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Brian's Reviews > On the Incarnation
On the Incarnation
by Athanasius of Alexandria, C.S. Lewis , Sister Penelope Lawson
by Athanasius of Alexandria, C.S. Lewis , Sister Penelope Lawson
Athanasius, a 4th century Christian, wrote this as a long letter to a recent convert in order to help him understand Christ's Incarnation. It is ripe with orthodox Christian doctrine and one of the more powerful sections of the book is how he ties the passage in 1 Cor. 15:55 (O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?) to the martyrdom of the early Christian church. That in Christ's conquest of death He not only provided reconciliation with the Father culminating in eternal life, but also followers who embraced death while standing on the truth of these claims.
Not to be missed is C.S. Lewis's quotable introduction where he discusses the value of old books and recommends, as a "good rule: after reading a new book, never allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between." Good advice made all the wiser when choosing classic texts like this one from Athanasius.
Not to be missed is C.S. Lewis's quotable introduction where he discusses the value of old books and recommends, as a "good rule: after reading a new book, never allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between." Good advice made all the wiser when choosing classic texts like this one from Athanasius.
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Reading Progress
| 10/11/2012 | page 26 |
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21.0% | "We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God it Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning." |
| 10/11/2012 | page 26 |
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21.0% | "This distinctness of things [in creation] argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all." |
| 10/11/2012 | page 27 |
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22.0% | "Plato...said that God had made all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as a carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists...How could God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself?...If He...did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman." |
| 10/11/2012 | page 28 |
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23.0% | "Because there is a mind behind the universe, it did not originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, itself was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word." |
| 10/11/2012 | page 41 |
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34.0% | "The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image." |
| 10/11/2012 | page 45 |
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37.0% | "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." |
| 10/11/2012 | page 49 |
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40.0% | "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." |
| 10/11/2012 | page 54 |
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45.0% | "He, the Life of all, our Lord and Savior, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind...He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those others His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced." |
| 10/12/2012 | page 55 |
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45.0% | "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? Here, again, 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." |
| 10/12/2012 | page 58 |
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48.0% | "If anyone still doubts the conquest of death, after so many proofs and so many martyrdoms in Christ and such daily scorn of death by His truest servants, he certain does well to marvel at so great a thing, but he must not be obstinate in unbelief and disregard plain facts." |
| 10/12/2012 | page 73 |
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60.0% | "It is, in fact, a sign and notable proof of the coming of the Word that Jerusalem no longer stands, neither is prophet raised up nor vision revealed among them [Jews]...and when the Truth had come, what further need was there of the shadow?" |
| 10/12/2012 | page 93 |
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77.0% | "Such and so many are the Savior's achievements that follow from His Incarnation, that to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves...when one wants to take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, one cannot do so, even by reckoning them up, for the things that transcend one's thoughts are always more than those one think that one has grasped." |
