The Incarnation

1. Out of an inclination to mercy, our Savior became the same as what those for whose sake he appeared became through an instinctive passion, namely, flesh and soul, which constantly holds sway over them, and they are destroyed and die.

2. Yet, those who [came into being] [as] invisible and invisibly, he taught them concerning himself invisibly.

3. He not only took on [himself] the death of those whom he intended to save, but he embraced their smallness as well, to which they had fallen when they were [born] with body and soul, because he deigned to be born as a child with body and soul.

4. He participated in all the other situations that those who had fallen shared in, even though they possessed the light, despite his being exalted above them, because he deigned to be conceived without sin, impurity, and corruption.

5. He was begotten into physical life, dwelling in life, because it was determined that both would equally become body and soul on account of the passion and shifting inclination from the Word who had bestirred himself (in conversion).

6. But in view of the plan of salvation, it was he [who] took on himself the results of those things we mentioned before, namely, what came into being from the illuminating vision and the firm thought of the Word after his self-conversion, after he bestirred himself.

7. This is how those who, like him, assumed body and soul, and an establishment and stability and wisdom.

8. It had been determined beforehand that they would come together with the coming of the Savior that also had been determined beforehand.

9. Only when the Savior had made the decision did they also come.

10. So they came, surpassing much more in their fleshly emanation those who had been produced from the deficiency, because this was how they, too, underwent corporeal emanation, as did the Savior, through the revelation of their union with him.

11. These are those of a singular substance, even that which is spiritual.

12. The plan of salvation, though, is diverse, this being one thing, that, another.

13. Some emerge from passion and division, being in need of healing.

14. Others issue from prayer that heals the sick, being appointed to treat the fallen, these being the apostles and the preachers of the message.

15. They are the students of the Savior, and instructors for those in need of teaching.

16. Then why is it that they also participate in the (same) passions as those who were produced from passion, if in accord with the plan of salvation they were produced in one body with [the] Savior, who did not participate in such passions?

17. The Savior was an image of a singular entity, being the Totality in bodily mode.

18. He consequently maintained the pattern of inseparability, from which issues impassability.

19. Yet they are images of each one who was revealed, which is why they embrace separation from their pattern, given that they assumed form for the planting that exists beneath the heaven, and that also participates in the evil that prevails in the places they have attained.

20. For the will held captive the Totality under sin, so that by will he could bestow mercy on the Totality, and that they could be saved, given that one who is singular is chosen to give life, all the rest being in need of salvation.

21. Because of this, he was the first of those to obtain the grace of bestowing the gifts preached by those he considered deserving of preaching to others.

22. Because [the] seed of the promise of Jesus Christ was put in place, whose revelation and union we have served, the promise made teaching possible, even the return to what they had been at the beginning, they possessing a drop inclining them to return to it, which is what they call “redemption,” which is the release from captivity and the attainment of freedom.

23. The captivity is that of those who were enslaved to ignorance.

24. By contrast, freedom is the knowledge of the truth that existed before ignorance, prevailing eternally without beginning and without end, being what is good, a panacea, and a release from the enslaving nature that made those suffer who had been produced in a lowly thought of vacuity, the nature of the evil inclination, through the thought that degrades them to the lust for control.

25. From the wealth of grace that looked on the children, they received the treasure of freedom.

26. (Freedom) casts down passion and destroys those things that it earlier discarded from itself when the Word had separated them from himself.

27. He destined them for destruction until [the] the plan of salvation ends, and allowed them to continue to exist because they, too, were of use for the things that had been predetermined.