Could God Let His Work Perish?

For this reason, then, since death had gained the upper hand over men and corruption was settling on them, the human race was perishing. Man, the rational creature made in God’s image, was disappearing, and God’s handiwork was in the process of falling apart. For death, as I said above, had from then on a legal hold over us, and there was no escaping the law, since God had laid it down because of the transgression. The result was truly both monstrous and unfitting. First, it would be monstrous for God, having spoken, to prove false: that after he had once decreed that man should die the death if he transgressed the commandment, man should not die after the transgression, and God’s word should be broken. For God would not be true if, when he had said that we should die, man did not die. Again, it would be unfitting that creatures once made rational, who had shared in the Word, should go to ruin and turn back toward non-existence by the road of corruption. For it would not be worthy of God’s goodness that the things he had made should waste away because of the deceit the devil practiced on men. Above all, it was unfitting in the extreme that God’s craftsmanship in men should be undone, whether through their own carelessness or through the deceit of evil spirits. [a]

So, as the rational creatures were wasting away and such works were going to ruin, what was God in his goodness to do? Let corruption prevail against them, and death hold them fast? Then what good would it have been for them to be made in the first place? It would have been better for them not to be made than, once made, to be left to neglect and ruin. For neglect shows weakness, not goodness, on God’s part, if he lets his own work be ruined once he has made it, more so than if he had never made man at all. For if he had not made them, no one could charge him with weakness. But once he had made them, creating them out of nothing, it would be most monstrous for the work to be ruined, and that before the very eyes of its Maker. It was out of the question, then, to leave men to the current of corruption, because this would be unfitting and unworthy of God’s goodness.