But since the account of true religion also knows how to recognize a distinction of hypostases within the unity of nature, we must again correct the error on this point by making a careful distinction, so that in our opposition to the Hellenistic position our argument may not be carried over into Judaism. For even those outside our teaching do not suppose the divine to be without Logos; and this admission on their part will sufficiently clarify our argument. Whoever admits that God is not without Logos will surely agree that the One who is not without Logos has Logos. Yet human speech is also called by the same name, logos. Therefore, if someone says that he understands the Word of God by analogy with our own word, he will in this way be led toward a higher conception.
For it is altogether necessary to believe that the Word corresponds to the nature, just as all the other things said of it do. Power, life, and wisdom are also observed in the human sphere; but no one, simply because the same names are used, would suppose that life, power, or wisdom in God is of the same kind as in us. Rather, the force of such names is lowered in proportion to the measure of our nature. Since our nature is corruptible and weak, our life is therefore short-lived, our power lacks subsistence, and our word is unstable. But in the transcendent nature, everything said concerning it is elevated together with the greatness of what is contemplated. Therefore, even when He is called the Word of God, He is not to be thought to have His subsistence in the impulse of the speaker and then, like our word, to pass into nonexistence. Rather, just as our perishable nature has a perishable word, so the incorruptible and ever-abiding nature has a Word who is eternal and subsisting.
If, then, it is admitted as the argument requires that the Word of God subsists eternally, it is altogether necessary to confess that the Word's hypostasis is in life. For it is not reverent to suppose that the Word subsists without life, like stones. But if He subsists as something intellectual and incorporeal, He certainly lives; and if He is separated from life, then He certainly is not in hypostasis. Yet it has already been shown to be irreverent to say that the Word of God is without hypostasis. It follows, then, that this Word must be contemplated as living. And since the nature of the Word is reasonably believed to be simple, displaying no doubleness or composition in itself, no one should regard the Word as living by participation in life. Such a conception—saying that one thing exists in another—would not be free from composition. Rather, once simplicity is confessed, it is altogether necessary to understand the Word as Life itself, not as participating in life.
If, then, the Word who is Life lives, He certainly also possesses the power of will, for nothing living is without volition. It is also reverent, as the argument requires, to understand this volition as effective. For if one does not admit that it has power, one necessarily establishes the contrary, powerlessness; but powerlessness is far removed from our conception of the divine, since nothing incongruous is contemplated in the divine nature. It is therefore altogether necessary to confess that the Word's power is as great as His purpose, so that no mixture or concurrence of opposites may be conceived in what is simple—as though powerlessness and power were found in the same purpose because He could do one thing but lacked power for another. Rather, the Word's will, being able to do all things, has no inclination toward anything evil, for an impulse toward evil is foreign to the divine nature. Whatever is good, that He also wills; and what He wills He certainly can do; and being able, He is not inactive, but brings every good purpose into action.
The world is good, and everything in it is seen to be ordered wisely and skillfully. Therefore all things are works of the Word: of One who lives and subsists because He is the Word of God; who possesses will because He lives; who is able to accomplish whatever He chooses; and who always chooses what is good and wise, and whatever else bears a still higher meaning.
Since, then, the world is acknowledged to be something good, and what has been said has shown that the world is the work of the Word, who both chooses and is able to accomplish the good, this Word is other than the One whose Word He is. For this too is, in a certain way, one of the expressions of relation, since together with the Word we must necessarily understand the Father of the Word; for He would not be Word if He were not someone's Word. If, then, the hearer's mind distinguishes by the relational meaning between the Word Himself and the One from whom He is, the mystery will no longer be in danger of falling into the Jewish position while opposing Hellenistic conceptions. Rather, it escapes the error of both equally: it confesses the living, active, and creative Word of God—which the Jewish position does not accept—and also that the Word Himself and the One from whom He is do not differ in nature.
For in our own case we say that the word is from the mind, being neither entirely the same as the mind nor altogether other than it. Because it is from the mind, it is something other and is not the mind itself; yet because it brings the mind into manifestation, it can no longer be understood as something other than it. Rather, while one with it in nature, it is different in the underlying subject. In the same way, the Word of God, by subsisting in Himself, is distinguished from the One from whom He has His hypostasis; yet because He displays in Himself those things that are contemplated concerning God, He is the same in nature as the One who is known by the same distinguishing marks. For whether one takes goodness, power, wisdom, eternal existence, incapacity for evil, death, and corruption, perfection in every respect, or any such mark as a means of apprehending the Father, by those same marks one will also recognize the Word who subsists from Him.