body through acts of thought, without working outside its own body or moving distant things by its presence. That is, a man never moves or displaces things at a distance simply by thinking about them. If a man were to sit in his own house and think about the heavenly bodies, he would not by that fact move the sun or make the heavens revolve. He observes that they move and exist without actually being able to influence them. But the Word of God in His human nature was not like that, for He was not bound to His body but rather was Himself directing it, so that He was not only in it but was actually in everything, and while being external to the universe, He abode in His Father only. And this was the wonderful thing: He was at once walking as a man, and as the Word was giving life to all things, and as the Son was dwelling with His Father. So not even when the Virgin bore Him did He undergo any change, nor was His glory diminished by being in the body; rather, He sanctified the body as well. For not even by being in the universe does He share in its nature, but all things, on the contrary, are given life and sustained by Him. For if the sun, which was made by Him and which we see revolving in the heaven, is not defiled by touching the bodies on earth, nor is it extinguished by darkness, but on the contrary illuminates and cleanses them as well, much less was the all-holy Word of God, Maker and Lord also of the sun, defiled by being made known in the body. On the contrary, being incorruptible, He gave life to and cleansed the body as well, which was in itself mortal: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, as it says.

18. How the Word and Power of God works in His human actions: by casting out devils, by Miracles, by His Birth of the Virgin.

When inspired writers speak of Him eating and being born, understand that the body, as body, was born and sustained with food appropriate to its nature. Meanwhile, God the Word Himself, who was united with the body, was ordering all things and through the works He did in the body showed Himself to be not man but God the Word. These things are said of Him because the actual body that ate, was born, and suffered belonged to no one else but the Lord. And because He had become man, it was proper for these things to be said of Him as man, to show that He had a body in truth and not in appearance. 2. But just as from these things He was known to be bodily present, so from the works He did in the body He made Himself known to be Son of God. This is why He cried out to the unbelieving Jews: “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do them, though you believe not Me, believe My works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.” 3. For just as, though invisible, He is known through the works of creation, so having become man and being in the body unseen, it may be known from His works that He who can do these things is not man but the Power and Word of God. 4. For when He commanded evil spirits and they were driven out, this deed is not of man but of God. Or who that saw Him healing the diseases to which the human race is subject can still think Him man and not God? For He cleansed lepers, made lame men walk, opened the hearing of deaf men, made blind men see again, and in a word drove away from men all diseases and infirmities. From these acts it was possible even for the most ordinary observer to see His Godhead. For who that saw Him give back what was lacking to men born lacking, and open the eyes of the man blind from his birth, would have failed to perceive that the nature of men was subject to Him and that He was its Artificer and Maker? For He who gave back what the man from his birth had not must be, it is surely evident, the Lord also of men’s natural birth. 5. Therefore, even to begin with, when He was descending to us, He fashioned His body for Himself from a Virgin, thus to give to all no small proof of His Godhead, in that He who formed this is also Maker of everything else as well. For who, seeing a body proceeding forth from a Virgin alone without man, can fail to conclude that He who appears in it is Maker and Lord of other bodies also? 6. Or who, seeing the substance of water changed and transformed into wine, fails to perceive that He who did this is Lord and Creator of the substance of all waters? For this reason He went upon the sea also as its Master and walked as on dry land, to give evidence to those who saw it of His lordship over all things. And in feeding so vast a multitude on so little, and of His own self producing abundance where none existed, so that from five loaves five thousand had enough and left so much again over, did He show Himself to be any other than the very Lord whose Providence is over all things?

19. Man, unmoved by nature, was to be taught to knowGod by that sacred Manhood, Whose deity all nature confessed, especially in His Death.

But it seemed good for the Saviour to do all this so that since people had failed to know His Providence revealed in the Universe and had failed to perceive His Godhead shown in creation, they might at least from the works of His body recover their sight and through Him receive an idea of the knowledge of the Father, inferring, as I said before, from particular cases His Providence over the whole. For who that saw His power over evil spirits, or who that saw the evil spirits confess that He was their Lord, will hold his mind any longer in doubt whether this is the Son and Wisdom and Power of God? For He made even the creation break silence, in that even at His death, marvelous to relate, or rather at His actual trophy over death—the Cross I mean—all creation was confessing that He who was made manifest and suffered in the body was not merely man, but the Son of God and Saviour of all. For the sun hid its face, and the earth quaked and the mountains were split; all people were awed. Now these things showed that Christ on the Cross was God, while all creation was His slave and was witnessing by its fear to its Master’s presence. Thus, then, God the Word showed Himself to people by His works. But our next step must be to recount and speak of the end of His bodily life and course, and of the nature of the death of His body, especially as this is the sum of our faith, and all people without exception are full of it, so that you may know that no less from this also Christ is known to be God and the Son of God.

20. None, then, could bestow incorruption, but He Who had made, none restore the likeness of God, save His Own Image, none quicken, but the Life, none teach, but the Word. And He, to pay our debt of death, must also die for us, and rise again as our first-fruits from the grave. Mortal therefore His Body must be; corruptible, His Body could not be.

We have now explained, as far as possible and as we have been able to understand, the reason for His bodily appearance: that it was in the power of no one else to turn the corruptible to incorruption except the Savior Himself, who in the beginning also made all things out of nothing, and that no one else could create anew the likeness of God’s image for humanity except the Image of the Father, and that no one else could render the mortal immortal except our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Very Life, and that no one else could teach people about the Father and destroy the worship of idols except the Word, who orders all things and is alone the true Only-begotten Son of the Father. But since it was also necessary that the debt owed by all should be paid again—for, as I have already said, it was owed that all should die, which was the specific reason He came among us—to this end, after the proofs of His divinity from His works, He next offered up His sacrifice also on behalf of all, yielding His temple to death in place of all, in order first to make people quit and free of their old trespass, and further to show Himself more powerful even than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection of all. And do not be surprised if we frequently repeat the same words on the same subject. For since we are speaking of the counsel of God, we explain the same meaning in more than one form, lest we should seem to be leaving anything out and incur the charge of inadequate treatment, for it is better to accept the blame of repetition than to leave out anything that ought to be set down. The body, then, as sharing the same nature with all—for it was a human body, though by an unparalleled miracle it was formed from a virgin only—yet being mortal, was to die also, in keeping with its peers. But by virtue of the union of the Word with it, it was no longer subject to corruption according to its own nature, but by reason of the Word who had come to dwell in it, it was placed beyond the reach of corruption. And so it was that two marvels came to pass at once: that the death of all was accomplished in the Lord’s body, and that death and corruption were wholly done away with by reason of the Word who was united with it. For there was need of death, and death had to be suffered on behalf of all, so that the debt owed by all might be paid. Therefore, as I said before, the Word, since it was not possible for Him to die, as He was immortal, took to Himself a body such as could die, so that He might offer it as His own in place of all, and as suffering through His union with it on behalf of all, bring to nothing Him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and might deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

21. Death brought to nought by the death of Christ. Why then did not Christ die privately, or in a more honourableway? He was not subject to natural death, but had to die at the hands of others. Why then did He die? Nay but for that purpose He came, and but for that, He could not have risen.

Since the common Saviour of all has died on our behalf, we who are faithful in Christ no longer die the death we died before, according to the warning of the law. This condemnation has ceased. Corruption has ceased and been put away by the grace of the Resurrection. From now on, we are only dissolved according to our bodies’ mortal nature, at the time God has fixed for each person, so that we may gain a better resurrection. For like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish by dissolution. Instead, sown in the earth, we will rise again, because death has been brought to nothing by the grace of the Saviour. This is why blessed Paul, who was made a guarantee of the Resurrection to all, says: This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality; but when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death where is your sting? O grave where is your victory? Now someone might ask: if it was necessary for Him to yield up His body to death in place of all, why did He not lay it aside privately as a man, instead of going so far as to be crucified? It would have been more fitting for Him to have laid His body aside honorably than to endure such a shameful death. But consider whether such an objection is merely human, whereas what the Saviour did is truly divine and for many reasons worthy of His Godhead. First, the death that happens to men comes to them according to the weakness of their nature. Being unable to remain in one condition, they dissolve with time. Therefore diseases also befall them, and they fall sick and die. But the Lord is not weak; He is the Power of God and Word of God and Very Life. If He had laid aside His body somewhere in private, on a bed, in the manner of men, it would have been thought that He also did this according to the weakness of His nature, and that there was nothing in Him more than in other men. But since He was, first, the Life and the Word of God, and it was necessary, second, for the death on behalf of all to be accomplished, for this reason, on the one hand, because He was life and power, the body gained strength in Him. On the other hand, since death had to come to pass, He did not take it upon Himself, but received it at others’ hands, the occasion for perfecting His sacrifice. It was not fitting for the Lord to fall sick, since He healed the diseases of others. Nor was it right for that body to lose its strength, since in it He gives strength to the weaknesses of others also. Why then did He not prevent death, as He did sickness? Because it was for this purpose that He had the body, and it was unfitting to prevent it, lest the Resurrection also should be hindered. Yet it was equally unfitting for sickness to precede His death, lest it should be thought weakness on the part of Him that was in the body. Did He not hunger? Yes, He hungered, according to the properties of His body. But He did not perish of hunger, because of the Lord that wore it. Therefore, even if He died to ransom all, He saw no corruption. For His body rose again in perfect soundness, since the body belonged to none other but to the very Life.

22. But why did He not withdraw His body from the Jews, and so guard its immortality? (1) It became Him not to inflict death on Himself, and yet not to shun it. (2) He came to receive death as the due of others, therefore it should come to Him from without. (3) His death must be certain, to guarantee the truth of His Resurrection. Also, He could not die from infirmity, lest He should be mocked in His healing of others.

