Why He Came as a Man

Now suppose they ask: “Why, then, did he not appear by means of other, nobler parts of creation? Why did he not use some nobler instrument, such as the sun, or moon, or stars, or fire, or air, instead of merely a man?” Let them know that the Lord came not to make a display, but to heal and teach those who were suffering. Someone aiming at display would simply appear and dazzle those who saw him. But someone seeking to heal and teach must not merely come and stay here. He must give himself to helping those in need, and appear in a way that those who need him can bear. Otherwise, by going beyond what the sufferers need, he would trouble the very people who need him, and God’s appearing would be of no use to them. [a]

Now nothing in creation had gone astray in its notions of God, except man alone. Indeed, neither sun nor moon nor sky nor stars nor water nor air had swerved from its order. They know their Maker and Sovereign, the Word, and they remain as they were made. Human beings alone rejected what was good, invented worthless things in place of the truth, and gave the honor due to God, and their knowledge of him, to demons and to men in the form of stone statues. It would have been unworthy of God’s goodness to overlook so grave a matter. Yet people were not able to recognize him as ordering and guiding the whole. With good reason, then, he takes to himself as an instrument a part of the whole, his human body, and unites himself with it. He did this so that, since people could not recognize him in the whole, they should not fail to know him in the part. And since they could not look up to his invisible power, they might at least be able, from what resembled themselves, to reason their way to him and to contemplate him. For, being human, they will be able to know his Father more quickly and directly through a body of the same nature as theirs, and through the divine works done by means of it. Comparing them, they will judge that these works are not human, but the works of God, done by him.

And if it were absurd, as they say, for the Word to be known through the works of the body, it would equally be absurd for him to be known through the works of the universe. For just as he is in creation, and yet does not share its nature in the least, but rather all things share in his power, so while he used the body as his instrument he shared in nothing that belongs to bodies. On the contrary, he himself made even the body holy. Even Plato, who is held in such high regard among the Greeks, says that the maker of the universe, seeing it tossed by storms and in danger of going down into the place of chaos, takes his seat at the helm of the soul, comes to the rescue, and sets right all its disasters. What, then, is there unbelievable in what we say: that when humankind had gone astray, the Word came down and settled upon it and appeared as man, so that he might save it in its storm by his guidance and goodness?