The Word Before the World

Christ’s way of being is twofold. One side of it is like the head of the body, in that he is thought of as God; the other may be compared to the feet, in that for the sake of our salvation he put on a man with passions like our own. So the account of what follows will be complete only if we begin the narrative of his whole history from its chief and most sovereign points. In this way the age and the divine character of the Christian faith will be shown to those who suppose it new and foreign, something that appeared yesterday and never before. [a]

No language could ever be adequate to express the origin and the dignity, the very being and nature, of Christ. That is why the divine Spirit says in the prophecies, “Who will declare his generation?” For no one has known the Father except the Son, and no one has ever known the Son as he deserves except the Father alone who begot him. [b] The Light that was before the world; the thinking and truly existing Wisdom that was before the ages; the living God the Word who was in the beginning with the Father—who but the Father could clearly understand him? He is, before all creation and all making, visible and invisible, the first and only offspring of God; the commander-in-chief of the reasoning and immortal army of heaven; the Angel of Great Counsel; the servant of the Father’s unspoken purpose; the maker of all things together with the Father; the second cause of the universe after the Father; the true and only Son of God; the Lord and God and King of all things that have come into being, who has received sovereignty and might from the Father, together with divinity itself and power and honor. For in the hidden teachings of the Scriptures concerning his divinity it is said of him: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” [c]

The great Moses teaches this too. As the most ancient of all the prophets, he describes by the divine Spirit how the universe came into being and was set in order, and he teaches that the maker of the world and creator of all things gave over to Christ himself—to none other than his own divine and firstborn Word, plainly—the making of the lower things, and that he consulted with him about the creation of man. “For God said,” he writes, “Let us make man after our image and likeness.” [d] Another of the prophets vouches for these words, speaking of God in his hymns in this way: “He spoke, and they came into being; he commanded, and they were created.” Here he presents the Father and Maker as ruler of all, giving orders with a royal nod, and second to him the divine Word—none other than the one we proclaim—carrying out the Father’s commands. [e]

From the first creation of man, all who are said to have been distinguished for righteousness and the virtue of piety—Moses the great servant and those with him, and before him Abraham first of all, and his children, and all the righteous men and prophets who appeared afterward—saw him with the pure eyes of the mind, recognized him, and paid him the reverence due to a Son of God. And he, never neglecting his own reverence for the Father, was appointed teacher of the knowledge of the Father to them all. So the Lord God, Scripture records, appeared like an ordinary man to Abraham as he sat by the oak of Mamre. Abraham fell down at once, and though it was a man he saw with his eyes, he worshiped him as God, entreated him as Lord, and confessed that he knew who he was, in these very words: “Lord, you who judge all the earth, will you not do justice?” [f] For no reason would allow us to suppose that the unbegotten and unchangeable being of Almighty God changed into the form of a man, or that it deceived the eyes of those who saw it with the appearance of some created thing; nor can we suppose that Scripture falsely invents such things. So when God and Lord, who judges all the earth and does justice, is seen in the shape of a man, who else could he be called—if it is not right to call him the first cause of all things—but his own pre-existent Word alone? Of him it is said in the Psalms: “He sent his Word and healed them, and rescued them from their destruction.” [h]

Moses most plainly names him a second Lord after the Father when he says, “The Lord rained sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord.” When he appeared again to Jacob in the shape of a man, the divine Scripture calls him God, as he said to Jacob, “Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel will be your name, because you have prevailed with God.” Then Jacob called the name of that place “Form of God,” saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and my life was preserved.” [i] Nor is it right to suppose that the appearances of God recorded in Scripture were appearances of lower angels and servants of God. Whenever one of these appears to men, Scripture does not hide it, but states by name that they were called not God, nor Lord, but angels—as is easy to confirm from countless passages.

Joshua too, the successor of Moses, names him “commander-in-chief of the Lord’s army,” as the leader of the heavenly angels and archangels and of the powers above the world, and as being, so to speak, the Father’s own power and wisdom, entrusted with the second place in the kingship and rule over all things; though he saw him in no other way than, again, in the form and shape of a man. So it is written: [j] “And it came to pass, when Joshua was at Jericho, that he looked up and saw a man standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand. Joshua went up to him and said, ‘Are you for us, or for our enemies?’ And he said to him, ‘I am the commander-in-chief of the Lord’s army; I have come now.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the ground and said to him, ‘Master, what do you command your servant?’ And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take your sandal off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’” [k] You will notice from the very same words that this was no other than the one who had also spoken with Moses, since Scripture uses the same words about that one too: “When the Lord saw that he was coming near to look, the Lord called him from the bush, saying, ‘Moses, Moses.’ And he said, ‘What is it?’ And he said, ‘Do not come near here. Take your sandal off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’ And he said to him, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’” [l]