But someone might say it would have been better to hide from the plots of the Jews so that He could keep His body entirely from death. Now let such a person be told that this too was unfitting for the Lord. For just as it was not fitting for the Word of God, being the Life, to inflict death Himself on His own body, so neither was it suitable to flee from death offered by others, but rather to pursue it to its destruction, for which reason He naturally neither laid aside His body of His own accord, nor fled from the Jews when they plotted against Him. But this did not show weakness on the part of the Word, but on the contrary, showed Him to be Savior and Life; in that He both waited for death to destroy it, and hastened to accomplish the death offered to Him for the salvation of all. And besides, the Savior came to accomplish not His own death, but the death of men; therefore He did not lay aside His body by a death of His own—for He was Life and had none—but received that death which came from men, in order to perfectly do away with it when it met Him in His own body. Again, from the following also one might see the reasonableness of the Lord’s body meeting this end. The Lord was especially concerned for the resurrection of the body which He was set to accomplish. For what He was to do was to show it as a monument of victory over death, and to assure all of His having accomplished the blotting out of corruption, and of the incorruption of their bodies from that time forward; as a pledge of which and a proof of the resurrection in store for all, He has preserved His own body incorrupt. If, then, once more, His body had fallen sick, and the Word had been separated from it in the sight of all, it would have been unfitting that He who healed the diseases of others should allow His own instrument to waste in sickness. For how could His driving out the diseases of others have been believed in if His own temple fell sick in Him? For either He would have been mocked as unable to drive away diseases, or if He could but did not, He would be thought uncaring toward others also.

23. Necessity of a public death for the doctrine of the Resurrection.

But even if, without any disease or pain, He had hidden His body away privately and by Himself in a corner, or in a desert place, or in a house, or anywhere, and afterwards suddenly appeared and said that He had been raised from the dead, He would have seemed to everyone to be telling idle tales, and what He said about the Resurrection would have been even more discredited, since there was no one at all to witness His death. Now, death must come before resurrection, since it would not be resurrection if death did not come first; so if the death of His body had taken place anywhere in secret, with the death not being visible or taking place before witnesses, His Resurrection too would have been hidden and without evidence. Or why, while when He had risen He proclaimed the Resurrection, should He cause His death to take place in secret? Or why, while He drove out evil spirits in the presence of everyone, and made the man blind from birth recover his sight, and changed the water into wine, so that by these means He might be believed to be the Word of God, should He not demonstrate His mortal nature as incorruptible in the presence of everyone, so that He might be believed to be the Life? Or how were His disciples to have boldness in speaking of the Resurrection if they were not able to say that He first died? Or how could they be believed, saying that death had first taken place and then the Resurrection, if they did not have as witnesses of His death the very people before whom they spoke with boldness? For if, even as it was, when His death and Resurrection had taken place in the sight of everyone, the Pharisees of that day would not believe, but even compelled those who had seen the Resurrection to deny it, then surely, if these things had happened in secret, how many excuses for disbelief would they have invented? Or how could the end of death and the victory over it be proved, unless by challenging it before the eyes of everyone He had shown it to be dead, cancelled for the future by the incorruption of His body?

24. Further objections anticipated. He did not choose His manner of death; for He was to prove Conqueror of death in all or any of its forms: (simile of a good wrestler). The death chosen to disgrace Him proved the Trophy against death: moreover it preserved His body undivided.

But we must also respond to what others might say. For perhaps someone might argue as follows: If it was necessary for His death to happen before everyone, with witnesses, so that the account of His Resurrection would also be believed, it would have been better for Him to arrange a glorious death for Himself, if only to avoid the disgrace of the Cross. But if He had done even this, He would give reason for people to suspect that He was not powerful against every form of death, but only against the death He chose for Himself; and so there would still be an excuse for disbelief about the Resurrection. So death came to His body not from Himself, but from hostile plots, so that whatever death they inflicted on the Saviour, this He might completely destroy. And just as a noble wrestler, great in skill and courage, does not choose his opponents for himself, lest he raise suspicion that he is afraid of some of them, but leaves the choice to the spectators, especially if they happen to be his enemies, so that whichever opponent they match him against, he may defeat him and be believed superior to them all; so also the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, Christ Himself, did not arrange a death for His own body, so as not to appear to be afraid of some other death; but He accepted and endured a death inflicted by others on the Cross, and above all by His enemies, which they considered dreadful and disgraceful and not to be faced; so that when this also was destroyed, both He Himself might be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be completely brought to nothing. So something surprising and startling has happened; for the death which they thought to inflict as a disgrace was actually a monument of victory against death itself. Therefore He did not suffer the death of John, whose head was cut off, nor was He sawn in two like Isaiah; so that even in death He might still keep His body undivided and in perfect wholeness, and no excuse be given to those who would divide the Church.

25. Why the Cross, of all deaths? (1) He had to bear the curse for us. (2) On it He held out His hands to unite all, Jews and Gentiles, in Himself. (3) He defeated the Prince of the powers of the air in His own region, clearing the way to heaven and opening for us the everlasting doors.

To respond to those outside the faith who pile up arguments: if any of our own people also ask—not from a love of debate, but from a love of learning—why He suffered death in no other way except on the cross, let him also be told that no other way than this was good for us, and that it was fitting that the Lord suffered this for our sake. For if He came Himself to bear the curse laid upon us, how else could He have become a curse, unless He received the death appointed for a curse? And that is the cross. For this is exactly what is written: Cursed is he that hangs on a tree. Again, if the Lord’s death is the ransom of all, and by His death the middle wall of partition is broken down, and the calling of the nations is brought about, how would He have called us to Him had He not been crucified? For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Therefore it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out His hands, so that with the one He might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in Himself. For this is what He Himself has said, indicating by what manner of death He was to ransom all: I, when I am lifted up, He says, shall draw all men to Me. And once more, if the devil, the enemy of our race, having fallen from heaven, wanders about our lower atmosphere, and there bearing rule over his fellow-spirits as his peers in disobedience, not only works illusions by their means in those who are deceived, but tries to hinder those who are going up (and about this the Apostle says: According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience); while the Lord came to cast down the devil and clear the air and prepare the way for us up into heaven, as the Apostle said: Through the veil, that is to say, His flesh—and this must necessarily be by death—well, by what other kind of death could this have come to pass, than by one which took place in the air, I mean the cross? For only he who is perfected on the cross dies in the air. Therefore it was quite fitting that the Lord suffered this death. For thus being lifted up He cleared the air of the malice both of the devil and of demons of all kinds, as He says: I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven; and made a new opening of the way up into heaven as He says once more: Lift up your gates, O you princes, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors. For it was not the Word Himself who needed an opening of the gates, being Lord of all; nor were any of His works closed to their Maker; but we were the ones who needed it, whom He carried up by His own body. For as He offered it to death on behalf of all, so by it He once more made ready the way up into the heavens.

26. Reasons for His rising on the Third Day. (1) Not sooner for else His real death would be denied, nor (2) later; to (a) guard the identity of His body, (b) not to keep His disciplestoo long in suspense, nor (c) to wait till the witnesses of His death were dispersed, or its memory faded.

The death on the Cross, then, has proven to be fitting and appropriate for us, and its cause has been shown to be reasonable in every way. It can justly be argued that salvation for all people could not rightly have taken place in any other way than by the Cross. For not even on the Cross did He hide Himself. Rather, while He made creation bear witness to the presence of its Maker, He did not allow the temple of His body to remain long in death. Instead, having simply shown it to be dead through death’s contact with it, He immediately raised it up on the third day, carrying away incorruptibility and impassibility in His body as the sign of victory and triumph over death. He could have raised His body immediately after death and shown it alive, but the Saviour in His wisdom chose not to do this. Otherwise, someone might have said that He had not really died at all, or that death had not fully touched Him, if He had revealed the Resurrection at once. Again, if the time between His dying and rising had been only two days, the glory of His incorruptibility would have been unclear. So in order that the body might be proven to be truly dead, the Word waited one full day in between, and on the third day showed it incorruptible to everyone. Therefore, to prove that the death on the Cross was real, He raised His body on the third day. But to prevent people from disbelieving Him—thinking He had substituted a different body—if He raised it after it had remained a long time and completely decayed (for after too much time had passed, a person might distrust what he saw and forget what had happened), for this reason He waited no more than three days. Nor did He keep those whom He had told about the Resurrection in suspense for long. Rather, while the word was still echoing in their ears and their eyes were still watching expectantly and their minds were still waiting, and while those who had killed Him were still alive on earth and present on the spot and could testify to the death of the Lord’s body, the Son of God Himself, after three days, showed His body—though it had been dead—now immortal and incorruptible. It was made clear to everyone that the body had not died because of any natural weakness of the Word that dwelt in it, but so that death might be destroyed in it by the power of the Saviour.

27. The change wrought by the Cross in the relation of Death to Man.

For that death is destroyed, and that the Cross has become the victory over it, and that it no longer has any power but is truly dead, this is no small proof, or rather clear evidence, that it is despised by all Christ’s disciples, and that they all take the offensive against it and no longer fear it. By the sign of the Cross and by faith in Christ they trample it down as something dead. Before the divine coming of the Savior took place, even the saints found death terrifying, and everyone wept for the dead as though they had perished. But now that the Savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrifying. All who believe in Christ trample him underfoot as nothing, and would rather die than deny their faith in Christ. They truly know that when they die they are not destroyed, but actually begin to live and become incorruptible through the Resurrection. And that devil who once maliciously rejoiced in death, now that its pains were released, remained the only one truly dead. And proof of this is that before people believe in Christ, they see death as an object of terror and act like cowards before him. But when they cross over to Christ’s faith and teaching, their contempt for death is so great that they even eagerly rush toward it and become witnesses for the Resurrection the Savior has accomplished against it. For while still young in years they hurry to die, and not only men but also women train themselves by bodily discipline against it. Death has become so weak that even women who were formerly deceived by him now mock at him as dead and paralyzed. For just as when a tyrant has been defeated by a true king and bound hand and foot, then everyone who passes by laughs him to scorn, hitting and mocking him, no longer fearing his rage and cruelty because of the king who has conquered him, so also death, having been conquered and exposed by the Savior on the Cross and bound hand and foot, all those who are in Christ, as they pass by, trample on him. Witnessing to Christ they scoff at death, joking at him and saying what was written against him long ago: O death, where is your victory? O grave, where is your sting.

