Four Discourses Against the Arians

⁶⁶ For if, as has been said, because of the resurrection from the dead He is called a beginning, and then a resurrection took place when He, bearing our flesh, had given Himself to death for us, it is evident that His words, 'He created me a beginning of ways,' is indicative not of His essence, but of His bodily presence. For to the body death was proper; and in like manner to the bodily presence are the words proper, 'The Lord created me a beginning of His ways.' For since the Saviour was thus created according to the flesh, and had become a beginning of things new created, and had our first fruits, viz. that human flesh which He took to Himself, therefore after Him, as is fit, is created also the people to come, David saying, 'Let this be written for another generation, and the people that shall be created shall praise the Lord. ' And again in the twenty-first Psalm, 'The generation to come shall declare unto the Lord, and they shall declare His righteousness, unto a people that shall be born whom the Lord made. ' For we shall no more hear, 'In the day that you eat thereof, you shall surely die,' but 'Where I am, there ye' shall 'be also;' so that we may say, 'We are His workmanship, created unto good works.' And again, since God's work, that is, man, though created perfect, has become wanting through the transgression, and dead by sin, and it was unbecoming that the work of God should remain imperfect (wherefore all the saints were praying concerning this, for instance in the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm, saying, 'Lord, You shall requite for me; despise not then the works of Your hands '); therefore the perfect Word of God puts around Him an imperfect body, and is said to be created 'for the works;' that, paying the debt in our stead, He might, by Himself, perfect what was wanting to man. Now immortality was wanting to him, and the way to paradise. This then is what the Saviour says, 'I glorified You on the earth, I perfected the work which You have given Me to do;' and again, 'The works which the Father has given Me to perfect, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me;' but 'the works ' He here says that the Father had given Him to perfect, are those for which He is created, saying in the Proverbs, 'The Lord created me a beginning of His ways, for His works;' for it is all one to say, 'The Father has given me the works,' and 'The Lord created me for the works.'

67. When then received He the works to perfect, O God's enemies? For from this also 'He created' will be understood. If you say, 'At the beginning when He brought them into being out of what was not,' it is an untruth; for they were not yet made; whereas He appears to speak as taking what was already in being. Nor is it pious to refer to the time which preceded the Word's becoming flesh, lest His coming should thereupon seem superfluous, since for the sake of these works that coming took place. Therefore it remains for us to say that when He has become man, then He took the works. For then He perfected them, by healing our wounds and vouchsafing to us the resurrection from the dead. But if, when the Word became flesh, then were given to Him the works, plainly when He became man, then also is He created for the works. Not of His essence then is 'He created' indicative, as has many times been said, but of His bodily generation. For then, because the works had become imperfect and mutilated from the transgression, He is said in respect to the body to be created; that by perfecting them and making them whole, He might present the Church unto the Father, as the Apostle says, 'not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish.' Mankind then is perfected in Him and restored, as it was made at the beginning, nay, with greater grace. For, on rising from the dead, we shall no longer fear death, but shall ever reign in Christ in the heavens. And this has been done, since the own Word of God Himself, who is from the Father, has put on the flesh, and become man. For if, being a creature, He had become man, man had remained just what he was, not joined to God; for how had a work been joined to the Creator by a work? Or what succour had come from like to like, when one as well as other needed it? And how, were the Word a creature, had He power to undo God's sentence, and to remit sin, whereas it is written in the Prophets, that this is God's doing? For 'who is a God like You, that pardons iniquity, and passes by transgression?' For whereas God has said, 'Dust you are, and unto dust shall you return,' men have become mortal; how then could things originate undo sin? But the Lord is He who has undone it, as He says Himself, 'Unless the Son shall make you free;' and the Son, who made free, has shown in truth that He is no creature, nor one of things originate, but the proper Word and Image of the Father's Essence, who at the beginning sentenced, and alone remits sins. For since it is said in the Word, 'Dust you are, and unto dust you shall return,' suitably through the Word Himself and in Him the freedom and the undoing of the condemnation has come to pass.

68. 'Yet,' they say, 'though the Saviour were a creature, God was able to speak the word only and undo the curse.' And so another will tell them in like manner, 'Without His coming among us at all, God was able just to speak and undo the curse.' but we must consider what was expedient for mankind, and not what simply is possible with God. He could have destroyed, before the ark of Noah, the then transgressors; but He did it after the ark. He could too, without Moses, have spoken the word only and have brought the people out of Egypt; but it profited to do it through Moses. And God was able without the judges to save His people; but it was profitable for the people that for a season judges should be raised up to them. The Saviour too might have come among us from the beginning, or on His coming might not have been delivered to Pilate; but He came 'at the fullness of the ages,' and when sought for said, 'I am He.' For what He does, that is profitable for men, and was not fitting in any other way; and what is profitable and fitting, for that He provides. Accordingly He came, not 'that He might be ministered unto, but that He might minister,' and might work our salvation. Certainly He was able to speak the Law from heaven, but He saw that it was expedient to men for Him to speak from Sinai; and that He has done, that it might be possible for Moses to go up, and for them hearing the word near them the rather to believe. Moreover, the good reason of what He did may be seen thus; if God had but spoken, because it was in His power, and so the curse had been undone, the power had been shown of Him who gave the word, but man had become such as Adam was before the transgression, having received grace from without, and not having it united to the body; (for he was such when he was placed in Paradise) nay, perhaps had become worse, because he had learned to transgress. Such then being his condition, had he been seduced by the serpent, there had been fresh need for God to give command and undo the curse; and thus the need had become interminable, and men had remained under guilt not less than before, as being enslaved to sin; and, ever sinning, would have ever needed one to pardon them, and had never become free, being in themselves flesh, and ever worsted by the Law because of the infirmity of the flesh.