Chapter 1. Christ Is Truly Our Savior.
Chapter 1
1. Certainly, in no other way could we have learned the things of God unless our Teacher, who is the Word, had become man; for no one else but his own Word could have revealed to us the things of the Father. For who else has known the mind of the Lord, or who else has been his counsellor? Again, we could not have learned in any other way than by seeing our Teacher and hearing his voice with our own ears. Thus, having become imitators of his works and doers of his words, we—we who were but recently created, we who have been made according to the likeness of himself, by himself who is the only good and excellent [God], and who has the gift of imperishability—might have communion with him, and receive growth from him who is perfect and who is before all creation. For we, we who as yet did not exist, had been predestined according to the Father’s foreknowledge to have existence, but once we had been made we received a beginning as a creature, in the times that were foreknown, according to the ministry of the Word, who is perfect in all respects, because he is the powerful Word and true Man. He redeemed us rationally through his blood. He gave himself as a ransom for those who had been led into captivity. And since the Apostasy ruled over us unjustly, since by nature we belonged to God who rules all things, and so alienated us against our nature and made us his disciples, the Word of God who is all-powerful and not deficient in his justice, justly turned against the Rebellion itself and redeemed from it what is his very own. He did this not by force—as the Rebellion ruled over us in the beginning, by snatching away greedily what was not his own—but with persuasion, as becomes God who persuades to obtain what he wills. And he does not use force, so that what is just might not be crushed, or that God’s ancient handiwork might not perish.
Therefore, all the doctrines of the heretics crumble to ruins, since the Lord redeemed us by his blood, and gave his soul for our souls, and his flesh for our flesh, and poured out the Father’s Spirit to effect the union and communion of God with man, by bringing down God to men through the Spirit, and by bringing man up to God through the incarnation. By his coming, too, he gave us imperishability securely and truly through communion with himself.
2. Really, those who assert that he appeared only putatively are senseless. These things, certainly, did not take place putatively, but in true reality. If he, though not man, appeared as man, then neither did he remain what he truly was, Spirit-God, because Spirit is invisible; nor was there any truth in him, for he was not what he appeared to be. We have already said that Abraham and the other Prophets were wont to see him in prophetic vision, prophesying by vision what he would be in the future. If, therefore, at present he appears such, but actually is not what he was seen to be, this, too, is a kind of prophetic vision that has been made for men, and it is necessary that we await another coming of his, in which he will really be such as he is now seen in prophetic vision. We have shown, moreover, that it is the same to say that he appeared putatively and that he received nothing from Mary. For he would not be man with true blood and flesh, by which he redeemed us, unless he had recapitulated in himself the ancient handiwork of Adam. Senseless, therefore, are the Valentinians who give out this opinion, that they might exclude salvation of the flesh and reject God’s handiwork.
3. Senseless, too, are the Ebionites, who do not receive into their souls through faith the union of God and man, but continue in the ancient leaven of birth, and refuse to understand that the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, therefore the child born is holy, and the Son of God, of the Father of all things, who wrought his incarnation and revealed a new birth. The purpose of this was that, just as through the first birth we have inherited death, so through this birth we might inherit life. So these men reject the mixture of the heavenly wine, and they wish to be only worldly water. By not taking God into their mixture, they remain in the Adam who had been conquered and cast out of paradise. They do not consider that, as in the beginning of our formation the breath of life, which was from God, was united with the handiwork and gave life to man, and showed him to be a rational animal; so in the end the Father’s Word and God’s Spirit, having been united to the ancient substance of the handiwork of Adam, made man living and perfect, capable of receiving the perfect Father. The result was that, just as all had died in the natural man [Adam], so all are given life in the spiritual man [Christ]. For Adam will never escape God’s hands, to whom the Father spoke when he said, Let us make man to our image and likeness. And so in the end, his hands made man living and perfect, not of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of the will of the Father, that Adam might be to the image and likeness of God.