28. This exceptional fact must be tested by experience. Let those who doubtit become Christians.

Is this, then, a small proof of the weakness of death? Or is it a small demonstration of the victory the Savior has won over death, when the young men and young women who are in Christ despise this life and train themselves to die? For by nature, man is afraid of death and of the body’s dissolution; but here is this most startling fact: the person who has put on the faith of the Cross despises even what is naturally fearful, and for Christ’s sake is not afraid of death. And just as fire has the natural property of burning, but if someone said there was a substance that did not fear its burning and instead proved fire to be weak—as the asbestos among the Indians is said to do—then a person who did not believe this story, if he wanted to test it, would at any rate, after putting on the fireproof material and touching the fire, be convinced of the weakness attributed to the fire; or if anyone wished to see the tyrant bound, he could at any rate go into the country and domain of his conqueror and see the man who is a terror to others now reduced to weakness—so if a person is still incredulous even after so many proofs and after so many who have become martyrs in Christ, and after the scorn shown for death every day by those who are distinguished in Christ, and if his mind is still doubtful as to whether death has been brought to nothing and has ended, he does well to wonder at so great a thing, only let him not remain stubborn in unbelief, nor hardened in the face of what is so clear. But just as the person who has the asbestos knows that fire has no burning power over it, and as the person who wants to see the tyrant bound goes over to the empire of his conqueror, so too let the person who is incredulous about the victory over death receive the faith of Christ and pass over to His teaching, and he will see the weakness of death and the triumph over it. For many who were formerly unbelievers and scoffers have afterward believed and so despised death as even to become martyrs for Christ Himself.

29. Here then are wonderful effects, and a sufficient cause, the Cross, to account for them, as sunrise accounts for daylight.

Now if death is trampled down by the sign of the Cross and by faith in Christ, it must be clear before the tribunal of truth that it is none other than Christ Himself who has displayed trophies and triumphs over death and made him lose all his strength. And if death was previously strong and therefore terrible, but now after the sojourn of the Savior and the death and Resurrection of His body it is despised, it must be clear that death has been brought to nothing and conquered by the very Christ who ascended the Cross. For just as, when the sun rises after nighttime and the whole region of earth is illuminated by it, there is no doubt that it is the sun who has revealed his light everywhere, who has also driven away the darkness and given light to all things, so now that death has become an object of contempt and been trampled underfoot from the time when the Savior’s saving manifestation in the flesh and His death on the Cross took place, it must be quite plain that it is the very Savior who also appeared in the body who has brought death to nothing and who displays the signs of victory over him day by day in His own disciples. For when one sees men, weak by nature, leaping forward toward death and not fearing its corruption nor frightened of the descent into Hades, but with eager soul challenging it, and not flinching from torture but on the contrary choosing for Christ’s sake to rush upon death rather than live on earth, or even if one is an eyewitness of men and women and young children rushing and leaping upon death for the sake of Christ’s religion, who is so foolish, or who is so unbelieving, or who is so impaired in his mind as not to see and conclude that Christ, to whom the people bear witness, Himself supplies and gives to each person the victory over death, depriving him of all his power in each one of those who hold His faith and bear the sign of the Cross? For anyone who sees the serpent trampled underfoot, especially knowing his former fierceness, no longer doubts that he is dead and has completely lost his strength, unless he is perverted in mind and does not even have his bodily senses sound. For who that sees a lion being mocked by children fails to see that he is either dead or has lost all his power? Just as it is possible to see the truth of all this with the eyes, so now that death is mocked and despised by believers in Christ, let no one any longer doubt, nor any prove unbelieving, that death has been brought to nothing by Christ and the corruption of death destroyed and stopped.

30. The reality of the resurrection proved by facts: (1) the victory over death described above: (2) the Wonders of Grace are the work of One Living, of One who is God: (3) if the gods be (as alleged) real and living, a fortiori He Who shatters their power is alive.

What we have said so far, then, is no small proof that death has been destroyed and that the Cross of the Lord is a sign of victory over him. But concerning the Resurrection of the body to immortality that Christ accomplished afterward—the common Savior and true Life of all—the demonstration by facts is clearer than arguments to those whose mental vision is sound. For if, as our argument showed, death has been destroyed, and because of Christ all people trample him underfoot, how much more did He Himself first trample him down with His own body and destroy him? But if death was killed by Him, what else could have happened except the rising again of His body and its being displayed as a monument of victory against death? Or how could death have been shown to be destroyed unless the Lord’s body had risen? But if this demonstration of the Resurrection seems insufficient to anyone, let him be assured of what is said even from what takes place before his eyes. For when a man dies he can put forth no power, but his influence lasts only to the grave and from that point ceases; and actions, and power over men, belong only to the living. Let anyone who wishes see and be the judge, confessing the truth from what appears to sight. For now that the Savior works such great things among people, and day by day invisibly persuades such a great multitude from every side—both from those who dwell in Greece and in foreign lands—to come over to His faith, and all to obey His teaching, will anyone still hold his mind in doubt whether a Resurrection has been accomplished by the Savior, and whether Christ is alive, or rather is Himself the Life? Or is it like a dead man to be pricking the consciences of people, so that they deny their hereditary laws and bow before the teaching of Christ? Or how, if He is no longer active (for this is proper to one dead), does He stop from their activity those who are active and alive, so that the adulterer no longer commits adultery, and the murderer murders no more, nor is the inflicter of wrong any longer grasping, and the profane person is henceforth religious? Or how, if He has not risen but is dead, does He drive away, and pursue, and cast down those false gods said by the unbelievers to be alive, and the demons they worship? For where Christ is named, and His faith, there all idolatry is deposed and all imposture of evil spirits is exposed, and any spirit is unable to endure even the name—in fact, on barely hearing it, flees and disappears. But this work is not that of one dead, but of one who lives—and especially of God. In particular, it would be ridiculous to say that while the spirits cast out by Him and the idols brought to nothing are alive, He who chases them away, and by His power prevents their even appearing—yes, and is being confessed by them all to be Son of God—is dead.

31. If Power is the sign of life, what do we learn from the impotence of idols, for good or evil, and the constraining power of Christ and of the Sign of the Cross? Death and the demonsare by this proved to have lost their sovereignty. Coincidence of the above argument from facts with that from the Personality of Christ.

But those who don’t believe in the Resurrection provide strong proof against themselves. Instead of all the spirits and gods they worship casting out Christ, whom they claim is dead, Christ actually proves that all of them are dead. If it’s true that someone who is dead can’t exercise any power, while the Savior performs so many works every day—drawing people to religion, persuading them toward virtue, teaching about immortality, leading them to desire heavenly things, revealing knowledge of the Father, giving them strength to face death, showing Himself to each person, and removing the godlessness of idolatry—and the gods and spirits of unbelievers can do none of these things but instead show themselves to be dead in Christ’s presence, their splendor reduced to powerlessness and emptiness; and by the sign of the Cross all magic is stopped, all witchcraft brought to nothing, all idols are being abandoned and left behind, every uncontrolled pleasure is restrained, and everyone is looking up from earth to heaven: who should we call dead? Christ, who does so many works? But working is not characteristic of someone who is dead. Or those who exercise no power at all but lie as if lifeless? That is exactly what characterizes the idols and spirits, dead as they are. For the Son of God is living and active, and works every day, bringing about the salvation of all. But death is proven daily to have lost all its power, and idols and spirits are proven to be dead rather than Christ, so that from now on no one can doubt the Resurrection of His body. But whoever doesn’t believe in the Resurrection of the Lord’s body seems to be ignorant of the power of the Word and Wisdom of God. For if He took a body to Himself at all, and—as our argument showed in reasonable consistency—made it His own, what was the Lord to do with it? Or what should be the final state of the body once the Word had descended upon it? It had to die, since it was mortal and was to be offered to death on behalf of all—which is the very purpose for which the Savior fashioned it for Himself. But it was impossible for it to remain dead, because it had been made the temple of life. Therefore, while it died as something mortal, it came to life again because of the Life within it; and the works are a sign of its Resurrection.

32. But who is to see Him risen, so as to believe? Nay, God is ever invisible and known by His works only: and here the works cry out in proof. If you do not believe, look at those who do, and perceive the Godhead of Christ. The demonssee this, though men be blind. Summary of the argument so far.

