Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the… - Athanasius of Alexandria

For God has not only created us from nothing, but also granted us by the grace of the Word to live a life according to God.

But when the human being had once been made, and necessity required the healing, not for the things that were not, but for the things that had come to be, it followed that the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created, to heal what existed. He became a human being for this, and used his body as a human instrument. For if it was not right to happen in this way, how should the Word appear, when he wished to use an instrument? Or whence was he to take it, if not from those who already existed and had need of his divinity through one like [themselves]? For it was not non-existent things that needed salvation, so that a command alone would have sufficed, but the human being, already in existence, who was corrupted and perishing. Whence it was reasonable and good that the Word should use a human instrument and unfold himself to all things.

For if a King constructed a house or a city, and it is attacked by bandits because of the carelessness of its inhabitants, he in no way abandons it, but avenges and saves it as his own work, having regard not for the carelessness of the inhabitants but for his own honor. All the more so, the God Word of the all-good-Father did not neglect the race of human beings, created by himself, which was going to corruption, but he blotted out the death which had occurred through the offering of his own body, and correcting their carelessness by his own teaching, restoring every aspect of human beings by his own power.