Spring, 2010 The Theology of De Incarnatione Daniel J.

Isadore

The Masterpiece of Athanasius C.S. Lewis put it this way, When I first opened De Incarnatione I soon discovered that I was reading a masterpiece The whole book, indeed, is a

picture of the Tree of Life a sappy and golden book full of confidence. i It cannot be said any better. Written by St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione (On the Incarnation) is indeed nothing short of a masterpiece. In this short but thorough treatise from the 4th century Patriarch, pastoral concern meets substantial theology in the essential act of God in Christ.
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It is evident from reading this work that Athanasius was not interested in philosophy or theology as a discipline in and of itself. His burning desire was for human souls.iii Due to this concern, he composed De Incarnatione from the standpoint of salvation. He wrote it to answer the question, How can one be saved?
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His response came to be comprised of six, sequential movements. First he

describes God s initial act of Creation, recounting both the nature and condition of man as God created him. Second, he takes a look at the Fall, examining Adam s sin and it s consequences. Third, he considers the doctrine of the Incarnation, describing Christ s person and His purpose in taking on human flesh. Fourth and fifth, Athanasius describes what was accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ. Finally, the Patriarch concludes with brief comments on the Second Coming of Christ. The rest of this paper will consist of an examination of these six movements.

Creation Athanasius did not believe that creation was self-originating or that it existed eternally. Against both the Epicureans and the Platonists, he affirmed that out of nothing and out of non-existence, absolute and utter, God brought creation into being in all of its beauty and complexity.v Which God did he believe made all things? Against the Gnostics, he declared that it was none other than the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who created through the Word, through Christ Himself.vi Athanasius believed unequivocally that God created the creation, all of it, through His own word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
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According to Athanasius, man was included in this creation of all things, yet unlike the rest of creation in a significant way. Though the entire creation was ex nihilo, Athanasius states that God reserved especial mercy for the race of men. Upon men, God bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked impress of his own Image.
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namely, the

This image was impressed upon man so that they

may be able to perceive the Image Absolute (Christ), and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life.
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Men were made in the image of God so that they could know and

commune with their Maker, for in fellowship with Him is where true happiness and joy would be found. Yet, there was more to it. Athanasius explains his belief that because man came into being out of nothing, he was in and of himself impermanent.xi By nature he was mortal.xii God, on the other hand, was the only one who truly and eternally existed.xiii Therefore, if man was to continue on, that continuance could only come

from God. In communion with God, man would not only become supreme happy but also immortal. In knowing His Maker then, man would live in that knowledge forever.

The Fall What went wrong? Why did this man, fashioned from the dust of the creation by the Lord Jesus Himself, need to be saved? According to Athanasius, man was not only made in God s image, but also given the freedom to choose whether or not he would turn to God or away from Him. Having been set in God s own paradise, he was placed under probation. By guarding his capacity to know God he would retain his life in paradise, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven.
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However, if he chose to run from God he would no longer live in paradise but would instead experience a state of corruption and death.xv Well run he did. Man, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death.
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Due to his failure

to withstand Satan s temptation, man had incurred the penalty of death and entered into the process of becoming corrupted entirely.
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As Athanasius saw it, man had

turned back to his nature. Having come into being out of non-existence, he was now on his way back to non-existence.xviii Why, according to Athanasius, did the Fall ultimately lead to non-existence? He viewed evil as non-being , for God alone truly exists. Therefore, by turning away from God, the existence Himself, man would ultimately dissolve into non-

existence. It is only through constant contemplation of God, through communion with God, that man could continue to exist. There is no doubt that Athanasius was influenced by some form of Platonic thought, causing him to view the Fall in ontological terms rather than in ethical categories. Whether one is liable to fall out of existence apart from a right relationship to God is surely debatable. However, the substance of what he said remains true even if one does not agree with the conceptual language that he used. Apart from God lies death. It was due to this historical Fall of mankind, the pinnacle of God s creation, that man needed to be saved. Man had subjected himself to both corruption and death, having turned away from God. On account of this supreme blunder, the Word of God took on human flesh.

