Creation and the Fall
1. The Incarnation and Creation
In the preceding work, we selected a few points from among many and gave a sufficient account of the error of the heathen concerning idols and their worship. We explained how idols were originally invented, and how human beings devised their worship out of wickedness. By God’s grace, we also considered something of the divinity of the Father’s Word, his universal providence and power, and how the good Father orders all things through him, while all things are moved by him and receive life in him.
Come now, Macarius, worthy of that name and a true lover of Christ. Let us continue our account of the faith of our religion and set forth what concerns the Word’s becoming human and his divine appearance among us. The Jews slander this appearance, and the Greeks laugh it to scorn, but we worship it. Then, because of what seems to be the Word’s low estate, your devotion to him may increase and multiply all the more.
For the more unbelievers mock him, the more he bears witness to his own Godhead. He himself demonstrates that what people mistakenly consider impossible is possible. In his own goodness, he clothes with fittingness what they ridicule as unfitting. By his own power, he demonstrates as divine what they, in their conceit of wisdom, laugh at as merely human. Through his supposed humiliation, that is, through the cross, he subdues the pretensions of idols, while invisibly winning those who mock and disbelieve to recognize his divinity and power.
To treat this subject, however, we must recall what has already been said. Otherwise, you might fail to understand the cause of the bodily appearance of the Father’s Word, who is so high and so great. You might also suppose that the Savior wore a body as a consequence of his own nature. But although he is incorporeal by nature and is the Word from the beginning, he was manifested to us in a human body for our salvation because of his own Father’s loving-kindness and goodness.
It is therefore proper for us to begin our treatment of this subject by speaking about the creation of the universe and about God, its maker. In this way, it may be rightly understood that the renewal of creation was the work of the very same Word who made it in the beginning. It will then become clear that it was fitting for the Father to save the world through the same Word through whom he made it.
2. False Accounts of Creation
Many people have held different views about the making of the universe and the creation of all things, and each has laid down the law just as he pleased. Some say that everything came into being by itself and by chance. The Epicureans, for example, tell us in their contempt for themselves that universal providence does not exist, speaking directly against obvious fact and experience.
For if, as they say, everything began by itself and without purpose, it would follow that everything came into mere being in such a way as to be alike and without distinction. Because of the unity of body, everything would have to be either sun or moon. In the case of human beings, the whole body would have to be hand, eye, or foot. But this is not so. Instead, we see that the sun, moon, and earth are distinct. Likewise, in human bodies, we see the distinction of foot, hand, and head. Such an ordered distinction does not tell us that these things came into being by themselves. It shows that a cause preceded them, and from this cause we may also apprehend God as the maker and orderer of all.
Others, including Plato, who is held in such high esteem among the Greeks, argue that God made the world from matter that already existed and had no beginning. On their account, God could have made nothing unless the material already existed, just as wood must be ready at hand before a carpenter can do any work.
In saying this, however, they do not realize that they are attributing weakness to God. If he is not himself the cause of the material but makes things only from material that already exists, he proves to be weak because he is unable to produce anything he makes without that material. In the same way, it is undoubtedly a weakness in a carpenter that he cannot make anything required without timber. On this assumption, if the material had not existed, God would not have made anything. How, then, could he be called maker and artificer if he owes his ability to make things to another source, namely, the material? According to their theory, God would be only a craftsman, not a creator from nothing, since he works with existing material but is not himself the cause of that material. He could not properly be called Creator unless he also created the material from which created things were in turn made.
The sectarians, meanwhile, imagine a different maker of all things, someone other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In doing so, they show deep blindness even concerning the words they use.
For the Lord says to the Jews, “Have ye not read that from the beginning He which created them made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall become one flesh?” Referring then to the Creator, he says, “What, therefore, God hath joined together let not man put asunder” (Matt 19:4-6). How, then, do these people claim that creation is independent of the Father? Or consider John’s words, which make no exception: “All things were made by Him,” and “without Him was not anything made” (John 1:3). How could the maker be someone else, distinct from the Father of Christ?
3. Creation from Nothing
In this way, they speculate in vain. But godly teaching and the faith according to Christ condemn their foolish language as godlessness. This faith knows that the universe did not arise spontaneously, because forethought is not absent. Nor was it made from existing matter, because God is not weak. Instead, God made the universe exist out of nothing, without its having any previous existence, through his Word.
First, he says through Moses, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1). Second, in the most edifying book of The Shepherd, it says, “First of all believe that God is one, which created and framed all things, and made them to exist out of nothing.” Paul also refers to this when he says, “By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear” (Heb 11:3).
