Section XCIII

From all these things, the following most manifestly follow before the others: a) that the human race utterly perished through the original transgression; b) that God, according to his goodness, did not permit it to lie oppressed by ruin; that therefore c) he sent his Only-begotten that he might mercifully recall the work which he had first founded to that nobility from which it had fallen by its own fault; d) that God the Word complied with the all-good Parent, and, by offering his own body, destroyed the death into which men had fallen, drove away by his instruction the darkness into which they had cast themselves, and finally restored by his power all things that pertained to them. But by e) what reparation? A particular one, circumscribed to some out of the innumerable, or rather a general one which embraces the whole family of men? Athanasius declares the amplitude of this reformation through the Word, saying that it pertains to the proper work of the Word, to the human race, to all the things which belong to men, to those whose nature the Word himself assumed and who died in Adam. But these formulas are universal, and so universal that they except no one and comprehend all and each within their ambit. Universal, therefore, is the renovation through Christ; universal is the salutary will of God in Christ; and universal is the remedy offered to men; so that those who are born subject to death are refreshed by the hope of resurrection, and those who are born children of wrath obtain the opportunity and faculty of divine adoption.

Concerning this matter, the following are most excellent words which Athanasius adds¹:

When men had been reduced to the lot of beasts, and the fraud of demons everywhere hung over them like a shadow and obscured the knowledge of the true God, τί τὸν θεὸν ἔδει ποιεῖν; what ought God to have done? To pass over in silence so abominable a thing, and then to suffer that men, deceived by demons, should not know God? But what would it have profited man to have been fashioned from the beginning according to the image of God? For either he should have been created without reason, like brute animals, or certainly, having been made a participant in reason, he ought not to have lived the life of beasts. What likewise would it have profited him to have received the notion of God from the beginning? For if now² he is unworthy to receive it, certainly it ought not to have been given to him in the beginning either. Moreover, what utility to God the Creator, what glory, would have redounded from this, if the men whom he created did not worship him but judged others to be their makers? For thus God would appear to have created men not for himself but for others.

Moreover, an emperor, although a man, does not permit cities constructed by himself to come under the dominion and servitude of others, nor to defect to others; but he admonishes the citizens by letters, often also writes to them through friends, and, if necessity demands, meets them himself, that he may bend them by his presence, solely for this reason: lest they serve others or his work be rendered void.

Οὐ πολλῷ πλέον ὁ θεὸς τῶν ἑαυτοῦ κτισμάτων φείσεται πρὸς τὸ μὴ πλανηθῆναι ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, καὶ τοῖς οὐκ οὖσι δουλεύειν, μάλιστα ὅτι ἡ τοιαύτη πλάνη ἀπωλείας αὐτοῖς αἰτία καὶ ἀφανισμοῦ γίνεται; Will not God, therefore, much more have mercy upon his creatures, lest they wander from him and serve those things which do not exist, especially since such wandering becomes for them a cause of destruction and ruin? Οὐκ ἔδει δὲ τὰ ἅπαξ κοινωνήσαντα τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ εἰκόνος ἀπολέσθαι, it was by no means becoming that those who had once obtained a participation in the divine image should perish. What, therefore, was it becoming for God to undertake? Or what else ought to have been done than that likeness according to which men were made in the image of God be renewed, so that through it they might again be able to know God? But how would this be done unless the very Image of God, our Savior Jesus Christ, had come? For it could not be done through men, since they themselves also were made according to the image of God; nor even through angels, for neither are they images. Ὅθεν ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος δι᾽ ἑαυτοῦ παρεγένετο, ἵν᾽ ὡς εἰκὼν ὢν τοῦ πατρὸς τὸν κατ᾽ εἰκόνα ἄνθρωπον ἀνακτίσαι δυνηθῇ. Wherefore the Word of God came through himself, that, as the Image of the Father, he might be able to refashion man, who had been made according to the image.

Furthermore, this could not have been done unless death and corruption were destroyed; whence he most fittingly received a mortal body, that death might be destroyed in it and men made according to the image might be fashioned anew. Οὐκοῦν ἑτέρου πρὸς ταύτην τὴν χρείαν οὐκ ἦν, εἰ μὴ τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ πατρός. Therefore no other was fit for this work except the Image of the Father alone.