The Word in the Whole and in the Part

Take the whole body, which is given life and light by the person within it. Suppose someone said it was absurd for the person’s power to be in the toe as well. He would be thought foolish, because while he grants that the person pervades the whole and works in it, he objects to his being in the part too. In the same way, whoever grants and believes that the Word of God is in the whole universe, and that the whole is lit up and moved by him, should not think it absurd that a single human body as well should receive movement and light from him. But perhaps they regard the Savior’s appearing in a man, of which we speak, as unfitting because the human race is a created thing and has been made out of nothing. Then it is high time for them to expel him from creation too, for it also has been brought into existence by the Word out of nothing. But if it is not absurd for the Word to be in creation, even though creation is a thing made, then neither is it absurd for him to be in man. For whatever idea they form of the whole, they must necessarily apply the same idea to the part. Man too, as I said before, is a part of the whole. So it is not at all unfitting that the Word should be in man, while all things draw from him their light and movement and life, as their own writers also say: “In him we live and move and have our being.” [a]

What, then, is there to scoff at in what we say, if the Word has used that in which he is as an instrument to reveal himself? If he were not in it, he could not have used it. But if we have already agreed that he is in the whole and in its parts, what is unbelievable in his revealing himself in that in which he is? For by his own power he is wholly united with each thing and with all things, and orders all things without limit. So no one could have called it out of place for him to speak, and to make himself and his Father known, by means of the sun, if he so willed, or the moon, or the sky, or the earth, or the waters, or fire. For he holds all things together at once, and is in fact not only in all things but also in the part in question, and there reveals himself invisibly. In the same way it cannot be absurd if he, who orders the whole and gives life to all things, and who willed to make himself known through human beings, has used a human body as his instrument to reveal the truth and the knowledge of the Father. For humanity too is an actual part of the whole. The mind pervades a person through and through, yet it is expressed by one part of the body, I mean the tongue; and no one, I suppose, says that the essence of the mind is lowered on that account. In the same way, if the Word, who pervades all things, has used a human instrument, this cannot appear unfitting. For, as I have said before, if it is unfitting to have used a body as an instrument, it is unfitting also for him to be in the whole.