The one who follows Greek thought may perhaps not dispute, on the basis of common conceptions, that there is a Word and Spirit of God; nor may the Jew dispute it on the basis of the Scriptures. But both will equally reject the divine Word's dispensation concerning humanity as something incredible and unfitting to be said of God. We must therefore lead those who object toward faith in this matter from another starting point. Do they believe that all things came to be through Word and Wisdom from the One who constituted the whole, or are they difficult to persuade even about this conviction? If they do not grant that Word and Wisdom preside over the constitution of existing things, they will place irrationality and lack of skill at the beginning of the whole. But if that is absurd and impious, they must acknowledge that Word and Wisdom govern the things that exist.
But it has already been shown above that the Word of God is not merely a spoken word, nor a disposition of some kind of knowledge or wisdom, but a power subsisting according to essence, choosing every good and possessing in His power everything that He wills. Since the world is good, the power that produces and brings forth good things is its cause. And if the subsistence of the whole world depends upon the power of the Word, as the course of the argument has shown, then we must not imagine any other cause for the constitution of the parts of the world than the Word Himself, through whom all things passed into being. Whether someone wishes to call Him Word, Wisdom, Power, God, or by some other lofty and honorable name, we will not disagree.
For whatever expression or name is found that points to the subject, what is signified through these words is one and the same: the eternal power of God, productive of the things that exist, devising what did not exist, holding together what has come to be, and foreseeing what is to come. This God the Word—Wisdom and Power—has therefore been shown, in the course of the argument, to be the Maker of human nature. He was not driven by any necessity to create the human being; rather, from the abundance of His love He brought this living creature into being. For the light ought not to remain unseen, nor the glory without witness, nor goodness unenjoyed, nor all the other things contemplated in the divine nature lie inactive for lack of one who could participate in and enjoy them. Therefore, if the human being comes into existence for this purpose—to become a participant in the divine goods—he must necessarily be constituted in such a way as to be capable of sharing in those goods.
For just as the eye, through the brightness naturally present in it, comes into fellowship with light by drawing what is akin to itself through its innate capacity, so it was necessary for something akin to the divine to be implanted in human nature, so that through what corresponded to it humanity might have desire for what is its own. Even among irrational creatures, those whose life is in water or in the air are each constituted suitably for their kind of life, so that by the particular formation of the body the air is proper and kindred to one, and the water to another. In the same way, the human being, brought into existence for the enjoyment of divine goods, needed to have in his nature something akin to that in which he was to participate. For this reason he was adorned with life, reason, wisdom, and all the goods fitting to God, so that through each of them he might desire what is akin to him.
Since eternity is also one of the goods belonging to the divine nature, the constitution of our nature necessarily could not be excluded from this either, but had to possess immortality within itself, so that through this implanted capacity it might both recognize what is above it and desire the divine eternity. The account of creation sums all this up in a single comprehensive expression when it says that the human being was made in the image of God. For likeness according to the image includes the full enumeration of all the qualities that characterize the divine. And everything Moses sets out about these matters in a more narrative form, presenting doctrines to us in the form of a story, belongs to the same teaching. That paradise and the distinctive character of its fruits—whose eating gives those who taste them not fullness of the stomach but knowledge and eternity of life—all accord with what was previously contemplated concerning the human being: that in the beginning our nature was good and existed among good things.
But perhaps someone who looks only at the present situation will object to what has been said and think he has proved the argument false, since the human being is now seen not in those conditions but in almost all their opposites. Where is the Godlike character of the soul? Where is the body's freedom from passion? Where is the eternity of life? Humanity is short-lived, subject to passion, perishable, and liable in both body and soul to every kind of suffering. By saying these and similar things and attacking human nature, the objector will think he has overturned the account that has been given concerning humanity. But so that our argument may nowhere be diverted from its sequence, we will discuss these matters briefly as well.
The fact that human life is now in a disordered condition is not sufficient proof that the human being was never among good things. For since the human being is God's work, brought into existence through the goodness of the One who made this living creature, no one could reasonably suspect that one whose cause of existence is goodness was created by his Maker in evils. Rather, there is another cause both for our present condition and for our deprivation of what is better. Once again the starting point for this argument is not outside what our opponents themselves can grant. For the One who made the human being to share in His own goods, and who implanted in his nature the capacities for every beautiful thing so that through each of them desire might fittingly be borne toward what is like it, would not have deprived him of the most beautiful and honorable of the goods: the grace of being free from mastery and self-determining.
For if some necessity governed human life, the image would have proved false in this respect, having been estranged from the archetype by that dissimilarity. How could a nature subjected and enslaved to necessities be called the image of the ruling nature? Therefore what was made like to the divine in every respect necessarily had to possess in its nature what is self-governing and free from mastery, so that participation in the good things might be the prize of virtue. From where, then, you will ask, did the one honored in every way with the most beautiful things exchange the good for what is worse? The explanation of this too is clear. No origin of evil had its beginning in the divine will; otherwise evil would be beyond blame, since it could name God as its Maker and Father. Rather, evil somehow grows from within, coming to subsist in moral choice whenever the soul withdraws from the beautiful. For just as sight is an activity of nature while blindness is deprivation of that natural activity, so virtue stands opposed to evil.
For the origin of evil cannot be conceived in any other way than as the absence of virtue. Just as darkness follows when light is removed, while it does not exist when light is present, so long as the good is present in nature evil has no existence in itself. The withdrawal of what is better becomes the coming-to-be of its opposite. Since it is the distinctive feature of self-determination to choose according to one's own authority what one desires, God is not the cause of the evils now present to you, for He made your nature unmastered and free; rather, lack of good counsel chose the worse instead of the better.