But if anyone should say that there is a third account, as fitting to be stated concerning the uncreated things — that is, that God is neither separated from matter nor again united with it as its parts, but that, as in a place, God is in matter, or also matter in God — let him hear this: that if we say matter is the place of God, it is necessary to say that He is contained and circumscribed by matter.
Moreover, it is also necessary that He be borne along in disorder like matter, and not stand still, nor of necessity remain in Himself, since that in which He is, is borne now this way, now that. Besides this, it is also necessary to say that God has come to be in worse circumstances. For if matter was once disordered, and He set it in order, choosing to turn it to the better, there was once a time when God was among things unordered.
And I would justly ask this too: did God fill matter, or was He in some part of it? For if someone should wish to say that God is in some part of matter, he is saying that He is by far smaller than matter, if indeed some single part of it contained the whole God. But if he should say that He is in all of it and has pervaded the whole of matter, let him tell how He fashioned it. For it is necessary either to say there is some contraction of God, upon whose occurring He fashioned that from which He had withdrawn, or else that He fashions together with Himself, having no place into which to withdraw.
But if someone says that matter is in God, it is likewise necessary to examine: whether it is as though He were spaced apart from Himself, and just as in air there exist kinds of living creatures, with Him being divided and parceled out for the reception of the things coming to be in Him; or whether as in a place — that is, as water in earth.
For if we should say it is as in air, it is necessary to say that God is divisible; but if as water in earth, and matter was disordered and unarranged, and besides this contained evils as well, it is necessary to say that God is the place of the unordered things and of the evils. Which seems to me not auspicious, but rather perilous. For you wish matter to exist so that you may not call God the maker of evils, and yet, choosing to flee this, you say that He is the receptacle of evils.
If, then, you were saying that matter is to be supposed uncreated on the basis of the created things which subsist, I would have made a long argument concerning it, to demonstrate that it is impossible for it to be uncreated. But since you say that the origin of evils is the cause of such a supposition, on this account it seems good to me to come to the examination of these. For when it becomes clear by the argument in what manner the evils exist, and that it is not possible to call God free of responsibility for evils by positing matter for Him, such a supposition seems to me to be done away with.