You may wonder why, when we set out to speak about the Incarnation of the Word, we are now discussing the origin of humanity. But this subject also properly belongs to the purpose of our account.
For when speaking about the Savior’s manifestation among us, we must also speak about the origin of humanity, so that you may know that our condition became the occasion for His descent, and that our transgression called forth the Word’s love for humanity, so that the Lord came to us and appeared among human beings.
We were the occasion of His embodiment, and for our salvation, in His love for humanity, He came to be and appeared in a human body.
Thus God made the human being and willed that he should remain in incorruption. But human beings neglected and turned away from the contemplation of God, and they reasoned out and devised evil for themselves, as was said in the preceding work. They therefore received the condemnation of death that had been threatened beforehand. From then on they no longer remained as they had been made, but were corrupted according to what they had devised, and death ruled over them as king. For transgression of the commandment was turning them back toward what they were by nature, so that, just as they had come into being from non-existence, they would in time naturally undergo corruption toward non-existence.
For since they had once been non-existent by nature and were called into being through the presence and love for humanity of the Word, it followed that, when human beings emptied themselves of the knowledge of God and turned toward things that do not exist—for evils have no true being, while good things have being because they come from God Who Is—they would also be deprived of continued existence. This means being dissolved and remaining in death and corruption.
By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also likeness to Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through contemplation of Him, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: "The keeping of His laws is the confirmation of incorruption." And being incorrupt, he would be from then on as God, as Holy Scripture says, "I have said, You are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but you die as men and fall as one of the princes."