How Man May Become God

So this God, alone and above all, first brought forth the Word by an act of thought — not a word in the sense of something spoken aloud, but the reasoning of the universe, conceived and held within the mind of God. Him alone he produced out of what exists; for the Father was himself that existence, and from him came the one who was born. The Word was the cause of everything that came to be, carrying in himself the will of the one who begot him, and not ignorant of the Father’s mind. For the moment he came forth from the one who begot him — being that one’s firstborn — he had in himself, as a voice, the thoughts conceived in the Father. And so, when the Father ordered the world to come into existence, the Word completed each object of creation one by one, and in this pleased God. Some creatures, the ones that multiply by breeding, he made male and female; but whatever beings were meant for service and attendance he made either male, or not needing females, or neither male nor female. For even the primary substances these were formed from, which were themselves made out of nothing — fire and spirit, water and earth — are neither male nor female, and neither male nor female could come from any one of them, unless God, who is the source of all authority, willed that the Word should lend his help in bringing about a production of that kind. I acknowledge that angels are of fire, and I hold that no female spirits are present with them. And I am of the opinion that sun and moon and stars are produced in the same way, from fire and spirit, and are neither male nor female. I hold that the swimming and the winged animals come from water, male and female; for God, whose will it was, ordered that there should be a moist substance with the power to bring forth. In the same way God commanded that from earth should come the creeping things and the beasts, and males and females of every sort of animal, since the nature of the things being made allowed it. Whatever he willed, God made, each in its own time. These he created through the Word, since it was not possible for things to come into being in any other way than as they were produced. And when he had formed them as he willed, he called them by names, and so made his will known. And having made these, he formed the ruler of them all, and shaped him out of all the substances combined. The Maker did not want to make him a god and fail at it; nor an angel — do not be misled — but a man. If he had willed to make you a god, he could have done it: you have the Word as your example. But his will was that you should be a man, and he has made you a man. If you want to become a god as well, obey the one who created you, and do not resist him now, so that, having been found faithful in the small thing, you may be trusted with the great as well. [a]

The Word alone, of everything that is this God’s, is from God himself, and that is why the Word is God — he is of God’s own being. The world, on the other hand, was made out of nothing, and so it is not God; and it is not God for this reason too, that this world admits of being dissolved whenever its Maker wishes. But God, who created it, did not make evil and does not make it. What he makes is glorious and excellent, for the one who makes it is good. Now man, once brought into existence, was a creature free to choose for himself, though he did not have a mind that ruled, and did not hold sway over everything by thought and authority and power. He was a slave, and held every kind of contradiction inside himself. But man, just because he is free to choose, brings evil into being — brings it in incidentally; and that evil is not brought to completion unless you actually commit some piece of wickedness. For it is in our wanting something wicked, or turning it over in our minds, that a thing gets the name of evil. Evil had no existence from the beginning; it came to be afterward. Since man is free to choose, a law has been marked out for his guidance by God, and not without answering a good purpose. If man did not have the power to will a thing and not to will it, why would a law be set up at all? A law will not be laid down for an animal that has no reason; a bridle and a whip are laid on it instead. To man a command has been given, and a penalty for carrying out or not carrying out what was commanded. For man, constituted this way, a law was enacted by righteous men in the earliest ages. Nearer our own day a law was established, weighty and just, by Moses — the man mentioned earlier, devout, and loved by God.

The Word of God governs all of this — the firstborn child of the Father, the voice of the dawn before the morning star. Afterward righteous men were born, friends of God, and these have been called prophets, because they showed beforehand what was to come. The word of prophecy was entrusted to them, and not for one age only: the announcements of events foretold throughout all generations were granted in perfect clarity — and not merely at the moment when seers furnished a reply to those standing in front of them. Events that would happen throughout all the ages have been shown ahead of time as well. For in speaking of incidents gone by, the prophets brought them back to people’s memory; in setting out what was happening at present, they tried to persuade men not to be careless; and in foretelling what was still to come, they have made every one of us afraid — seeing events that had been predicted long before, and expecting the ones still ahead. This is our faith, all you men — ours, I say, who are not convinced by empty phrases, nor carried off by sudden impulses of the heart, nor taken in by the plausibility of polished speeches, but who do not refuse to obey words spoken by the power of God. God gave these charges to the Word, and the Word, by declaring them, published God’s commands, and so turned man away from disobedience — not bringing him into slavery by force of necessity, but summoning him to freedom by a choice that is his own.

This Word the Father sent out in the last days. He was no longer to speak through a prophet; the Father did not want the Word announced obscurely and left to guesswork, but shown openly, so that we could see him with our own eyes. This Word, I say, the Father sent out, so that the world, on seeing him, might revere him — one who was not delivering commands through the person of prophets, nor terrifying the soul by an angel, but who was himself the one who had spoken, present among us in the body. This Word, we know, received a body from a virgin and put on the old man through a new fashioning. And we know that the Word passed through every stage of this life, so that he himself might serve as a law for every age, and that by being present among us he might display his own humanity as the aim for all men. And that in his own person he might prove that God made nothing evil, and that man is free to choose, since he is able to will and not to will, and has the power to do either. This man, we know, was made out of the same mixture as the rest of us. For if he were not of the same nature as we are, then it is pointless for him to command us to imitate the Teacher. If that man happened to be of a different substance from us, why does he lay on me — born weak — charges like the ones he himself received? And how is that the act of one who is good and just? So that he might not be supposed to be different from us, he even took on hard labor, was willing to endure hunger, did not refuse to feel thirst, and sank into the quiet of sleep. He did not protest against his suffering, but became obedient to the point of death, and showed his resurrection. In all these acts he offered up his own humanity as the firstfruits, so that you, when you are under pressure, would not lose heart, but would acknowledge yourself a man like him, and go on expecting to receive as well what the Father has granted to this Son.

This is the true teaching about the divine nature, men — Greeks and non-Greeks, Chaldeans and Assyrians, Egyptians and Libyans, Indians and Ethiopians, Celts, and you Latins who lead armies, and all of you who live in Europe and Asia and Libya. I have become your adviser, since I am a student of the Word who loves mankind, and so a friend to men myself, in order that you may hurry and be taught by us who the true God is, and what his well-ordered creation is. Do not give your attention to the tricks of contrived arguments, nor to the empty promises of heretics who steal from others, but to the venerable simplicity of unpretending truth. And by this knowledge you will escape the approaching threat of the fire of judgment, and the rayless scene of gloomy Tartarus, where no beam from the shining voice of the Word has ever fallen. You will escape the boiling flood of hell’s everlasting lake of fire, and the eye of the fallen angels, fixed forever in its threatening glare, chained in Tartarus as punishment for their sins. And you will escape the worm that coils endlessly around the body for food, feeding on the filth that bred it. These are the torments you will avoid by being taught to know the true God. You will have an immortal body, one put beyond the reach of decay, just as the soul is. You will receive the kingdom of heaven — you who, while you lived out this life, knew the King of heaven. You will be a companion of God and a fellow heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by cravings or passions, and never again worn down by disease. For you have become God. Whatever sufferings you underwent while you were a man, he gave you those because you were of mortal mold; but whatever it belongs to God to give, God has promised to hand over to you, because you have been made God and born into immortality. This is what the saying “Know yourself” means: discover God within yourself, for he formed you after his own image. For knowing yourself goes together with being known by God, since you are called by God himself. So do not be set on fire with hatred for one another, men, and do not hesitate to retrace your steps with all speed. For Christ is the God over all, and he has arranged to wash sin away from human beings, making the old man new again by a second birth. God called man his likeness from the beginning, and in that figure showed his love toward you. And provided you obey his weighty commands and become a faithful imitator of the one who is good, you will be like him, since he will confer honor on you. For God is not made poor in the divinity of his own perfection by having made you God as well, to his glory. [m]