These are the stories they tell. But the divinely inspired teaching and the faith according to Christ condemn their empty talk as godlessness. They know that the universe did not come into being by itself, because it is not without providence, nor from pre-existing matter, because God is not weak. Rather, God brought all things from non-existence into being through the Word, though they had in no way existed before. Thus He says through Moses, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," and through the most helpful book of the Shepherd, "First of all, believe that there is one God, Who created and ordered all things and brought them from non-existence into being."
Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared."
For God is good—or rather, He is the source of goodness—and one who is good could never be envious of anything. Therefore, begrudging existence to no one, He made all things from non-existence through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. Among earthly creatures, He showed special mercy to the human race. Seeing that human beings were not able, according to the condition of their own origin, to continue forever, He gave them something more. He did not create them merely as He created all the irrational animals on earth, but made them according to His own image and gave them a share in the power of His own Word. Thus, possessing something like reflections of the Word and becoming rational, they might remain in blessedness and live the true life that truly belongs to the saints in paradise.
But since the human will could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things—namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the promise of incorruption in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their original goodness, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption.
This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, "Of every tree that is in the garden you shall surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, but in the day that you do eat, you shall surely die." "You shall surely die"—not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption.