It's frankly embarrassing to admit how little I've read from the Patristics directly. This is the first time I've read Athanasius, "On the Incarnation," and wow, what have I been doing with my life??

What I found most striking about this little work is clear Athanasius is. Somehow, I've been led to believe that the early Church Fathers are too cryptic and mysterious for modern readers to understand (I don't know where I got that idea, so there's no one to blame but myself), but Athanasius writes with incredible precision and clarity. Furthermore, it's not as if Athanasius is writing with primitive, half-baked theological categories that still need hundreds of years to perfect; reading this little work, it's clear that Athanasius has a specific, robust theological system that he's working with--he has a fully developed Christology, which is more than can be said about many of the modern Christological discussions.

What I particularly found interesting is how closely Athanasius links the incarnation as a redemptive, atoning act in and of itself. For Athanasius, it's not simply that Christ took on a human body so that such a human body could be used as an arbitrary means for atonement. I have heard Athanasius' views summarized simply as: "he believed that Christ had to become a human so that he could die." Which is true--both of the incarnation and of Athanasius' view of the incarnation--but it doesn't nearly say enough. For Athanasius, the incarnation wasn't simply a means to crucifixion, rather, the crucifixion wouldn't mean anything at all without the incarnation being what it is: a redemptive act in which Christ begins to reverse the curse in his own body--the final blow of this reversal being the atonement for sin and the triumph over death through crucifixion and resurrection. I found this passage helpful:

"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. If, then, death had been outside the body, life would also have had to be outside 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. Otherwise, if the Word had been outside the body, and not in it, death would have been conquered by him most naturally, since death has no power against life, but nonetheless the attached corruption would have remained in the body. For this reason, the Savior rightly put on a body, in order that the body, being interwoven with life, might no longer remain as mortal in death, but, as having put on immortality, henceforth it might, when arising, remain immortal." Section 44.

This book was incredibly helpful for me. Count me down as one more believer in the importance of reading patristics for developing a healthy theology.