For God is good, or rather, he is essentially the source of goodness, and one who is good cannot be grudging about anything. Therefore, begrudging existence to no one, he made all things out of nothing through his own Word, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Among these earthly creatures, God took special pity above all on the human race. He perceived that, because of the condition of their origin, human beings were unable to continue in one state by their own power. He therefore gave them an additional gift. He did not merely create them as he did all the irrational creatures on earth. Instead, he made them according to his own image, giving them a share even in the power of his own Word. Thus, possessing something like a reflection of the Word and being made rational, they might be able to remain forever in blessedness, living in paradise the true life that belongs to the saints.
But God also knew that the human will could turn in either direction. In anticipation, he secured the grace he had given them by a law and by the place where he set them. He brought them into his own garden and gave them a law. If they preserved the grace and remained good, they would continue to enjoy life in paradise without sorrow, pain, or care, while also possessing the promise of incorruption in heaven. But if they transgressed, turned back, and became evil, they would know that they were incurring the corruption of death that was theirs by nature. They would no longer live in paradise but would be cast out from that time onward, dying and remaining in death and corruption.
Holy Scripture gives warning of this in the person of God: “Of every tree that is in the garden, eating thou shalt eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall not eat of it, but on the day that ye eat, dying ye shall die” (Gen 2:16-17). What else could “dying ye shall die” mean except not merely dying, but also remaining forever in the corruption of death?
4. Humanity’s Fall into Corruption
Perhaps you are wondering why, when we proposed to speak about the incarnation of the Word, we are now discussing the origin of humanity. But this also properly belongs to the purpose of our treatise.
When speaking about the Savior’s appearance among us, we must also speak about the origin of human beings. Then you may understand that his descent was because of us and that our transgression called forth the Word’s loving-kindness, so that the Lord hastened to help us and appeared among humanity. We were the reason for his becoming incarnate. For our salvation, he acted so lovingly as to appear and even be born in a human body.
God, then, made humanity and willed that human beings should remain in incorruption. But they despised and rejected the contemplation of God and devised and contrived evil for themselves, as was said in the preceding work. They therefore received the condemnation of death with which they had been threatened. From then on, they no longer remained as they had been made but were corrupted according to their own devices (Eccl 7:29; Rom 1:21-22), and death ruled over them as king (Rom 5:14).
Transgression of the commandment was turning them back toward their natural state. Just as they had received their being from nothing, so they might also expect, in the course of time, to suffer corruption into nothing. They had formerly been in a natural state of nonexistence and were called into being by the presence and loving-kindness of the Word. It followed naturally that when they were deprived of the knowledge of God and turned back toward what does not exist, they would be deprived forever even of being. For evil does not exist, but good does. Since they derived their being from God, who is, they would be disintegrated and remain in death and corruption.
Humanity is mortal by nature because it was made from what did not exist. Yet because of humanity’s likeness to the One who is, if human beings had preserved that likeness by keeping him in their knowledge, they would have restrained their natural corruption and remained incorrupt. As Wisdom says, “The taking heed to His laws is the assurance of immortality” (Wis 6:18). Being incorrupt, they would thereafter have lived as God. I suppose divine Scripture refers to this when it says, “I have said ye are gods, and ye are all sons of the most Highest; but ye die like men, and fall as one of the princes” (Ps 82:6-7).
5. The Spread of Sin and Death
God not only made us out of nothing, but also freely gave us, through the grace of the Word, a life in harmony with God. Yet human beings rejected eternal things and, by the counsel of the devil, turned toward corruptible things. They therefore became the cause of their own corruption in death. As I said before, they were corruptible by nature, but through the grace that came from participating in the Word, they were destined to escape their natural condition if they remained good.
Because the Word dwelled with them, even their natural corruption did not approach them. As Wisdom also says, “God made man for incorruption, and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death came into the world” (Wis 2:23-24). But when this happened, human beings began to die, and from then on corruption prevailed against them. It gained even more than its natural power over the whole human race because the divine threat attached to the transgression of the commandment gave it an additional advantage against them.
Even in their offenses, human beings did not stop at any fixed limit. Instead, they advanced gradually until they had passed beyond all measure. At first they invented wickedness and called down death and corruption upon themselves. Later they turned aside into wrongdoing, exceeded every form of lawlessness, and stopped at no single evil. Continually devising every kind of new evil, they became insatiable in sinning.
Adulteries and thefts were everywhere, and the whole earth was full of murders and plunder. No one paid attention to law in matters of corruption and wrongdoing. Every crime was practiced everywhere, both individually and collectively. Cities were at war with cities, nations rose against nations, and the whole earth was torn by civil conflicts and battles. Each person competed with others in lawless deeds.
Even crimes against nature were not far from them. As the apostle and witness of Christ says, “For their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet” (Rom 1:26-27).
