13. How the Life in
the Logos Comes After the Beginning.
Here, we must carefully observe, we have two things
which are one, and we have to define the difference between them.
First, what is before us in
The Word in the beginning,
then what
is implied in
The Life in the Word
. The Word was not
made
in the beginning; there was no time when the beginning was
devoid of the Word, and hence it is said, “In the beginning was
the Word.” Of life, on the other hand, we read, not that it
was as the Word, but that it was made; if at least it be the case that
the life is the light of men. For when man was not yet, there was
no light of men; for the light of men is conceived only in relation to
men. And let no one annoy us with the objection that we have put
this under the category of time, though it be the order of the things
themselves, that make them first and second and so on, and even though
there should have been no time when the things placed by the Logos
third and fourth were not in existence. As, then, all things
were made
by Him, not all things
were
by Him, and as
without Him
was
nothing
made
, not, without Him nothing
was
, so what
was made
in Him, not what
was
in Him,
was life. And, again, not what
was made
in the beginning
was the Word, but what
was
in the beginning was the Word.
Some of the copies, it is true, have a reading which is not devoid of
probability, “What was made is life in Him.” But if
life is the same thing as the light of men, then no one who is in
darkness is living, and none of the living is in darkness; but every
one who is alive is also in light, and every one who is in light is
living, so that not he only who is living, but every one who is living,
is a son of light; and he who is a son of light is he whose work shines
before men.