But if His resurrection is disbelieved because He is not seen, it is high time for those who refuse to believe to deny the very course of nature. For it is God’s peculiar property to be invisible while at the same time being known from His works, as has already been stated above. If the works are not there, they do well to disbelieve what does not appear. But if the works cry aloud and show it clearly, why do they choose to deny the life so clearly resulting from the Resurrection? For even if they are impaired in their intelligence, yet even with their external senses people can see the unimpeachable power and Godhead of Christ. For even a blind man, though he does not see the sun, if he takes hold of the warmth the sun gives out, knows that there is a sun above the earth. Thus let our opponents also, even if they do not yet believe, being still blind to the truth, yet at least knowing His power through others who believe, not deny the Godhead of Christ and the Resurrection accomplished by Him. For it is clear that if Christ were dead, He could not be expelling demons and destroying idols; for spirits would not have obeyed a dead man. But if they are clearly expelled by the naming of His name, it must be evident that He is not dead, especially since spirits, seeing even what is unseen by men, could tell if Christ were dead and would refuse Him any obedience at all. But as it is, what irreligious men do not believe, the spirits see—that He is God—and therefore they flee and fall at His feet, saying just what they said when He was in the body: We know who You are, the Holy One of God; and, What have we to do with You, Son of God? I beg You, do not torment me. Since demons confess Him, and His works bear witness to Him day by day, it must be evident, and let no one brazenly deny the truth, both that the Savior raised His own body, and that He is the true Son of God, being from Him, as from His Father, His own Word, and Wisdom, and Power, who in later ages took a body for the salvation of all, and taught the world concerning the Father, and brought death to nothing, and bestowed incorruption upon all by the promise of the Resurrection, having raised His own body as a first-fruits of this, and having displayed it by the sign of the Cross as a monument of victory over death and its corruption.

33. Unbelief of Jews and scoffing of Greeks. The former confounded by their own Scriptures. Prophecies of His coming as God and as Man.

These things being so, and the Resurrection of His body and the victory gained over death by the Saviour being clearly proved, come now let us refute both the disbelief of the Jews and the scoffing of the Gentiles. These are perhaps the points where Jews express doubt, while Gentiles mock, finding fault with the scandalous nature of the Cross and with the Word of God becoming man. But our argument will not hesitate to engage with both, especially since the proofs we have against them are as clear as day. For Jews in their disbelief may be refuted from the Scriptures, which they themselves read; for this passage and that, and indeed the whole inspired Scripture, cries aloud concerning these things, as even its very words abundantly show. For prophets proclaimed beforehand concerning the wonder of the Virgin and the birth from her, saying: Behold, the Virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means, being interpreted, God with us. But Moses, the truly great, and whom they believe to speak truth, with reference to the Saviour’s becoming man, having considered what was said as important and assured of its truth, set it down in these words: There shall rise a star out of Jacob, and a man out of Israel, and he shall break in pieces the captains of Moab. And again: How lovely are your habitations O Jacob, your tabernacles O Israel, as shadowing gardens, and as parks by the rivers, and as tabernacles which the Lord has fixed, as cedars by the waters. A man shall come forth out of his seed, and shall be Lord over many peoples. And again, Isaiah: Before the Child knows how to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria before the king of Assyria. That a man, then, shall appear is foretold in those words. But that He who is to come is Lord of all, they predict once more as follows: Behold the Lord sits upon a light cloud, and shall come into Egypt, and the graven images of Egypt shall be shaken. For from there also the Father calls Him back, saying: I called My Son out of Egypt.

34. Prophecies of His passionand death in all its circumstances.

Nor is even His death passed over in silence. On the contrary, it is referred to in the divine Scriptures with exceeding clarity. So that no one should go astray for lack of instruction about what actually happened, they did not hesitate to mention even the reason for His death—that He suffers it not for His own sake, but for the immortality and salvation of all—and the plots of the Jews against Him and the insults they inflicted on Him. They say then: A man in stripes, and knowing how to bear weakness, for his face is turned away: he was dishonoured and held in no account. He bears our sins, and is in pain on our account; and we reckoned him to be in labour, and in stripes, and in ill-usage; but he was wounded for our sins, and made weak for our wickedness. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we were healed. What a marvel is the loving-kindness of the Word, that for our sakes He is dishonoured, so that we may be brought to honour. For all we, it says, like sheep had gone astray; man had erred in his way; and the Lord delivered him for our sins; and he opens not his mouth, because he has been evilly entreated. As a sheep was he brought to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opens he not his mouth: in his abasement his judgment was taken away. Then lest anyone should conclude from His suffering that He is a common man, Holy Scripture anticipates the assumptions of man and declares the power that worked for Him and the difference of His nature compared with ourselves, saying: But who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. From the wickedness of the people was he brought to death. And I will give the wicked instead of his burial, and the rich instead of his death; for he did no wickedness, neither was guile found in his mouth. And the Lord will cleanse him from his stripes.

35. Prophecies of the Cross. How these prophecies are satisfied in Christ alone.

But perhaps, after hearing the prophecy of His death, you want to learn also what is said about the Cross. For not even this is passed over—it is shown by the holy men with great clarity. First Moses predicts it, and that with a loud voice, when he says: You shall see your Life hanging before your eyes, and shall not believe. Next, the prophets after him bear witness to this, saying: But I as an innocent lamb brought to be slain, knew it not; they counseled an evil counsel against me, saying, Come and let us cast a tree upon his bread, and wipe him out from the land of the living. And again: They pierced my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones, they parted my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Now a death that is raised up and that takes place on a tree could be nothing other than the Cross—and again, in no other death are the hands and feet pierced, except on the Cross alone. But since through the Savior’s time among men all nations on every side began to know God, they did not leave this point without a reference either—this matter is also mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. For there shall be, he says, the root of Jesse, and he that rises to rule the nations, on him shall the nations hope. This then is a little of the proof of what has happened. But all Scripture is full of refutations of the disbelief of the Jews. For which of the righteous men and holy prophets and patriarchs recorded in the divine Scriptures ever had his bodily birth from a virgin only? Or what woman has been sufficient without a man for the conception of a human being? Was not Abel born of Adam, Enoch of Jared, Noah of Lamech, and Abraham of Terah, Isaac of Abraham, Jacob of Isaac? Was not Judah born of Jacob, and Moses and Aaron of Amram? Was not Samuel born of Elkanah, was not David of Jesse, was not Solomon of David, was not Hezekiah of Ahaz, was not Josiah of Amon, was not Isaiah of Amoz, was not Jeremiah of Hilkiah, was not Ezekiel of Buzi? Did not each have a father as the source of his existence? Who then is he that is born of a virgin only? For the prophet made very much of this sign. Or whose birth did a star in the heavens precede, to announce to the world the one who was born? For when Moses was born, he was hidden by his parents. David was not known even by those in his neighborhood, since even the great Samuel did not know him, but asked, does Jesse have yet another son? Abraham again became known to his neighbors as a great man only after his birth. But for Christ’s birth the witness was not man, but a star in that heaven from which He was descending.

36. Prophecies of Christ’s sovereignty, flight into Egypt, etc.

But what king that ever existed, before he had the strength to call for his father or mother, reigned and won victories over his enemies? Did not David come to the throne at thirty years of age, and Solomon when he had grown to be a young man? Did not Joash enter the kingdom when he was seven years old, and Josiah, a later king, receive the government around the seventh year of his age? And yet they at that age had the strength to call for their father or mother. 2. Who, then, is there who was reigning and plundering his enemies almost before his birth? Or what king of this kind has ever existed in Israel and in Judah—let the Jews, who have searched out the matter, tell us—in whom all the nations have placed their hopes and had peace, instead of being at war with them on every side? 3. For as long as Jerusalem stood there was constant war between them, and everyone fought with Israel; the Assyrians oppressed them, the Egyptians persecuted them, the Babylonians attacked them; and, strangely enough, they even had the Syrians their neighbors at war against them. Or did not David war against the Moabites and strike down the Syrians, did not Josiah guard against his neighbors, and Hezekiah tremble at the boasting of Sennacherib, and did not Amalek make war against Moses, and the Amorites oppose him, and the inhabitants of Jericho array themselves against Joshua son of Nun? And, in a word, treaties of friendship had no place between the nations and Israel. Who, then, it is on whom the nations are to set their hope, it is worth considering. For there must be such a person, as it is impossible for the prophet to have spoken falsely. 4. But which of the holy prophets or of the early patriarchs died on the cross for the salvation of all? Or who was wounded and destroyed for the healing of all? Or which of the righteous men, or kings, went down to Egypt, so that at his coming the idols of Egypt fell? For Abraham went there, but idolatry prevailed universally all the same. Moses was born there, and the deluded worship of the people was there nonetheless.

37. Psalm 22:16, etc. Majesty of His birth and death. Confusion of oracles and demonsin Egypt.

Or who among those recorded in Scripture was pierced in the hands and feet, or hung at all upon a tree, and was sacrificed on a cross for the salvation of all? For Abraham died, ending his life on a bed; Isaac and Jacob also died with their feet raised on a bed; Moses and Aaron died on the mountain; David in his house, without being the object of any conspiracy at the hands of the people. True, he was pursued by Saul, but he was preserved unhurt. Isaiah was sawn in two, but not hung on a tree. Jeremiah was shamefully treated, but did not die under condemnation. Ezekiel suffered, but not for the people—rather to indicate what was to come upon the people. Moreover, these men, even when they suffered, were human beings sharing in our common nature. But the one who is declared in Scripture to suffer on behalf of all is called not merely man, but the Life of all, even though He was in fact like human beings in nature. For it says, you shall see your Life hanging before your eyes; and who shall declare his generation? For one can determine the genealogy of all the saints and declare it from the beginning, and say from whom each was born. But the generation of Him who is the Life, the Scriptures refer to as not able to be declared. Who then is he of whom the Divine Scriptures say this? Or who is so great that even the prophets predict such great things about him? None other is found in the Scriptures except the common Savior of all, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is the one who came forth from a virgin and appeared as a man on the earth, and whose generation according to the flesh cannot be declared. For there is no one who can tell His father according to the flesh, His body not being from a man but from a virgin alone. So no one can declare the bodily generation of the Savior from a man, in the same way as one can draw up a genealogy of David and of Moses and of all the patriarchs. For He is the one who caused the star also to mark the birth of His body, since it was fitting that the Word, coming down from heaven, should have His constellation also from heaven, and it was fitting that the King of Creation when He came forth should be openly recognized by all creation. Indeed, He was born in Judea, and men from Persia came to worship Him. He is the one who even before His appearing in the body won the victory over His demon adversaries and a triumph over idolatry. All heathen at any rate from every region, renouncing their ancestral tradition and the impiety of idols, are now placing their hope in Christ and enrolling themselves under Him, as you may see with your own eyes. For at no other time has the impiety of the Egyptians ceased, except when the Lord of all, riding as it were upon a cloud, came down there in the body and brought to nothing the delusion of idols, and brought over all to Himself, and through Himself to the Father. He is the one who was crucified before the sun and all creation as witnesses, and before those who put Him to death, and by His death salvation has come to all, and all creation has been ransomed. He is the Life of all, and He is the one who as a sheep yielded His body to death as a substitute for the salvation of all, even though the Jews do not believe it.