The Incarnation It was due to the sin of man that the Son of God, in His great love, took humanity s nature upon Himself, being born and manifested in a human body. is important to note that in Athanasius theology the primary motive for the Incarnation was based upon the very character of God, namely his love and his goodness. Athanasius clearly believed that God willed the good of Adam, desiring Him to remain in communion with Himself and so live eternally.xx God did not create Adam to simply test him. He made Adam to love him, and that Adam might know His love.
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It

Assuming the goodwill of God toward man, Athanasius saw it as unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing and supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear. Such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes, states Athanasius, would argue not goodness in God but limitation . In other words,
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Athanasius did not see salvation as an option for God. Based on His character, no other course of action would have been appropriate for the good and loving Creator of all things. It was impossible that He would not save.xxii However, it was also equally impossible that God should not fulfill His word to man, that if he were to turn away he would surely die. In order for God to be God, not only must God rescue man, but also death must hold dominion over men.
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It

was to maintain the Father s consistency of character that the Son came into the world. For only He could maintain God s integrity both in love and fulfillment of His word of judgment, recreating all and suffering on behalf of all .xxiv There is absolutely no doubt that Athanasius believed Christ to be none other than God Himself. He describes Him as the immortal one who created and fills all things.xxv Yet this one who has been abiding in union with the Father for all eternity took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own.
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Put simply,

God Himself became man to save man. If Athanasius was clear on anything it was this point. In Christ one did not merely find a good man or even a great man. Christ was none other than fully God and fully man. Had He been anything less than God, death would have been his defeat. However, if he had been other than man He would not have been able to enter into death to defeat it. It was only this God-man

that was able to break the law of death that hung over the head of humanity without ultimately being broken by it.xxvii Yet, before the God-man was to die, He had a mission to fulfill with His life. Man, in the fall, did not simply sin and come under the reign of death. As Athanasius said, Men had turned from the contemplation of God above, and were looking for Him in the opposite direction, down among created things and things of sense.
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Man lost the knowledge of God in that primal transgression. He turned away from Him and fixed his attention on the creation rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25). Christ stepped into humanity so that once again man might come to know their God. Athanasius says that in the God-man, God met man half way.
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Because

man was already looking for God amongst created things, God obliged and made Himself an object for the senses so that those who were looking for God might find him through the works of the God-man.xxx Therefore, no matter where man was looking for God, he would find Him in Christ. Athanasius believed that this was the ultimate reason for the death and resurrection of the God-man: That He might recall men from all the paths of error to know the Father.
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This is why He did not

offer Himself as a sacrifice immediately upon entering into humanity. His goal was not just to save man, as wonderful as that is. His goal was to bring man back to Himself. In a sense, God sought to transport him back to the Garden so that man could once again experience life eternal in communion with his Creator.xxxii This brings to mind a good question: If the ultimate reason for the death and resurrection of Christ was to bring them into a renewed knowledge of the Father, why did this occur before those two great events? It would seem correct to

conclude that the life of Christ was a taste of what would be fully experienced as the fruit of His death and resurrection. Christ lived to wake men up to who He is, and after having woken them to carry them into the fullness of that awakening. His life functioned as the present in-breaking of a reality that men could fully experience only through the completed work of the Lord Jesus.

The Death of Christ The road to full knowledge of and communion with God led inescapably to the death of Christ. Athanasius called the death of the God-man the very center of our faith.
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It was for this death that Christ had taken upon Himself a human

body, through this death that He would break death s power over humanity, and on account of this death that He was able to raise humanity into new life.xxxiv For Athanasius, the death of Christ was both an end and a beginning: the end of death and the beginning of life. Athanasius believed that death was a debt owing which must needs be paid by man.xxxv This, as already mentioned, was a result of the Fall. Man, by turning away from God in Adam, incurred this debt. Unless this debt was paid, death and the one who holds its power, namely the devil, would reign. Christ came to put an end to this reign that held man captive by consummating the death of mankind in His body through the offering of Himself once and for all. In performing this deed, He taste death for everyone (Hebrews 2:9), ending its reign and satisfying the debt that man had incurred in the primal transgression. death and corruption were utterly abolished.
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In His death, therefore,

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However the death of Christ also marked a beginning. It opened a door of sorts into new life. According to Athanasius, His death made a heaven.
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way for us up to

The God-man s death was a pathway to resurrection. He had to die, or

else those prone to death could not be raised. In breaking death s power, the Lord Jesus re-opened the road to heaven, conquering the power of Satan and death in the process.xxxix

The Resurrection In Athanasius eyes, it was Christ s resurrection that marked the pledge and token of His victory .xl This stood as indisputable proof that Jesus had conquered death once and for all. Through it, He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection.
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Yet this event was more than a monument. Through the resurrection, proclaimed Athanasius, the Word of God made flesh freely graced us all with incorruption.
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Ponder for a moment what this means. Packed in this statement is

what has already been discussed as the ultimate reason for the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Yes, He came to abolish death, but for the purpose of bringing humanity back to God.xliii The resurrection restored the communion that was lost at the Fall. In Christ, humanity was raised up so as to partake of the eternal life that comes only from the knowledge of God.xliv

