I read this book with others in a lunchtime discussion group. Our meetings were led by a local Orthodox minister.

This book, at first glance, is easier to read than you might expect. The sentences (a translation from Greek) are in simple structures. The vocabulary is fairly ordinary, and the chapters are short - but the content goes much, much deeper.

This book is a logical, reasoned proof for the incarnation of the Creator God in the person of Jesus Christ. Athanasius moves through the objections against Christ as the son of God systematically, de-constructing poor arguments and burning straw men. This book will make you think. The more comfortable you are with logic, the better.

This is not a book that will necessarily have you flipping through a Bible. Because Athanasius was creating an argument for people, mostly, that did not believe in the Bible as a credible source he builds his arguments (in some chapters more than others) without using much of the Scripture.

The Orthodox minister who led my group was a wealth of encyclopedic information about the culture of Athanasius. I have no doubt this greatly enriched my reading experience. If you don't have someone like this at your disposal I would think having a text about the ancient Greco-Roman culture that you can easily reference would be handy. Occasionally Athanasius references items or beliefs current to his time that would be obscure to the average reader today.

I highly recommend reading this if you like to think, and if you like to be challenged. It's a well-thought argument. If you're a believer you'll find it enriching. If you're a non-believer you might look for holes in his argument, or who knows, maybe be swayed by it. It's a classic either way.