38. Other clear prophecies of the coming of Godin the flesh. Christ’s miraclesunprecedented.

For if they do not think these proofs sufficient, let them be persuaded at any rate by other reasons, drawn from the oracles they themselves possess. For of whom do the prophets say: I was made manifest to them that sought me not, I was found of them that asked not for me: I said Behold, here am I, to the nation that had not called upon my name; I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people. 2. Who, then, one might say to the Jews, is he that was made manifest? For if it is the prophet, let them say when he was hidden, afterward to appear again. And what kind of prophet is this, who was not only made manifest from obscurity, but also stretched out his hands on the Cross? None of the righteous, surely, except the Word of God alone, who, incorporeal by nature, appeared for our sakes in the body and suffered for all. 3. Or if not even this is sufficient for them, let them at least be silenced by another proof, seeing how clear its demonstrative force is. For the Scripture says: Be strong you hands that hang down, and feeble knees; comfort ye, you of faint mind; be strong, fear not. Behold, our God recompenses judgment; He shall come and save us. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be plain. 4. Now what can they say to this, or how can they dare to face this at all? For the prophecy not only indicates that God is to dwell here, but it announces the signs and the time of His coming. For they connect the blind recovering their sight, and the lame walking, and the deaf hearing, and the tongue of the stammerers being made plain, with the Divine Coming which is to take place. Let them say, then, when such signs have come to pass in Israel, or where in Jewry anything of the sort has occurred. 5. Naaman, a leper, was cleansed, but no deaf man heard nor lame man walked. Elijah raised a dead man; so did Elisha; but no one blind from birth regained his sight. For in truth, to raise a dead man is a great thing, but it is not like the wonder wrought by the Saviour. Only, if Scripture has not passed over the case of the leper, and of the dead son of the widow, certainly, had it come to pass that a lame man also had walked and a blind man recovered his sight, the narrative would not have omitted to mention this also. Since then nothing is said in the Scriptures, it is evident that these things had never taken place before. 6. When, then, have they taken place, except when the Word of God Himself came in the body? Or when did He come, if not when lame men walked, and stammerers were made to speak plainly, and deaf men heard, and men blind from birth regained their sight? For this was the very thing the Jews said who then witnessed it, because they had not heard of these things having taken place at any other time: Since the world began it was never heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.

39. Do you look for another? But Daniel foretells the exact time. Objections to this removed.

But perhaps, being unable even they to fight continually against plain facts, they will, without denying what is written, maintain that they are still looking for these things, and that the Word of God has not yet come. For this is what they keep harping on forever, not blushing to brazen it out in the face of plain facts. But on this one point, above all, they shall be all the more refuted, not by us, but by the most wise Daniel, who marks both the actual date and the divine sojourn of the Savior, saying: Seventy weeks are cut short upon your people, and upon the holy city, for a full end to be made of sin, and for sins to be sealed up, and to blot out iniquities, and to make atonement for iniquities, and to bring everlasting righteousness, and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint a Holy of Holies; and you shall know and understand from the going forth of the word to restore and to build Jerusalem unto Christ the Prince. Perhaps with regard to the other prophecies they may be able even to find excuses and to put off what is written to a future time. But what can they say to this, or can they face it at all? For not only is the Christ referred to, but He that is to be anointed is declared to be not simply man, but Holy of Holies; and Jerusalem is to stand until His coming, and from then on, prophet and vision cease in Israel. David was anointed of old, and Solomon and Hezekiah; but then, nevertheless, Jerusalem and the place stood, and prophets were prophesying: Gad and Asaph and Nathan; and, later, Isaiah and Hosea and Amos and others. And again, the actual men that were anointed were called holy, and not Holy of Holies. But if they shield themselves with the captivity, and say that because of it Jerusalem was not, what can they say about the prophets too? For in fact when first the people went down to Babylon, Daniel and Jeremiah were there, and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah were prophesying.

40. Argument (1) from the withdrawal of prophecyand destruction of Jerusalem, (2) from the conversion of the Gentiles, and that to the God of Moses. What more remains for the Messiah to do, that Christ has not done?

So the Jews are fooling themselves, and the time they claim is still future has actually already come. For when did prophet and vision cease from Israel, except when Christ came, the Holy of Holies? It is a sign and an important proof of the coming of the Word of God that Jerusalem no longer stands, nor is any prophet raised up nor vision revealed to them—and this is quite natural. For when the one who was signified had come, what further need was there for anyone to signify him? When the truth was present, what further need was there for the shadow? This was the reason they prophesied at all—namely, until the true Righteousness should come, and he who was to ransom the sins of all. And this was why Jerusalem stood until then—namely, so that there they might be trained in the types as a preparation for the reality. So when the Holy of Holies had come, naturally vision and prophecy were sealed and the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased. For kings were to be anointed among them only until the Holy of Holies should have been anointed; and Jacob prophesies that the kingdom of the Jews should be established until him, as follows: The ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor the Prince from his loins, until that which is laid up for him shall come; and he is the expectation of the nations. This is why the Savior himself also cried aloud and said: The law and the prophets prophesied until John. If then there is now among the Jews a king or prophet or vision, they do well to deny the Christ who has come. But if there is neither king nor vision, and from that time forward all prophecy is sealed and the city and temple taken, why are they so irreligious and so perverse as to see what has happened, yet still deny Christ, who has brought it all to pass? Or why, when they see even heathens deserting their idols and placing their hope, through Christ, on the God of Israel, do they deny Christ, who was born of the root of Jesse according to the flesh and is henceforth King? For if the nations were worshiping some other God, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then once more they would be doing well in claiming that God had not come. But if the Gentiles are honoring the same God who gave the law to Moses and made the promise to Abraham, and whose word the Jews dishonored—why are they ignorant, or rather why do they choose to ignore, that the Lord foretold by the Scriptures has shone forth upon the world and appeared to it in bodily form, as the Scripture said: The Lord God has shined upon us; and again: He sent his Word and healed them; and again: Not a messenger, not an angel, but the Lord himself saved them? Their condition may be compared to that of someone out of his right mind who sees the earth illuminated by the sun but denies the sun that illuminates it. For what more is there for the one they expect to do, when he has come? To call the heathen? But they are already called. To make prophecy and king and vision cease? This too has already happened. To expose the godlessness of idolatry? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? He is already destroyed. What then has not come to pass that the Christ must do? What is left unfulfilled that the Jews should now disbelieve with impunity? For if, I say—which is just what we actually see—there is no longer king nor prophet nor Jerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them, but even the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God, and Gentiles, leaving their godlessness, are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham through the Word, even our Lord Jesus Christ, then it must be plain, even to those who are exceedingly obstinate, that the Christ has come, and that he has illuminated absolutely all with his light and given them the true and divine teaching concerning his Father. So one can fairly refute the Jews by these and by other arguments from the Divine Scriptures.

41. Answer to the Greeks. Do they recognise the Logos? If He manifests Himself in the organism of the Universe, why not in one Body? For a human body is a part of the same whole.

But one cannot help being utterly astonished at the Gentiles, who laugh at what is no matter for jesting, while they remain insensible to their own disgrace, which they do not see they have set up in the form of wooden idols and stones. However, since our argument is not lacking in demonstrative proof, come let us put them to shame on reasonable grounds, mainly from what we ourselves also see. For what is there on our side that is absurd or worthy of ridicule? Is it merely our saying that the Word has been made manifest in the body? But even they will agree that this has happened without any absurdity, if they show themselves friends of truth. If they deny that there is a Word of God at all, they do so gratuitously, mocking what they do not know. But if they confess that there is a Word of God, and that He is ruler of the universe, and that in Him the Father has produced the creation, and that by His Providence all things receive light and life and being, and that He reigns over all, so that from the works of His providence He is known, and through Him the Father—consider, I ask you, whether they are not unwittingly raising the mockery against themselves. The philosophers of the Greeks say that the universe is a great body, and rightly so. For we see it and its parts as objects of our senses. If, then, the Word of God is in the universe, which is a body, and has united Himself with the whole and with all its parts, what is there surprising or absurd if we say that He has united Himself with man also. For if it were absurd for Him to have been in a body at all, it would be absurd for Him to be united with the whole either, and to be giving light and movement to all things by His providence. For the whole also is a body. But if it is fitting for Him to unite Himself with the universe and to be made known in the whole, it must also be fitting for Him to appear in a human body, and that by Him it should be illumined and work. For mankind is part of the whole as well as the rest. And if it is unseemly for a part to have been adopted as His instrument to teach men of His Godhead, it must be most absurd that He should be made known even by the whole universe.

42. His union with the body is based upon His relation to Creation as a whole. He used a human body, since to man it was that He wished to reveal Himself.

