§41. Answer to the Greeks. Do they recognise the Logos? If He manifests Himself in the organism of the Universe, why not in one Body? for a human body is a part of the same whole.
But one cannot but be utterly astonished at the
Gentiles, who, while they laugh at what is no matter for jesting, are
themselves insensible to their own disgrace, which they do not see that
they have set up in the shape of stocks and stones. 2. Only, as our
argument is not lacking in demonstrative proof, come let us put them
also to shame on reasonable grounds,—mainly from what we
ourselves also see. For what is there on our side that is absurd, or
worthy of derision? Is it merely our saying that the Word has been made
manifest in the body? But this even they will join in owning to have
happened without any absurdity, if they show themselves friends of
truth. 3. If then they deny that there is a Word of God at all, they do
so gratuitously, jesting at what they
know not. 4. But if they confess that there is a Word of God, and He
ruler of the universe, and that in Him the Father has produced the
creation, and that by His Providence the whole receives light and life
and being, and that He reigns over all, so that from the works of His
providence He is known, and through Him the Father,—consider, I
pray you, whether they be not unwittingly raising the jest against
themselves. 5. The philosophers of the Greeks say that the universe is
a great body; and rightly so. For we see it and its
parts as objects of our senses. If, then, the Word of God is in the
Universe, which is a body, and has united Himself with the whole and
with all its parts, what is there surprising or absurd if we say that
He has united Himself with man also. 6. For
if it were absurd for Him to have been in a body at all, it would be
absurd for Him to be united with the whole either, and to be giving
light and movement to all things by His providence. For the whole also
is a body. 7. But if it beseems Him to unite Himself with the universe, and to be made known in the whole, it must beseem Him also to appear in a human body, and that by Him it should be illumined and work. For mankind is part of the whole as well as the rest. And if it be unseemly for a part to have been adopted as His instrument to teach men of His Godhead, it must be most absurd that He should be made known even by the whole universe.