Take a parallel case. A man's personality actuates and quickens his whole body. If anyone said it was unsuitable for the man's power to be in the toe, he would be thought silly, because, while granting that a man penetrates and actuates the whole of his body, he denied his presence in the part. Similarly, no one who admits the presence of the Word of God in the universe as a whole should think it unsuitable for a single human body to be by Him actuated and enlightened.
But is it, perhaps, because humanity is a thing created and brought into being out of non-existence that they regard as unfitting the manifestation of the Savior in our nature? If so, it is high time that they spurned Him from creation too; for it, too, has been brought out of non-being into being by the Word.
If it is not unreasonable for the Word to be present in creation even though creation is made, then it is not unreasonable for Him to be present in a human being. Whatever they think about the whole, they must necessarily think in the same way about the part, for the human being also is a part of the whole, as I said before.
All things derive from the Word their light and movement and life, as the Gentile authors themselves say, "In Him we live and move and have our being." Very well then. That being so, it is by no means unbecoming that the Word should dwell in man.
So if, as we say, the Word has used that in which He is as the means of His self-manifestation, what is there ridiculous in that? He could not have used it had He not been present in it; but we have already admitted that He is present both in the whole and in the parts. What, then, is there incredible in His manifesting Himself through that in which He is?
By His own power He enters completely into each and all, and orders them throughout ungrudgingly; and, had He so willed, He could have revealed Himself and His Father by means of sun or moon or sky or earth or fire or water. Had He done so, no one could rightly have accused Him of acting unbecomingly, for He sustains in one whole all things at once, being present and invisibly revealed not only in the whole, but also in each particular part. This being so, and since, moreover, He has willed to reveal Himself through men, who are part of the whole, there can be nothing ridiculous in His using a human body to manifest the truth and knowledge of the Father.
The mind pervades the whole human being, yet it is expressed through one part of the body, namely the tongue; and no one says that the essence of the mind is diminished for this reason. In the same way, since the Word pervades all things, it is not unfitting that He should use a human instrument. For, as I said before, if it is unfitting for Him to use a body as an instrument, it is also unfitting for Him to be present in the whole.