Just as the whole body is given life and illuminated by man, and someone would be thought foolish if he said it were absurd that man’s power should also be in the toe—because while he grants that man pervades and works in the whole body, he objects to his being in the part as well—so too the person who grants and believes that the Word of God is in the whole universe, and that the whole is illuminated and moved by Him, should not think it absurd that a single human body should also receive movement and light from Him. But if they regard the manifestation of the Savior in man, which we speak of, as not fitting because the human race is a created thing and has been made out of nothing, then it is high time for them to reject Him from creation also, for it too has been brought into existence by the Word out of nothing. But if, even though creation is a thing made, it is not absurd that the Word should be in it, then neither is it absurd that He should be in man. For whatever idea they form of the whole, they must necessarily apply the same idea to the part. For man also, as I said before, is a part of the whole. Thus it is not at all unseemly that the Word should be in man, while all things are deriving from Him their light and movement and life, as their authors also say, “In him we live and move and have our being.” So then, what is there to mock in what we say, if the Word has used that in which He is as an instrument to manifest Himself? For if He were not in it, neither could He have used it; but if we have previously acknowledged that He is in the whole and in its parts, what is there incredible in His manifesting Himself in that in which He is? For by His own power He is united wholly with each and all, and orders all things without limit, so that no one could have called it out of place for Him to speak and make known Himself and His Father by means of sun, if He so willed, or moon, or heaven, or earth, or waters, or fire, since He holds all things together at once and is in fact not only in all but also in the particular part in question, and there invisibly manifests Himself. In the same way it cannot be absurd if, ordering as He does the whole and giving life to all things and having willed to make Himself known through men, He has used a human body as His instrument to manifest the truth and knowledge of the Father. For humanity too is an actual part of the whole. And just as the mind, pervading man all through, is expressed by a part of the body—I mean the tongue—without anyone saying, I suppose, that the essence of the mind is on that account lowered, so if the Word, pervading all things, has used a human instrument, this cannot appear unseemly. For, as I have said previously, if it is unseemly to have used a body as an instrument, it is unseemly also for Him to be in the whole.

43. He came in human rather than in any nobler form, because (I) He came to save, not to impress ; (2) man alone of creatures had sinned. As men would not recognise His works in the Universe, He came and worked among them as Man; in the sphere to which they had limited themselves.

Now, if they ask why He did not appear by means of other and nobler parts of creation, and use some nobler instrument, such as the sun, or moon, or stars, or fire, or air, instead of merely as man, let them know that the Lord came not to make a display, but to heal and teach those who were suffering. For the way for someone aiming at display would be simply to appear and to dazzle the observers. But for someone seeking to heal and teach, the way is not simply to dwell here, but to give himself to help those in need, and to appear in a form that those who need him can bear, so that he may not, by exceeding what the sufferers require, trouble the very persons who need him, making God’s appearance useless to them. Now, nothing in creation had gone astray in their understanding of God except man alone. Why, neither sun, nor moon, nor heaven, nor the stars, nor water, nor air had turned away from their proper order. Knowing their Maker and Sovereign, the Word, they remain as they were made. But men alone, having rejected what was good, then invented empty things instead of the truth, and have given the honor due to God, and their knowledge of Him, to demons and men in the form of stones. With good reason, then, since it would be unworthy of the Divine Goodness to overlook such a serious matter, while men were unable to recognize Him as ordering and guiding the whole, He takes to Himself as an instrument a part of the whole, His human body, and unites Himself with it, so that since men could not recognize Him in the whole, they should not fail to know Him in the part. And since they could not look up to His invisible power, they might be able, at least, from what resembled themselves to reason up to Him and to contemplate Him. For, being men as they are, they will be able to know His Father more quickly and directly through a body of like nature and through the divine works accomplished through it, judging by comparison that these are not human, but the works of God, which are done by Him. And if it were absurd, as they say, for the Word to be known through the works of the body, it would likewise be absurd for Him to be known through the works of the universe. For just as He is in creation, and yet does not share in its nature in the least degree, but rather all things share in His power, so while He used the body as His instrument He shared in no bodily property, but, on the contrary, He Himself sanctified even the body. For if even Plato, who is held in such high regard among the Greeks, says that its author, seeing the universe storm-tossed and in danger of sinking down to the place of chaos, takes his seat at the helm of the soul and comes to the rescue and corrects all its troubles, what is incredible in what we say, that, mankind being in error, the Word came down upon it and appeared as man, so that He might save it in its storm by His guidance and goodness?

44. As God made man by a word, why not restore him by a word? But (1) creation out of nothing is different from reparation of what already exists. (2) Man was there with a definite need, calling for a definite remedy. Death was ingrained in man’s nature: He then must wind life closely to human nature. Therefore the Word became Incarnate that He might meet and conquer death in His usurped territory. (Simile of straw and asbestos.)

But perhaps, ashamed into agreeing with this, they will choose to say that God, if He wished to reform and save mankind, ought to have done so by a mere command, without His Word taking a body, in just the same way as He did formerly when He produced them out of nothing. To this objection of theirs a reasonable answer would be: that formerly, when nothing existed at all, what was needed to make everything was a command and the bare will to do so. But when man had once been made, and necessity demanded a cure, not for things that did not exist, but for things that had come to be, it naturally followed that the Physician and Savior should appear in what had come to be, in order also to cure the things that existed. For this reason, then, He has become man and used His body as a human instrument. For if this were not the right way, how was the Word, choosing to use an instrument, to appear? Or where was He to take it from, except from those already in being and in need of His Godhead by means of one like themselves? For it was not things without being that needed salvation, so that a bare command should suffice, but man, already in existence, was going to corruption and ruin. It was then natural and right that the Word should use a human instrument and reveal Himself everywhere. Secondly, you must know this also, that the corruption which had set in was not external to the body, but had become attached to it; and it was required that, instead of corruption, life should cleave to it; so that, just as death has been engendered in the body, so life may be engendered in it also. Now if death were external to the body, it would be proper for life also to have been engendered externally to it. But if death was wound closely to the body and was ruling over it as though united to it, it was required that life also should be wound closely to the body, that so the body, by putting on life in its place, should cast off corruption. Besides, even supposing that the Word had come outside the body and not in it, death would indeed have been defeated by Him, in perfect accordance with nature, since death has no power against the Life; but the corruption attached to the body would have remained in it nonetheless. For this reason the Savior reasonably put on Him a body, in order that the body, becoming wound closely to the Life, should no longer, as mortal, abide in death, but, as having put on immortality, should from then on rise again and remain immortal. For once it had put on corruption, it could not have risen again unless it had put on life. And death likewise could not, from its very nature, appear except in the body. Therefore He put on a body, that He might find death in the body and blot it out. For how could the Lord have been proved at all to be the Life, had He not quickened what was mortal? And just as, whereas stubble is naturally destructible by fire, supposing firstly a man keeps fire away from the stubble, though it is not burned, yet the stubble remains, for all that, merely stubble, fearing the threat of the fire—for fire has the natural property of consuming it—while if a man secondly encloses it with a quantity of asbestos, the substance said to be an antidote to fire, the stubble no longer dreads the fire, being secured by its enclosure in incombustible matter; in this very way one may say, with regard to the body and death, that if death had been kept from the body by a mere command on His part, it would nonetheless have been mortal and corruptible, according to the nature of bodies; but that this should not be, it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and thus no longer fears either death or corruption, for it has life as a garment, and corruption is done away in it.

45. Thus once again every part of creation manifests the glory of God. Nature, the witness to her Creator, yields (by miracles) a second testimony to God Incarnate. The witness of Nature, perverted by man’s sin, was thus forced back to truth. If these reasons suffice not, let the Greeks look at facts.

The Word of God therefore took a body and used a human instrument in order to give life to the body as well, and just as He is known in creation through His works, to work in humanity also and to reveal Himself everywhere, leaving nothing empty of His own divinity and of the knowledge of Him. I say again what I said before: the Savior did this so that, just as He fills all things everywhere by His presence, He might also fill all things with the knowledge of Him, as the divine Scripture says: The whole earth was filled with the knowledge of the Lord. For if a person simply looks up to heaven, he sees its order, or if he cannot lift his face to heaven but only looks at humanity, he sees His power, far beyond comparison with human power, demonstrated by His works, and learns that He alone among humans is God the Word. Or if someone has gone astray among demons and fears them, he may see this man drive them out and conclude that He is their Master. Or if someone has descended to the waters and thinks they are God—as the Egyptians, for example, revere the water—he may see their nature changed by Him and learn that the Lord is Creator of the waters. But if someone has gone down even to Hades and stands in awe of the heroes who have descended there, regarding them as gods, yet he may see the fact of Christ’s Resurrection and victory over death and infer that among them also Christ alone is true God and Lord. For the Lord touched all parts of creation and freed and undeceived all of them from every deception, as Paul says: Having put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He triumphed on the Cross, so that no one might by any possibility be deceived any longer, but might everywhere find the true Word of God. For thus humanity, hemmed in on every side and seeing the divinity of the Word displayed everywhere—that is, in heaven, in Hades, in humanity, upon earth—is no longer exposed to deception concerning God, but is to worship Christ alone and through Him come rightly to know the Father. By these arguments, then, based on reason, the Gentiles in their turn will fairly be put to shame by us. But if they consider the arguments insufficient to shame them, let them be convinced of what we are saying at least by facts obvious to everyone’s sight.

46. Discredit, from the date of the Incarnation, of idol-cultus, oracles, mythologies, demoniacal energy, magic, and Gentile philosophy. And whereas the old cults were strictly local and independent, the worship of Christ is catholic and uniform.

