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| 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.
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On the
Incarnation of the Word.
————————————
§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.
Whereas in what precedes
we have drawn out—choosing a few points from among many—a
sufficient account of the error of the heathen concerning idols, and of
the worship of idols, and how they originally came to be invented; how,
namely, out of wickedness men devised for themselves the worshipping of
idols: and whereas we have by God’s grace noted somewhat also 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,
Macarius192
| 192 See
Contra Gentes, i. The word (Μακάριε) may
be an adjective only, but its occurrence in both places seems
decisive. The name was very common (Apol. c. Ar. passim).
‘Macarius’ was a Christian, as the present passage shews:
he is presumed (c. Gent. i. 7) to have access to
Scripture. | (worthy of that name), and true lover
of Christ, let us follow up the faith of our religion193
,
and set forth also what relates to the Word’s becoming Man, and
to His divine Appearing amongst us, which Jews traduce and Greeks laugh
to scorn, but we worship; in order that, all the more for the seeming
low estate of the Word, your piety toward Him may be increased and
multiplied. 2. 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 men mistake, thinking impossible,
but what men deride as unseemly, this by His own goodness He clothes
with seemliness, and what men, 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 those who mock and disbelieve invisibly winning over to
recognise His divinity and power. 3. But to treat this subject it is
necessary to recall what has been previously said; in order 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 Saviour 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. 4. 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, that so 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 inconsonant for
the Father to have wrought its salvation in Him by Whose means He made
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