There is, then, a being that lived and existed before the world, which served the Father and God of the universe in making all created things, and which is called the Word of God and Wisdom. Besides the proofs already set out, we can also hear this from Wisdom herself, speaking in her own person, who through Solomon very plainly reveals her own mysteries in this way: “I, Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling, and I called on knowledge and understanding. Through me kings reign, and rulers decree righteousness. Through me the great are made great, and through me sovereigns rule the earth.” [m] To which she adds: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, for his works. Before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were set in place; before all the hills he brings me forth. When he was preparing the heavens, I was there beside him; and when he was making firm the springs of what lies under heaven, I was with him, putting things in order. I was the one he delighted in day by day, and I rejoiced before him at all times, when he rejoiced at having completed the world.” [n] So, then, that the divine Word existed beforehand and appeared to some, if not to all, let this brief account suffice.

But why was it not proclaimed long ago to all people and all nations, as it is now? The reason will be plain from what follows. The life of people in ancient times was not yet able to take in the all-wise and wholly virtuous teaching of Christ. At the very beginning, after his first life in blessedness, the first man cared too little for God’s command and fell into this mortal and perishable life, exchanging his former delight, which was from God, for this accursed earth. Those descended from him, who filled the whole of our world, proved much worse, except for one or two here and there, and took up a brutish way of living, a life not fit to be lived. They gave no thought to city or state, to arts or sciences. They did not have even the names of laws and rights, of virtue and philosophy. They lived as nomads in desert places, like wild and savage people. By an excess of wickedness they chose for themselves, they destroyed the reasoning that belongs to human nature and the seeds of reason and gentleness in the human soul. They gave themselves over entirely to every impiety, so that now they corrupted one another, now killed one another, at other times ate human flesh. They dared to make war on God and to fight the battles of the giants that everyone sings of; they planned to fortify earth against heaven, and in the madness of a monstrous arrogance they prepared to make war on the God who is over all. [o] Since they brought this way of life on themselves, God, who watches over all things, pursued them with floods and fires, as if they were a wild forest spread over the whole earth. He cut them down with continual famines and plagues, with wars, and with thunderbolts from above, as though holding back some terrible and most stubborn disease of souls with harsher punishments.

Then, when the stupor of wickedness lay heavy over nearly everyone, like a terrible drunkenness that clouded and darkened the souls of almost all people, the firstborn and first-created Wisdom of God, the pre-existent Word himself, in the abundance of his love for mankind, appeared—sometimes through visions of angels to those beneath him, sometimes in his own person, as the saving power of God, to one or two of the men of old whom God loved. Yet he appeared to them only in human form, since it was not possible for them in any other way. Through these men the seeds of piety had now been sown among a multitude, and a whole nation devoted to piety had arisen on the earth, descended from the Hebrews of old. To them, as to crowds still corrupted by their old ways of life, he handed on through the prophet Moses images and symbols of a certain mystical Sabbath and of circumcision, and first lessons in other spiritual truths; but he did not hand on the plain initiation into the mysteries themselves. Their law became famous, and like a fragrant breeze it spread to all people. Then, starting from them, the minds of most of the nations were tamed by the lawgivers and philosophers who arose everywhere. Their wild and savage brutality was changed into mildness, so that they lived in deep peace, friendship, and dealings with one another. And then at last, to all the rest of mankind and to the nations throughout the world—helped beforehand, as it were, and now fit to receive the knowledge of the Father—that same teacher of virtue appeared again, the Father’s servant in all good things, the divine and heavenly Word of God. At the beginning of the Roman Empire he appeared through a man who in no way differed from our nature in the substance of his body, and he did and suffered what followed from the prophecies. For they had proclaimed beforehand that one who was both man and God would come to live in this world, would do extraordinary works, and would be shown to all nations as a teacher of the Father’s piety. They had proclaimed the wonder of his birth, his new teaching, and the marvels of his works, and besides these the manner of his death, his resurrection from the dead, and finally his divine return to heaven. [p]

So Daniel the prophet, seeing his kingdom at the end by the divine Spirit, was inspired to describe this vision of God in terms suited to human understanding: “For I was watching,” he says, “until thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days sat down. His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool. His throne was a flame of fire, its wheels blazing fire. A river of fire flowed before him. Thousands upon thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court sat, and books were opened.” [q] And next: “I was watching,” he says, “and look, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he reached the Ancient of Days and was brought before him. And to him was given the rule and the honor and the kingdom, and all peoples, tribes, and languages will serve him. His authority is an everlasting authority, which will not pass away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.” [r] Plainly these words could refer to no one else than our Savior, God the Word who was in the beginning with God, who is called Son of Man because he finally became man. But since we have collected the prophetic passages about our Savior Jesus Christ in separate notebooks, and have set out what is revealed about him in other works in the form of proofs, what has been said will be enough for now. [s]