On The Incarnation

by Athanasius of Alexandria

The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.

A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it. It has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books.

The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (“mere Christianity” as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books.

you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books.

Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously

People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us.

Measured against the ages “mere Christianity” turns out to be no insipid interdenominational transparency, but something positive, self-consistent, and inexhaustible.

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it.

He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, “whole and undefiled,” when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius—into one of those “sensible” synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today

It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away.

St. Athanasius himself approached the mystery of Christ “not as a theologian, but as a believing soul in need of a Saviour”;

In the De Incarnatione he sets forth the positive content of the Christian faith, as he has himself received it. Therein lies its value. It is not speculative, it is not original; as far as Christians are concerned it is not even controversial, for the need for defending the central truth of the Godhead of the Word within the Church itself had not yet arisen. It is a statement of the traditional faith of the Catholic Church;

the wonder of the mystery fills all the picture and leaves no room for the author to obtrude himself. Yet by a true Christian paradox his whole self is in it, and it is through his personality that the dynamic truth is mediated to us.

in Athanasius the authentic principle of redemption was at work, and he turned every circumstance to gold.

He knew that the very existence of the Church was at stake; but he was utterly certain of the truth and he knew that it must in time prevail.

The monks were unswerving in their loyalty to him; and he was consistent in his support of them.

Athanasius, as we have seen, though a Copt by birth, was in all else completely Greek.

Athanasius always knew the real thing when he saw

“He grew rich in contemplation, rich in splendour of life, combining them in wondrous sort by that golden bond which few can weave, using life as the guide of contemplation, contemplation as the seal of life.”

it is through Him that the Father gives order to creation,

There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation;

Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked—namely, the impress of His own Image,

when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good.

God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word.

the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law,

That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption,

It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits.

It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.

Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled, and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be.

The Self-revealing of the Word is in every dimension—above, in creation; below, in the Incarnation; in the depth, in Hades; in the breadth, throughout the world. All things have been filled with the knowledge of God.

The marvellous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself.

His body was for Him not a limitation, but an instrument,

At one and the same time—this is the wonder—as Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father.

His being in everything does not mean that He shares the nature of everything, only that He gives all things their being and sustains them in it.

to change the corruptible to incorruption was proper to none other than the Saviour Himself, Who in the beginning made all things out of nothing;

only the Image of the Father could re-create the likeness of the Image in men,

none save our Lord Jesus Christ could give to mor...

only the Word Who orders all things and is alone the Father’s true and sole-begotten Son could teach men about Him ...

Thus it happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord’s body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished.

Have no fear, then.

That condemnation has come to an end;

“Why did He not prevent death, as He did sickness?” Because it was precisely in order to be able to die that He had taken a body, and to prevent the death would have been to impede the resurrection.

though He died to ransom all, He did not see corruption. His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself.

How could He have called us if He had not been crucified, for it is only on the cross that a man dies with arms outstretched?

we see the fitness of His death and of those outstretched arms: it was that He might draw His ancient people with the one and the Gentiles with the other, and join both together in Himself.

“I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men...

This is the work of One Who lives, not of one dead; and, more than that, it is the work of God.