Since he said above that in God there is no change near at hand, nor any alteration whatsoever, by this word he showed that God is immutable. He has neither beginning of birth nor end.
Therefore he next says that He Himself willed and brought us forth when we did not exist. For if we did not exist and were brought forth, it is clear that we are changeable and mutable.
How can that which has come from non-being into being by means of change not be subject to change?
Further, since he said that He brought us forth, lest anyone think that God brought forth His Son as He did us, he consequently says that He brought us forth “by the word of truth.”
According to the Evangelist John, “all things were made through Him” (Jn 1:3), that is, through the true Word of God.
Thus, if the creation of us men was through the Son and Word, then we, being created, are not consubstantial with the uncreated Word of the Father, by Whom we were created, nor co-eternal with Him.
By “firstfruits” he means the first and most honorable of the creatures of sensible and visible nature. Saint Mitrophan gives the following interpretation of “firstfruits.”
“Since we came to be from Him, we were to be the firstfruits of His visible creatures. This is beauty, honor, and the most excellent creation.
In order that we might lose nothing of our original nature, we received dominion from Him Who created us, so as to possess and rule over all other animals, those that swim, live on land, and fly.”
It seems to me that here the divine James calls man the firstfruits because man is a small center, or better, an epitome and completion not only of visible creatures, but also of invisible and intellectual creatures.
For man was created from both, from the sensible and from the intellectual, as Gregory the Theologian said. Democritus and other wise men call man a microcosm, because he contains within himself all the forms of the whole world.
In other sources it reads, “For He Himself, of His own will, brought us forth by the word of truth.”
Some teachers understood this saying as referring to the second and spiritual regeneration of Christians, received through re-creation and Baptism, and through the word of truth, as a kind of firstfruits of God’s creatures and of other men.
They did not understand it through the first, common creation of all men. Christians were chosen out of all nations as the firstfruits and election of God, as Paul also says to the Thessalonians: “Knowing, beloved brethren, your election by God” (1 Thess 1:4).
The birth of the Son and Word of God is the work of the divine nature. Our birth, that is, creation, is the work of the divine will.
As Saint John of Damascus said: “Therefore in God, Who alone is passionless, immutable, unchangeable, and always the same, both begetting and creation are passionless.
For being by nature passionless and foreign to flow, because He is simple and uncompounded, He cannot be subject either to passion or to flow, whether in begetting or in creating. Nor does He need anyone’s cooperation.
But begetting in Him is without beginning and eternal, because it is an activity of His nature and proceeds from His essence. Otherwise the One begetting would suffer change, and there would be a first God and a later God, and increase would occur.
Creation in God, however, as an activity of will, is not co-eternal with God. For what is brought from non-being into being cannot be co-eternal with the Beginningless and Ever-Existing One” (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, book 1, ch. VIII).
The God-bearing Maximus also said: “That which came to be by the will of the Creator can never be co-eternal with the One Who willed to create it” (Gnostic Chapters, century 3, ch. 7).
THEOSIS