When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, if not since God, the true Word of God, came among humanity? Or when have the oracles among the Greeks, and everywhere else, ceased and become empty, if not since the Savior manifested Himself on earth? Or when did those called gods and heroes in the poets begin to be exposed as merely mortal men, if not since the Lord established His victory over death and preserved incorruptible the body He had taken, raising it from the dead? Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of demons fall into contempt, if not when the power of God, the Word, the Master of all these as well, condescending because of human weakness, appeared on earth? Or when did the art and schools of magic begin to be trampled down, if not when the divine manifestation of the Word took place among humanity? And in short, at what time has the wisdom of the Greeks become foolish, if not when the true Wisdom of God manifested itself on earth? For previously the whole world and every place was led astray by the worship of idols, and people regarded nothing else but the idols as gods. But now, throughout the entire world, people are abandoning the superstition of the idols and taking refuge with Christ; and worshiping Him as God, they are through Him coming to know the Father also, whom they did not know before. And it is a marvelous fact that whereas the objects of worship were various and vastly numerous, and each place had its own idol, and the one considered a god among them had no power to cross over to the neighboring place so as to persuade those of neighboring peoples to worship him, but was barely served even among his own people—for no one else worshiped his neighbor’s god; on the contrary, each person kept to his own idol, thinking it to be lord of all—Christ alone is worshiped as one and the same among all peoples; and what the weakness of the idols could not do—namely, to persuade even those dwelling close at hand—this Christ has done, persuading not only those close at hand, but simply the entire world, to worship one and the same Lord, and through Him God, even His Father.

47. The numerous oracles — fancied apparitions in sacred places, etc., dispelled by the sign of the Cross. The old gods prove to have been mere men. Magic is exposed. And whereas Philosophy could only persuade select and local cliques of Immortality, and goodness — men of little intellect have infused into the multitudes of the churches the principle of a supernatural life.

And whereas formerly every place was full of the deceit of the oracles, and the oracles at Delphi and Dodona, and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Cabiri, and the Pythoness, were held in high regard by people’s imagination, now, since Christ has begun to be preached everywhere, their madness has also ceased and there is no one among them who practices divination anymore. And whereas formerly demons used to deceive people’s perception, occupying springs or rivers, trees or stones, and thus tricked the simple-minded by their illusions, now, after the divine visitation of the Word, their deception has ceased. For by the Sign of the Cross, even if a person merely uses it, he drives out their deceits. And while formerly people held Zeus and Cronos and Apollo and the heroes mentioned in the poets to be gods, and went astray in honoring them, now that the Savior has appeared among people, those others have been exposed as mortal men, and Christ alone has been recognized among people as the true God, the Word of God. And what is one to say about the magic esteemed among them? That before the Word dwelt among us this was strong and active among Egyptians, and Chaldeans, and Indians, and inspired awe in those who saw it, but that by the presence of the Truth, and the Appearing of the Word, it also has been thoroughly refuted and brought wholly to nothing. But as to Gentile wisdom and the pompous claims of the philosophers, I think no one can need our argument, since the wonder is before the eyes of all: that while the wise among the Greeks had written so much and were unable to persuade even a few from their own neighborhood concerning immortality and a virtuous life, Christ alone, by ordinary language and by men not skilled with the tongue, has throughout all the world persuaded whole churches full of people to despise death and to give attention to the things of immortality, to overlook what is temporary and to turn their eyes to what is eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to strive only for the heavenly.

48. Further facts. Christiancontinence of virgins and ascetics. Martyrs. The power of the Cross against demonsand magic. Christ by His Power shows Himself more than a man, more than a magician, more than a spirit. For all these are totally subject to Him. Therefore He is the Word of God.

Now these arguments of ours are not merely words, but have a witness to their truth in actual experience. For let anyone who wishes go up and see the proof of virtue in the virgins of Christ and in the young men who practice holy chastity, and the assurance of immortality in so great a company of His martyrs. And let him come who would test by experience what we have now said, and in the very presence of the deceit of demons and the imposture of oracles and the marvels of magic, let him use the Sign of that Cross which is laughed at among them, and he will see how by its means demons flee, oracles cease, all magic and witchcraft is brought to nothing. Who, then, and how great is this Christ, Who by His own Name and Presence casts into shadow and brings to nothing all things on every side, and is alone strong against all, and has filled the whole world with His teaching? Let the Greeks tell us, who are pleased to laugh, and are not ashamed. For if He is a man, how then has one man exceeded the power of all whom they themselves hold to be gods, and convicted them by His own power of being nothing? But if they call Him a magician, how can it be that by a magician all magic is destroyed, instead of being confirmed? For if He conquered particular magicians, or prevailed over only one, it would be proper for them to hold that He excelled the rest by superior skill; but if His Cross has won the victory over absolutely all magic, and over the very name of it, it must be plain that the Savior is not a magician, seeing that even those demons who are invoked by the other magicians flee from Him as their Master. Who He is, then, let the Greeks tell us, whose only serious pursuit is jesting. Perhaps they might say that He, too, was a demon, and hence His strength. But say this as they will, they will have the laugh against them, for they can once more be put to shame by our former proofs. For how is it possible that He should be a demon who drives the demons out? For if He simply drove out particular demons, it might properly be held that by the chief of demons He prevailed against the lesser, just as the Jews said to Him when they wished to insult Him. But if, by His Name being named, all madness of the demons is uprooted and chased away, it must be evident that here, too, they are wrong, and that our Lord and Savior Christ is not, as they think, some demonic power. Then, if the Savior is neither simply a man, nor a magician, nor some demon, but has by His own Godhead brought to nothing and cast into shadow both the doctrine found in the poets and the delusion of the demons and the wisdom of the Gentiles, it must be plain and will be owned by all, that this is the true Son of God, even the Word and Wisdom and Power of the Father from the beginning. For this is why His works also are not works of man, but are recognized to be above man, and truly God’s works, both from the facts themselves, and from comparison with the rest of mankind.

49. His Birth and Miracles. You call Asclepius, Heracles, and Dionysus gods for their works. Contrast their works with His, and the wonders at His death, etc.

For what man who was ever born formed a body for himself from a virgin alone? Or what man ever healed such diseases as the common Lord of all? Or who has restored what was lacking to human physis (nature) and made someone blind from birth to see? Asclepius was made a god among them because he practiced medicine and discovered herbs for sick bodies—not forming them himself out of the earth, but discovering them through knowledge drawn from physis. But what is this compared to what was done by the Savior, who, instead of healing a wound, changed a man’s original physis and restored the body completely whole? Heracles is worshiped as a god among the Greeks because he fought against men who were his equals and destroyed wild beasts by cunning. What is this compared to what was done by the Word in driving away from humanity diseases and demons and death itself? Dionysus is worshiped among them because he taught mankind drunkenness, but the true Savior and Lord of all, for teaching self-control, is mocked by these people. But let these matters pass. What will they say to the other miracles of His Godhead? At what man’s death was the sun darkened and the earth shaken? Look, even to this day men are dying, and they died also in ancient times. When did any such wonder happen in their case? Or, to pass over the deeds done through His body and mention those after its rising again: what man’s teaching that ever existed has prevailed everywhere, one and the same, from one end of the earth to the other, so that his worship has spread its wings through every land? Or why, if Christ is, as they say, a man and not God the Word, is His worship not prevented by the gods they have from passing into the same land where they are? Or why on the contrary does the Word Himself, dwelling here, by His teaching stop their worship and put their deception to shame?

50. Impotence and rivalries of the Sophists put to shame by the Death of Christ. His Resurrection unparalleled even in Greek legend.

Many people before this Man have been kings and tyrants of the world, and many wise men and magicians are on record among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Indians. Which of these, I ask, not after death but while still alive, was ever able to prevail so far as to fill the whole earth with his teaching and reform so great a multitude from the superstition of idols, as our Savior has brought over from idols to Himself? The philosophers of the Greeks have composed many works with plausibility and verbal skill. What result, then, have they exhibited as great as what the Cross of Christ has achieved? The refinements they taught were plausible enough until they died, but even the influence they seemed to have while alive was subject to their mutual rivalries. They were competitive and spoke against one another. But the Word of God, most strangely, teaching in simpler language, has overshadowed the distinguished sophists. While He has brought their schools to nothing by drawing all people to Himself, He has filled His own churches. The marvelous thing is that by going down as man to death, He has brought to nothing the impressive utterances of the wise concerning idols. For whose death ever drove out demons? Or whose death did demons ever fear as they did Christ’s death? Where the Savior’s name is spoken, every demon is driven out. Or who has so freed people from the passions of the natural man, that sexually immoral people become chaste, murderers no longer take up the sword, and those who were formerly ruled by cowardice become courageous? And in short, who persuaded people of barbarous countries and pagans in various places to lay aside their madness and pursue peace, if not the Faith of Christ and the Sign of the Cross? Or who else has given people such assurance of immortality as the Cross of Christ and the Resurrection of His Body have? For although the Greeks have told all manner of false tales, they were not able to invent a resurrection of their idols—for it never even occurred to them whether it is at all possible for the body to exist again after death. And here one would especially accept their testimony, since by this opinion they have exposed the weakness of their own idolatry while leaving the possibility open to Christ, so that from this also He might be made known among all as Son of God.

51. The new virtue of continence. Revolution of Society, purified and pacified by Christianity.

Which person in all of human history, either after his death or while still alive, taught about virginity and showed that this virtue was actually possible for people to practice? But Christ, our Savior and King of all, had such power in His teaching about it that even children who have not yet reached the legal age of marriage make vows of virginity that go beyond what the law requires. What person has ever been able to travel as far as the Scythians and Ethiopians, or the Persians or Armenians or Goths, or those we hear about beyond the ocean or beyond Hyrcania, or even the Egyptians and Chaldeans—people who practice magic and are unnaturally superstitious and live in savage ways—and preach to them about virtue and self-control and against the worship of idols, as has the Lord of all, the Power of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? He not only preached through His own disciples but also brought conviction to people’s minds, persuading them to put aside their fierce ways and no longer serve their ancestral gods, but to learn to know Him and through Him to worship the Father. For previously, while caught up in idolatry, Greeks and barbarians used to make war against each other and were even cruel to their own relatives. It was impossible for anyone to travel by sea or land at all without carrying weapons, because of their relentless fighting among themselves. Their entire way of life revolved around warfare, and the sword served them like a walking staff and was their support in every situation. And still, as I said before, they were serving idols and offering sacrifices to demons, and despite all their idolatrous superstition they could not be freed from this violent spirit. But when they have come over to the teaching of Christ, then—remarkably enough—as people truly convicted in their conscience, they have laid aside their savage murders and no longer care about the things of war. Instead, all is at peace among them, and from that point forward what promotes friendship is what they desire.

