Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.20

We cannot know God by measuring his magnitude; it is impossible to measure the Father. But through his love — the love that draws us to God by his Word — we who obey him learn ever anew how great God truly is. He himself is the one who establishes, chooses, and adorns all things, the one who relates to us. And so we, together with all things that he contains, have been brought into being.

This is what Scripture declares: "The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Gen 2:7). Angels did not make us, nor form us; angels could not fashion the image of God, nor could anyone else except the Word of the Lord — no power remote from the Father. God had no need of such agents to carry out what he had predetermined, as though he lacked hands of his own. The Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, are ever present with him; through them and in them he made all things freely and gladly. To them he speaks: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" — he himself drawing from himself the substance of creatures, the pattern of things made, and the form of the world's adornment.

Scripture has spoken well: "First of all, believe that there is one God, who established and completed all things, making them out of nothing so that they might exist — the one who can contain all things and whom no one can contain." The prophet Malachi agrees: "Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?" (Mal 2:10). The Apostle echoes this: "One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Eph 4:6). The Lord himself says: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father" — clearly by the One who made all things, for nothing has been withheld. Therefore he is the Judge of the living and the dead, holding the key of David: "He will open, and no one will shut; he will shut, and no one will open." No one in heaven, on earth, or under the earth could open the Father's scroll or even look upon it, except the Lamb who was slain and redeemed us by his blood. He received all authority from the One who made all things by the Word and adorned them by Wisdom, at the moment the Word became flesh — so that, just as the Word of God held primacy in heaven, he might also hold primacy on earth, because he is the righteous man who committed no sin, in whose mouth no deceit was found. And he might hold primacy over the things under the earth, having become the firstborn from the dead, so that all things might see their King, as we foretold. The Father's light shines upon the flesh of the Lord, and from his flesh a radiant light comes to us, that humanity might become incorruptible, wrapped in the Father's light.

We have shown by many witnesses that the Word — that is, the Son — was always with the Father. And that Wisdom — that is, the Spirit — was with him before any ordering of creation. Solomon says: "By wisdom the Lord laid the earth's foundations; by understanding he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge the deeps were broken open and the clouds dropped dew." And again: "The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth." And again: "When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man."

Therefore there is one God, who by the Word and Wisdom made and ordered all things. He is the Artificer who gave this world to the human race. By magnitude he remains unknown to all who were made by him: no one has searched out his height — neither the ancients who have rested nor those who live now. But by love he is always known through the One through whom he established all things — our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the last times became man among men to join the end to the beginning. And so the prophets, receiving the prophetic gift from the same Word, foretold his coming in the flesh, by which the mingling and communion of God and humanity were accomplished according to the Father's good pleasure. From the beginning the Word of God foretold that God would be seen by human beings, would walk and speak with them on earth, would draw near to his creation, saving it, being perceived by it, and delivering us from the hands of all who hate us — that is, from the spirit of all transgression — and making us serve him in holiness and righteousness all our days, so that the human being who has received the Spirit of God might pass into the glory of the Father.