The Creator and Center of All

The meeting with the Lord was thought of generally—that is, with Abraham—the Melchizedek. What then is the will of their empty-headedness and how is it absurd? For they say whoever wishes to call Him the Beginning, and confess the end, and promise to the generation, and accept death from this generation; and they suppose that which comes from non-existence or from the dissimilarity of the divine essence to have become mortal and at the same time foreign to the composition of the Father, which is merely said, not even honored, as a mediator of all ungodliness.

But are their things then strong against the 'In the beginning was the Word' (John 1:1)? It was written also concerning creation, he says, the 'was'. For it has 'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth, and the earth was formless and void' (Gen 1:1-2), and 'there was a man of Ramathaim-Ziphah' (1 Sam 9:1). There is nothing common to the 'In the beginning was' and the 'In the beginning God made', nor to the creator in relation to the creation. For the 'was' concerning the creation is said and believed only regarding the flowing and passing time.

For the creation was after the non-existent came to be. For he said in advance that He made it, and then he added the 'was', so that it might not be thought automatic. But concerning the God the Word, it signifies the super-beginning. For 'In the beginning', he says, 'was' and 'was God' (John 1:1), and the 'In the beginning was' pushes out from non-existence.

But they testify concerning the being of the Son as eternal and maker of the ages thus: Paul, writing to the Hebrews: 'Long ago God, speaking in many parts and many ways, to the fathers by the prophets, in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages' (Heb 1:1-2); so he inherits his own things both as maker of them and as true Son; and he was appointed heir as having become man. And to the Corinthians in the first epistle: 'For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ' (1 Cor 3:11), that is, it is impossible for a beginning of the Son to be devised. 'For in him and through him' is every beginning.

And David in the 84th psalm, singing about the ruler: 'Our God, the eternal King, worked salvation in the midst of the earth' (Ps 84:11). And he says the Golgotha, the middle place and such like.

A center which names him under heaven; in whom, by his divine foreknowledge, the Son worked out salvation for us through the incarnation, and in fact, when the impassible one suffered through goodness as he knew and willed for our sake, and reached, as they say, 'to the heart of the earth' (Ezekiel 28:26: 'I have set her, Jerusalem, in the midst of the nations'). And in the 119th Psalm: 'Forever, Lord, your word remains in heaven' (Psalm 119:89). And the Lord himself, utterly excluding the heretics, said concerning himself: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, before the ages were, I am' (John 8:58).

Regarding the establishing of all things as creator, both incorporeal and corporeal, but not as subordinate or mediator, and in this also as without beginning, according to the testimonies already set forth; and David in the 33rd Psalm sings: 'Our God in heaven and on earth did all that he willed' (Psalm 33:6). He did not say: 'all that was permitted.'

Who then would deny that the self-determining and all-determining Monad exists, the one who acts by his own will and has all things rushing together by his pure, intrinsic breath, without necessity? And in the 89th Psalm: 'You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. And all of them will grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll them up, and they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will not fail' (Psalm 89:11-12), instead of 'you are without beginning and without end.'

And Paul writes the same to the Ephesians: 'in God who created all things' (Ephesians 1:16), and to the Colossians: 'because in him all things were created, those in the heavens and those on the earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things consist' (Colossians 1:16-17). For he who essentially depicts God and the one before all things in divinity, no one surpasses or is elder than him, just as no one is subject to or later than the one who is after all things.

And in another way: if he is before all things, alone from alone and by alone, absolutely generated before every activity, and is essentially the Son of the Father. For it is necessary...