The Second Coming That communion, believed Athanasius, while available in some measure now, would be fully experienced when Christ comes again to bestow on us the fruit of His cross the resurrection and incorruptibility.
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In other words, Athanasius

believed that the God-man would again return to this earth bodily, yet no longer in humiliation but in majesty.
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This future coming would not be the time of

redemption but of rewards and judgment with Christ Himself as Judge. Athanasius believed that this final judgment would be in accordance with deeds done in the body, whether good or ill.
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For those who had practiced well doing, they would

receive the fullness of the Kingdom of God. However, for those who made a practice of evil, only outer darkness and eternal fire (namely Hell) lay in wait.xlviii Did Athanasius view the good deeds as meritorious? Though he doesn t really discuss it, it seems relatively safe to conclude that that was not the case. His whole treatise focused on the work of Christ. That seems to be what he believed wrought salvation. These deeds according to which men would be judged were simply the fruit of the life of those believed in Christ.

Only the Beginning Interestingly enough, Athanasius ends De Incarnatione with a couple of comments regarding the interpretation of Scripture, which he believed was written and inspired by God.
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He mentions that, for the searching and right

understanding of the Scripture there is need of a good life and pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp the truth concerning God the Word.
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Why does he wait until the end of the book to speak concerning Scripture and the key to its understanding? This seems to be Athanasius way of saying, You have only begun. Athanasius believed that to come to know the Christ whom he had spent the entirety of this treatise bearing witness to, one would have to expose oneself to Scripture. At the same time, however, not everyone who picked up these Godbreathed pages would be able to see Jesus Whom they revealed. Only those who would approach with a sincere heart, a godly life and a love for God would experience Christ in His grace in coming to this Holy Text. What Athanasius is doing here is, having borne witness to the God-man, he is urging his readers to commune with Him themselves. That is why it is entirely appropriate to see this work not as an end in itself but only a beginning. This book was, as stated in the introduction, a labor of pastoral love. It was meant to direct people to the Son of God so that they might experience fellowship with the Triune God. Having guided them to the Lord in these pages, therefore, Athanasius points readers toward the study of Scripture and devotion to a godly life as the way to continue on in this communion that he sought to facilitate. In ending De Incarnatione this way he steps aside. He purposely takes himself out of the picture and bids readers to pluck and eat from the Tree of Life for themselves so that they could personally experience the end to which Athanasius had been writing: reestablished communion between God and man.

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation: The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (trans. and ed. by A Religious of C.S.M.V.; Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir s Seminary Press, 1993), 9.
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ii C. FitzSimons Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 1994), 89. iii Allison, Cruelty of Heresy, 89. iv Allison, Cruelty of Heresy, 89. v Athanasius, Incarnation, 28 vi Athanasius, Incarnation, 28 vii Athanasius, Incarnation, 28. viii Athanasius, Incarnation, 28. ix Athanasius, Incarnation, 28. x Athanasius, Incarnation, 38. xi Athanasius, Incarnation, 28. xii Athanasius, Incarnation, 30. xiii Athanasius, Incarnation, 30. xiv Athanasius, Incarnation, 29. xv Athanasius, Incarnation, 29. xvi Athanasius, Incarnation, 29. xvii Athanasius, Incarnation, 29. xviii Athanasius, Incarnation, 30. xix Athanasius, Incarnation, 29. xx Athanasius, Incarnation, 29. xxi Athanasius, Incarnation, 32. xxii Athanasius, Incarnation, 32. xxiii Athanasius, Incarnation, 33. xxiv Athanasius, Incarnation, 33. xxv Athanasius, Incarnation, 26, 33, 35. xxvi Athanasius, Incarnation, 33-34. xxvii Athanasius, Incarnation, 49. xxviii Athanasius, Incarnation, 43. xxix Athanasius, Incarnation, 43. xxx Athanasius, Incarnation, 43. xxxi Athanasius, Incarnation, 44. xxxii See John 17:3 and 1 Peter 3:18. xxxiii Athanasius, Incarnation, 48. xxxiv Athanasius, Incarnation, 37, 49, 51. xxxv Athanasius, Incarnation, 49. xxxvi Athanasius, Incarnation, 49. xxxvii Athanasius, Incarnation, 49. xxxviii Athanasius, Incarnation, 55. xxxix Athanasius, Incarnation, 55. xl Athanasius, Incarnation, 56. xli Athanasius, Incarnation, 49. xlii Athanasius, Incarnation, 64. xliii 1 Peter 3:18 xliv John 17:3 xlv Athanasius, Incarnation, 95. xlvi Athanasius, Incarnation, 95. xlvii Athanasius, Incarnation, 95. xlviii Athanasius, Incarnation, 95. xlix Athanasius, Incarnation, 95. l Athanasius, Incarnation, 96.