The Divine Logos and Creation

Regarding the one saying through the Holy Spirit, 'and they shall worship you, and in you they shall pray; for in you is God, and there is no other besides you. For you are God' (Rev 22:8), you see how he uproots the skillful cunning of those teaching falsely. Likewise, there the prophet discourses about the Word having taken our flesh. A spirit of shadow could never have become a creative spirit. And because he is God himself, the Savior said, 'Spirit, God' (John 1:1). And because God is light, he himself teaches us, saying, 'I am the light' (John 8:12).

For who else, whether of the holy angels or of righteous men, was reliable enough to loose the penalty set for him from the face of God, if not the Word himself, who is both co-existing and co-forming, toward whom the Father said, 'Let us make man in our image and likeness' (Gen 1:26), with no other god existing who would be able to co-form with him? 'I am,' he says, 'the first God, and I after these things, and besides me no other god exists.' Nor was there any younger god, nor was any other god being 'after these things' able to work together with God.

But if anyone uses a small and human example like ours to examine the divine action as if through an icon: just as a skilled man who is a statue-maker, desiring to fashion a man, first observes his forms and characters within himself, then conceives what breadth and length is becoming, and examines the proportion of the whole in each individual part, having prepared the appropriate material of bronze, and having modeled the coming man after his own intellect and seeing him mentally, consciously cooperating with the Logos—by which he reasons and by which he is accustomed to do all things (for nothing beautiful comes into being without the Logos)—beginning this sensible work, he exhorts himself as if to another, saying, 'Come, let us make, come, let us fashion a man';

Thus the Lord of all, God, making the ensouled man from the earth, exhorts no one else but his own Logos, saying, 'Let us make man' (Gen 1:26), not in the same way as the others; for the whole creation came into being by the Logos. For God did not need any other preparation, such as matter or some other human thing, but this preparation which is in his own intellect.

Since it was impossible to conceive of God apart from the Word and the wisdom approaching the Word regarding the construction of the heavens, he rightly said, 'Whenever he was preparing the heavens, I was with him' (Proverbs 8:30). For before the world existed, the Word was in the Father. When the Almighty God set to make all things in the heavens and upon the earth, the genesis of the world required an active energy. And because of this, with no other existing besides God (for all is confessed to have come from him), the Word, having come forth, became the maker of the world, he who previously was inwardly preparing it, just as the prophet Solomon teaches us, saying, 'Whenever he was preparing the heavens, I was with him' (Proverbs 8:30) and 'As he was establishing springs under the heavens, whenever he was making the strong foundations of the earth, I was with him, fittingly joined to him; I was there as he was being applied' (Proverbs 8:29). For the Father rightly rejoiced in making all things through the Word with wisdom and power.

Just as all things that happened came from the Father through the Word, so also the things said by the Father are signified through the Word. For this reason also the most holy Moses names the Word an angel there, because he appeared through no other, but so that he might announce to Moses those things which he knew would be effective for the sons of Israel; and he knew they would be effective for believing that there is one God. Therefore also to him he said, 'I am the Being' (Exodus 3:14), in order that he might teach that no other besides himself is God. This is easy, I think, for those thinking well to know from a small and humble example among us. For it is not possible for anyone to separate the word of a man in power and substance; for the word is one and the same to a man, and is not separated from anything else, except by the energy of the act alone.

Here the Father says 'I am the Being' (Exodus 3:14) to Moses, but he says it clearly through the Word. For all that the Father says, he seems to be saying everywhere through the Word. And this is clear also from ourselves, in whatever small things we compare to the great and divine; for we also do all that we wish to say and do through our own word, according to our ability.

What then, does Asterios suppose the one saying 'I am the Being' (Exodus 3:14) to be, the Son or the Father? For two substances, setting aside the one which the Word of God took flesh into, the human one, and [...]