We pass on to his conception of the relation of God to Creation. All things are conceived as pre-existing in God—potentially in the Father, actually in essence in the Son. In Him dwells all the fullness bodily, that is (according to V.) in the Eternal Word dwells all existence substantially—οὐσιακῶς. Whatever came into being subsequently in time, in Him was eternally Life. Thus the Λόγος is the "Λόγος of all things"—the universal Logos—the seed of all things, even in His Eternal Being, containing all things in Himself in archetypal reality. (Adv. Ar. i. 25, 1059 A; ii. 3, 1091 B; iii. 3, 1100 C, and iv. 4, 1116 C, where the Word is almost identified with the Platonic "ideas"; at least, He contains the ideas in Himself, as "species" or "potentiae principales.") It follows that the Son is very mainly considered as existing with a view to Creation. He exists as the "Λόγος of all that is" with a view to the being of whatever is ("ad id quod est esse iis quae sunt"). It is His essence to move, as it is the Father's to repose. The "motus" in virtue of which He is, is still pressing outward, so to speak, from the "fontana vita" of the Father.
All this is somewhat neo-Platonic in tone. What follows is almost pure and undiluted neo-Platonism, e.g. his description of the process of Creation, as a drawing out of the plenitude of God into a chain or gradation of existences. He; adopts the neo-Platonic conception of "anima" as something capable of spiritualization, but not yet "spirit"—intermediate between spirit and matter. He follows neo-Platonism in his conception of the "return of all things" into God (adv. Ar. iii. 1, 1098 B; iv. 11, 1121 A, B; de Gen. 10, 1026 A, B; adv. Ar. iii. 3, 1100 C; Hymn 1, 1141 A; in Eph. i. 4, 1239 B, C). He is simply neo-Platonic in his conception of matter and the material world. "Matter" has no existence independent of God; in itself it is "non-existent"—an abstraction. Man is regarded as a mixed being, a spiritual "anima" (see in Eph. i, 4, 1239 C) merged in the corruption of matter. He calls the human race "animae seminatae saeclis" corrupted by the material darkness in which they are merged (Hymn 1, 1142 A; adv. Ar. i. 26, 1060 A; i. 62, 1087 B). Misled by this ineradicable misconception of material life, he thinks in a Platonic and non-Christian spirit of men as existing in an unfallen condition, in a pre-mundane state of being, and being born into the corruption of material life at their natural birth. Moral evil, from this point of view, must be physical and necessary.
The other main effect of Platonism upon Victorinus's anthropology is to produce a profound and unmitigated Predestinarianism. His ideology leads him (in his Comm. in Eph. at least) to assert not only the pre-existence of the absolute "anima" in the Eternal Word, but the pre-existence of all particular souls. All the history of the soul in its descent into matter, and its recovery therefrom through the Incarnate Christ, is only the development of the idea of the soul which pre-existed eternally, individually, and substantially in the Mind and Will of God. (1245 C, 1243 C, 1238 C, 1239 B, 1242 B. What exists in God's thought must exist substantially.)
But these Platonizing elements in his teaching do not occupy all the ground. They lie side by side with the stock conceptions of Christian truth, no less emphasized sometimes than the Platonic views. Thus the common view of sin and responsibility and the origin of evil in the corrupt choice of the free will is emphasized several times (e.g. ad Justin. Man. 16, 1008 B), and it would seem that, much as the mode of conceiving Redemption which Victorinus adopts would lead to Universalism, he is not a Universalist. (In Eph. 1281 A, B; cf. 1282 C, D; 1286 B, C. On Universalism, see in Phil. 1221 B, "universos, sed qui sequerentur"; in Eph. 1245 B, "non omnia restaurantur sed quae in Christo sunt"; cf. 1274 C, "quae salvari possent." This interprets such passages as 1252 C.)
Again though on one occasion the view given of the Incarnation is vitiated by the notion of the essential corruption of matter (adv. Ar. i. 58, 1084 C), in general his Incarnation teaching is strikingly sound and repudiates by anticipation a good deal of 5th-cent. heresy. God the Son enters into conditions of real humanity. He takes human nature whole and complete into the unity of a single Person (it is an "acceptio carnis," not a proper "generation" of a person), and He lives, God in Manhood ("Deus in homine" [homo = manhood] adv. Ar. i. 14, 1048 D; i. 45, 1075 B; in Phil. 1208 C, 1224 C.; he, however, uses an Adoptionist phrase, adv. Ar. i. 10, 1045 C.) The humanity which He takes is emphasized as universal ("universalis caro, universalis anima; in isto omnia universalia erant," iii. 3, 1101 A). Thus the passion in which He suffers for man's redemption is universal, because He suffers as representative of the race He is to re-create (in Phil. 1196 D, 1221 B, and adv. Ar. l.c.). The effect of Christ taking humanity is to make the whole of that which He assumed—soul and flesh—vital with new capacities of life. The "Word made flesh" makes the flesh He took to be life in Him Who is the Life ("omne quod Christus est vita aeterna est," etc., iv. 7, 1118 A; cf. language about Eucharist below); and in this humanity—spirit, soul, and body—which Christ took, He is glorified and exalted (iv. 7, 1118 B; cf. in Eph. 1259 B, "aeterna caro," "corporalis majestas"). Through it He lives in His people, so that they become what He is, through Him. They become part of the Christ. The church is Christ (in Gal. 1173 C, D; cf. 1184 B), and we are to be glorified, body and soul, in Christ (in. Phil. 1226 A, B, 1227 A; cf. in Eph. 1255 B, "resurrectio Christi, resurrectio nostra").
Victorinus uses suggestive language about the sacraments and ministry of the church in relation to the communication to us of the life of Christ, e.g. (on baptism) in Gal. iii. 27; 1173 B and 1184 B; in Eph. v. 25, 1287 C; (on the Eucharist) adv. Ar. ii. 8, 1094 C ("quod accipimus Corpus Christi est, ipse autem Christus, vita est . . . divitiae in Christo corporaliter habitant"; cf. adv. Ar. i. 30, 1063 B, "Corpus ipsius Vita est, Corpus autem Panis." "Panis ἐπιούσιος," in the Lord's Prayer, is interpreted as "panis ex ipsa aut in ipsa Substantia, hoc est vitae panis," and referred to the Eucharist, and, in the
