On the Incarnation: Saint Athanasius (Popular Patristics Series Book 44)

by Athanasius of Alexandria

Coming himself into our realm, and dwelling in a body like the others, every design of the enemy against human beings has henceforth ceased, and the corruption of death, which had prevailed formerly against them, perished.

For the race of human beings would have been utterly dissolved had not the Master and Savior of all, the Son of God, come for the completion of death.

Truly this great work supremely befitted the goodness of God.

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...

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 hi...

Then, he also points out the reason why it was necessary for none other than the God Word to be incarnate, saying, “For it was fitting that he, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Heb 2.10).

Saying this, he means that it was for none other to bring human beings out from the corruption that had occurred except the God Word who had also created them in the beginning.

For what profit would there be for those who were made, if they did not know their own Maker?

But human beings, being again foolish, despising the grace thus given to them, so turned away from God and so darkened their own soul, that they not only forgot the concept of God but also fashioned for themselves others instead.

But knowing the weakness of human beings, God anticipated also their carelessness, so that if they cared not to recognize God through themselves, through the works of creation they might not be ignorant of the Creator.

But, what is most marvelous, being the Word, he was not contained by anyone, but rather himself contained everything.

For if the sun, too, made by him and seen by us, circling in heaven, is not polluted by touching bodies upon the earth, nor is destroyed by darkness, but rather itself enlightens and purifies them, by so much more the all-holy Word of God, the maker of the sun and Lord, when being made known in the body was not polluted, but rather, being incorruptible, vivified and purified even the mortal body.

But just as he was known by these things to be bodily present, so also from the works he did through the body he made himself known to be Son of God.

For who, seeing the body come from a virgin alone without a man, would not think that he who was revealed in this was the Creator and Lord of the other bodies?

Indeed, with the common Savior of all dying for us, we, the faithful in Christ, no longer die by death as before according to the threat of the law, for such condemnation has ceased.

If, then, it was in some private place that he laid his body upon a bed in the manner of human beings, it would have been supposed that he also suffered this through the weakness of nature and because he had nothing more than other humans.

Why, then, did he not prevent death, just as he did illness? Because it was for this that he had the body, and it was unfitting to prevent it, lest the resurrection should also be hindered.

Moreover, it was again unfitting for illness to precede death, lest it be thought a weakness of him who was in the body.

Such action did not show weakness on the part of the Word, but rather made him known to be Savior and Life, in that he both waited for death to destroy it and hastened to complete the death given to him for the salvation of all.

But if any one from among us asks, not as a lover of contention but as a lover of learning, why he endured the cross rather than some other way, then let him hear that in no other way than this was it beneficial for us, and that it was good that the Lord endured this for us.

For as he offered to death on behalf of all, so through it he opened up again the way to heaven.

Whatever king that ever was, “before he was able to cry out ‘father’ or ‘mother,’” reigned and gained trophies over his enemies?

He it is that was crucified, with the sun and creation as witnesses together with those who inflicted death upon him; and by his death salvation has come to all, and all creation been ransomed.

He it is who is the Life of all, and who like a sheep delivered his own body to death as a substitute for the salvation of all, even if the Jews do not believe.

Therefore even the Jews then seeing these things said that at no other time had they heard of these things happening, “From the ages never has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing” (Jn 9.32–3).

So the Jews are telling fables, and putting off the time which is actually now.

But if, even though creation is something made, it is not absurd for the Word to be in it, then neither is it absurd for him to be in a human being.

yet human beings were not able to know him even though he was ordering and guiding the universe, he takes a part of the whole for himself as an instrument, the human body, and came into it, in order that since human beings were not able to know him in the whole they should not fail to know him in the part;

Next, this must also be known, that the corruption which had occurred was not outside the body, but attached to it, and it was necessary that instead of corruption, life should cleave to it, so that as death had come to be in the body, so too life might come to be in it.

But if death was interwoven with the body, and dominated it as if united to it, it was necessary for life to be interwoven with the body, so that the body putting on life should cast off corruption.

For how at all would the Lord have been shown to be Life, if not by giving life to the mortal?

For if he is a human being, how has one human being exceeded the power of all their gods, and proved by his power that they are nothing?

So, then, if the Savior is not simply a human being, nor a magician, nor a demon, but by his divinity has destroyed and overshadowed the suppositions of poets and the illusions of the demons and the wisdom of the Greeks, it should be clear and will be confessed by all that this one is the true Son of God, being the Word and Wisdom and Power of the Father.

For this reason his works are not human, but beyond human, and they are known to be truly of God both from the very appearances and by comparison with those of human beings.

At the death of which human being was the sun darkened and the earth shaken?

Or, to leave aside the deeds done through his body and recall those after the resurrection of his body: whose teaching, of all those human beings who ever existed, prevailed from one end of the earth to the other, one and the same throughout the whole, so that his worship has spread through the whole world?

Or why, if Christ is a man and not the God Word as they hold, is not his worship prevented by their gods from passing into the regions where they are, but rather why does the Word himself, sojourning here, cause their worship to cease by his teaching and put their illusion to shame?

But if they appear to be, and are, works not of human beings but of God, why are the unbelievers so impious as not to recognize the Master who wrought them?