52. Wars, etc., roused by demons, lulled by Christianity.

Who then is He that has done this, or who is He that has united in peace people who hated one another, except the beloved Son of the Father, the common Savior of all, Jesus Christ, Who by His own love endured all things for our salvation? For even long ago it was prophesied concerning the peace He was to bring, where the Scripture says: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, and nation shall not take the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And this is certainly not unbelievable, since even now those barbarians who have an inborn savage way of life, while they still sacrifice to the idols of their country, are enraged against one another and cannot bear to go a single hour without weapons. But when they hear the teaching of Christ, immediately instead of fighting they turn to farming, and instead of arming their hands with weapons they raise them in prayer, and in short, in place of fighting among themselves, from then on they arm themselves against the devil and against evil spirits, subduing these by self-restraint and virtue of soul. Now this is at once a proof of the divinity of the Savior, since what people could not learn among idols they have learned from Him, and no small exposure of the weakness and worthlessness of demons and idols. For demons, knowing their own weakness, for this reason formerly set people to make war against one another, lest, if they stopped their mutual conflict, they should turn to battle against demons. Indeed, those who become disciples of Christ, instead of warring with each other, stand arrayed against demons by their conduct and their virtuous actions, and they defeat them and mock their leader the devil, so that in youth they are self-controlled, in temptations they endure, in labors they persevere, when insulted they are patient, when robbed they make light of it, and, as wonderful as it is, they despise even death and become martyrs of Christ.

53. The whole fabric of Gentilism levelled at a blow by Christ secretly addressing the conscience of Man.

And to mention one proof of the divinity of the Saviour, which is indeed utterly surprising—what mere man or magician or tyrant or king was ever able by himself to take on so many opponents and fight the battle against all idolatry and the whole demonic host and all magic, and all the wisdom of the Greeks, while they were so strong and still flourishing and deceiving everyone, and in one attack to stop them all, as was our Lord, the true Word of God, who, invisibly exposing each person’s error, is by himself drawing all people away from them all, so that those who were worshipping idols now trample on them, those who were famous for magic burn their books, and the wise prefer the interpretation of the Gospels above all studies? For those whom they used to worship, they are now abandoning, and the one whom they used to mock as crucified, they now worship as Christ, confessing him to be God. And the beings called gods among them are defeated by the Sign of the Cross, while the crucified Saviour is proclaimed in all the world as God and the Son of God. And the gods worshipped among the Greeks are falling into disgrace among their own people as shameful beings, while those who receive the teaching of Christ live more chastely than they did. If, then, these things and others like them are human works, let anyone who wishes point out similar works done by people in former times, and so convince us. But if they prove to be, and are, not human works but God’s, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognize the Master who did them? For their situation is like that of a person who, from the works of creation, failed to know God their Maker. For if they knew his Godhead from his power over the universe, they would have known that the bodily works of Christ also are not human, but are the works of the Saviour of all, the Word of God. And if they had known this, they would not, as Paul said, have crucified the Lord of glory.

54. The Word Incarnate, as is the case with the Invisible God, is known to us by His works. By them we recognise His deifying mission. Let us be content to enumerate a few of them, leaving their dazzling plentitude to him who will behold.

Just as someone who wants to see God, who is invisible by nature and not seen at all, can know and understand Him through His works, so too should anyone who fails to see Christ with his understanding at least grasp Him through the works of His body, and examine whether they are human works or God’s works. If they are human, let him mock; but if they are not human but of God, let him acknowledge it and not laugh at what deserves no mockery. Rather, let him marvel that through such ordinary means divine things have been revealed to us, and that through death immortality has come to all, and that through the Word becoming man, the universal Providence has been made known, along with its Giver and Creator, the very Word of God. For He was made man so that we might be made God, and He revealed Himself through a body so that we might receive understanding of the unseen Father, and He endured the abuse of men so that we might inherit immortality. For though He Himself was not harmed in any way, being impassible and incorruptible and the very Word and God, He maintained and preserved in His own impassibility those men who were suffering and for whose sake He endured all this. And in short, the accomplishments of the Savior resulting from His becoming man are of such kind and number that if anyone should want to list them all, he could be compared to people who gaze at the vast sea and want to count its waves. For just as one cannot take in all the waves with his eyes, since the incoming waves overwhelm the perception of anyone who tries, so too for anyone who would try to take in all the accomplishments of Christ in the body, it is impossible to grasp the whole, even by counting them up, since those that exceed his thought are more numerous than those he thinks he has grasped. It is better, then, not to try to speak of the whole when one cannot do justice even to a part, but after mentioning one more thing, to leave the whole for you to marvel at. For all are equally marvelous, and wherever a person turns his attention, he can see on that side the divinity of the Word and be filled with exceeding great awe.

55. Summary of foregoing. Cessation of pagan oracles, etc.: propagation of the faith. The true King has come forth and silenced all usurpers.

Here is what you need to understand after everything we have said so far, and you should take it as the summary of what we have already stated, and marvel at it greatly: since the Savior came among us, idolatry has not only stopped increasing, but what existed is diminishing and gradually coming to an end. Not only has the wisdom of the Greeks stopped advancing, but what exists is now fading away. Demons no longer cheat people with illusions, prophecies, and magic arts—if they even dare to try, they are put to shame by the sign of the Cross. To sum it up: look at how the Savior’s teaching is spreading everywhere, while all idolatry and everything opposed to the faith of Christ is daily shrinking, losing power, and falling. Seeing this, worship the Savior, who is above all and mighty, even God the Word, and condemn those who are being defeated and destroyed by Him. Just as when the sun rises, darkness no longer prevails, and if any darkness remains anywhere it is driven away, so now that the divine appearing of the Word of God has come, the darkness of the idols no longer prevails, and all parts of the world in every direction are illuminated by His teaching. It is like when a king is ruling in some country but does not appear and stays at home in his own house. Often some disorderly people take advantage of his absence, proclaim themselves king, and each of them, by assuming that role, deceives the simple people as if they were king. People are led astray by the title, hearing that there is a king but not seeing him, because they cannot enter the house. But when the real king comes out and appears, the disorderly impostors are exposed by his presence, and people, seeing the real king, abandon those who previously deceived them. In the same way, the evil spirits used to deceive people, taking for themselves the honor due to God. But when the Word of God appeared in a body and made known to us His own Father, then the deceit of the evil spirits was finally done away with and stopped, and people, turning their eyes to the true God, the Word of the Father, are abandoning the idols and now coming to know the true God. This is proof that Christ is God the Word and the Power of God. For whereas human things cease and the Word of Christ remains, it is clear to everyone that what ceases is temporary, but He who remains is God and the true Son of God, His only-begotten Word.

56. Search then, the Scriptures, if you can, and so fill up this sketch. Learn to look for the Second Advent and Judgment.

Let this, then, Christ-loving man, be our offering to you, just as a basic sketch and outline, in brief form, of the faith of Christ and of His divine appearing to us. But you, taking this as your starting point, if you come upon the text of the Scriptures, by genuinely applying your mind to them, will learn from them more completely and clearly the precise details of what we have said. For they were spoken and written by God, through men who spoke of God. But we are sharing what we have learned from inspired teachers who have studied them closely, who have also become martyrs for the deity of Christ, with you in your eagerness to learn. And you will also learn about His second glorious and truly divine appearing to us, when no longer in lowliness, but in His own glory—no longer in humble form, but in His own magnificence—He is to come, no longer to suffer, but from then on to give to all the fruit of His own Cross, that is, the resurrection and incorruption; and no longer to be judged, but to judge all, by what each has done in the body, whether good or evil; where the kingdom of heaven is prepared for the good, but for those who have done evil, everlasting fire and outer darkness. For the Lord Himself also says: From now on you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven in the glory of the Father. And for this very reason there is also a word of the Savior to prepare us for that day, in these words: Be ready and watch, for He comes at an hour you do not know. For, according to the blessed Paul: We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, so that each one may receive according to what he has done in the body, whether it be good or bad.

57. Above all, so live that you may have the right to eat of this tree of knowledgeand life, and so come to eternal joys. Doxology.

To search the Scriptures and gain true knowledge of them requires an honorable life, a pure soul, and virtue that follows Christ, so that the mind, guided by these things, may reach what it seeks and comprehend it as far as human nature can learn about the Word of God. Without a pure mind and a life modeled after the saints, no one could possibly understand the words of the saints. Just as someone who wants to see the light of the sun must first wipe and brighten his eye, purifying himself to become somewhat like what he wants to see, so that his eye, becoming light, may see the sun’s light; or just as someone who wants to see a city or country must actually go to that place to see it—in the same way, anyone who wants to comprehend the mind of those who speak of God must begin by washing and cleansing his soul through his way of life, and approach the saints themselves by imitating their works. Then, joined with them in living a common life, he may also understand what God has revealed to them, and from that point forward, closely united with them, may escape the danger of the sinners and their fire on the day of judgment, and receive what is stored up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven, which Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, whatever things are prepared for those who live a virtuous life and love the God and Father, in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom and with whom be to the Father himself, with the Son himself, in the Holy Spirit, honor and might and glory forever and ever. Amen.