For a good teacher who cares for his disciples will come down to the level of those who cannot benefit from higher subjects and teach them through simpler things. So also did the Word of God, as Paul says: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who believe.”
For human beings had turned away from contemplation of God and, as though sunk in the depths with their eyes cast downward, were seeking God among created things and things perceived by the senses. They even fashioned mortal human beings and demons as gods for themselves. For this reason the Word of God, the loving Savior of all, took a body for Himself and lived among them as a human being. He met them through what they could perceive with their senses. Thus those who thought God was to be found in bodily things could learn the truth from the works the Lord performed through the body and, through Him, come to know the Father.
Because they were human beings and understood everything in a human way, whatever they directed their senses toward, they found Him meeting them there and teaching them the truth from every side.
If they looked with awe upon creation, they saw it confessing Christ as Lord. If their minds were fixed on human beings and they regarded them as gods, then, by comparing their works with the Savior’s, it became clear that the Savior alone among human beings was the Son of God, since none of the others had works like those accomplished by God the Word.
If their minds were fixed on demons, then seeing them driven out by the Lord, they learned that He alone is the Word of God and that the demons are not gods.
If their minds had already been fixed on the dead, so that they worshiped heroes and the gods spoken of by the poets, then seeing the Savior’s resurrection, they confessed that these were false gods and that the Lord alone is true—the Word of the Father, who also rules over death.
For this reason He was born and appeared as a human being, and died and rose again. By His own works He dimmed and overshadowed the deeds of all who had ever lived, so that wherever people had become fixed in error, He might lead them up from there and teach them about His own true Father. As He Himself says, “I came to save and find what was lost.”