Chapter 16. The Word Incarnate Is the Pattern for the First Man.
Chapter 16
1. It was because the handiwork, Adam, was from our earth that Scripture says God spoke to him: In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the earth, from which you were taken. If, then, after death our bodies return to some other earth, it would follow that they also had their substance from there. But if they return to this same earth, it is evident that they were fashioned from this earth. The Lord made this manifest when he re-formed his eyes from this [earth]. And so the hand by which Adam was fashioned, and by which we, too, were fashioned, has been very clearly revealed as God’s. Further, since there is one and the same Father whose voice was present with his handiwork from the beginning, and since the substance of our handiwork has been clearly manifested by the Gospel, we ought no longer to go in search of another Father besides this one, or another substance of our handiwork besides the one mentioned and manifested by the Lord, or another hand of God besides the one which forms us from the beginning to the end, and prepares us for the life, and is present to his handiwork, and perfects it after the image and likeness of God.
2. This, however, was manifested to be thus when the Word of God became man, making himself like man and man like himself, so that by his likeness to the Son man might become precious to the Father. For in former times it was said that man was created after the image of God, but the image was not shown; for the Word, after whose image man had been created, was as yet invisible. For this reason man easily lost also the likeness. When, however, the Word of God became flesh, he made both [image and likeness] secure: for he truly showed forth the image, since he himself became what his image was; and he securely restored the likeness by making man like the invisible Father by means of the visible Word.
3. The Lord manifested himself and the Father, not merely by the things already mentioned, but also by his passion. For he undid the disobedience of man, which happened in the beginning by means of the tree, by becoming obedient to death, even to the death on a cross. Thus he healed the disobedience that happened on a tree by the obedience on a tree. But he would not have come in the same image to undo the disobedience against our Fashioner if he had announced another Father. Since, however, he brought obedience and consent to his word by means of the very things by which we did not obey God and did not believe his word, he clearly manifested him to be God whom we offended in the first Adam by not keeping his commandment, but to whom we were reconciled in the Second Adam, who became obedient unto death. In fact, we were not debtors to anyone else, but to him whose commandment we had transgressed from the beginning.