In the preceding work we dealt fully enough with a few of the chief points about the Gentiles’ error concerning idols, and how their superstition first arose. We also, by God's grace, briefly indicated that the Word of the Father is Himself divine, that all existing things owe their being to His providence and power, and that it is through Him that the Father orders all things, by Him that all things are moved, and in Him that they are given life. Now, Macarius, true lover of Christ, we must take a step further in the faith of our holy religion, and consider also the Incarnation of the Word and His divine manifestation among us. That mystery the Jews slander, the Greeks mock, but we worship; and the Word’s apparent lowliness will make your devotion to Him still greater.
For the more He is mocked among unbelievers, the greater the testimony He gives to His own divinity. What people do not understand and therefore judge impossible, He Himself shows to be possible. What people mock as unfitting, He makes fitting by His own goodness. And what those who consider themselves wise laugh at as merely human, He shows by His own power to be divine. By His apparent lowliness on the Cross He destroys the illusion of idols, while invisibly persuading those who mock and disbelieve to recognize His divinity and power.
Now in dealing with these matters it is necessary first to recall what has already been said. You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been manifested in a body. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is incorporeal. He has been manifested to us in a human body because of His own Father’s love for humanity and goodness, for our salvation.
We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been accomplished by the same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is therefore no inconsistency between creation and salvation, for the one Father worked through the same Word in both, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.