Athanasius’ On the Incarnation

For several years, I have taught The Creed unit on Venn’s Residential Fellowship. As one of our readings for this unit, I always assign Athanasius’s On the Incarnation. Every year, I take delight in seeing Fellows’ copies of this text highlighted, marked, and annotated.

Every year, I sense the Fellows’ excitement as we settle to discuss this text, even though to begin with, they are often tentative in sharing their thoughts and offering their searching questions. If you’ve ever wondered if theology can be a joyful undertaking, then the Fellows’ “Whoa”s and “Amazing”s that accompany our discussion suggest it can. Indeed, Fellows have told me that this text has rekindled their amazement before God and led them to worship Jesus with freshness. Their responses recall my own delight when I was first assigned Athanasius’s and Irenaeus’s writings to read over 15 years ago (like Athanasius, Irenaeus is known as a Church Father). From these two early Christian writers, I learnt the truth of J. I. Packer’s often-repeated phrase: All good theology leads to doxology (the worship of God). Athanasius, I like to think, would be well pleased by our responses to reading On the Incarnation, given his desire that those read it would “have an even greater and fuller piety towards” the Word of the Father, who has become human, Jesus Christ.¹

On the Incarnation is a particularly fitting text to read and ponder in this season of Advent as we prepare for Christmas—that season when we celebrate the birth of God incarnate and rejoice over all that this mystery means for us as Christian people. Originally, the second of a double treatise (the first treatise being Against the Gentiles), I recommend reading sections 1 to 32 in one sitting (before finishing the whole). If you can get your hands on a copy of John Behr’s translation (from St Vladimir’s Seminary Press Popular Patristics Series), not only will you have before you a very readable translation but also Behr’s excellent introduction to the double treatise and a reprint of C.S. Lewis’s preface to a previous English translation. There are other English translations online, including an English translation from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

In this treatise, you’ll find theological insight enfolded in scriptural quotation and the use of various metaphors to aid our understanding of what Jesus Christ has achieved for us in his cross and resurrection. I have loved, since it was first pointed out to me, how Athanasius uses the Greek term philanthrōpia—God’s love for humankind—to speak of his intent in both creating and redeeming humans, thus nesting together the divine activities of creation and redemption as they arise from the triune God’s love for humanity.² Along similar lines, I’ve long felt drawn to Athanasius’s picture of the Son of the Father as the Divine Artist who created humans in his image, and—in the Incarnation—came to restore his image that has been “soiled” by sin and death:

For as when a figure painted on wood has been soiled by dirt from outside, it is necessary for him whose figure it is to come again, so that the image can be renewed on the same material—because of his portrait even the material on which it is painted is not cast aside, but the portrait is reinscribed on it. In the same way the all-holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our place to renew the human being made according to himself.³

Athanasius himself was a tenacious and forthright character, a staunch defender of Nicene orthodoxy throughout his entire life. During his time as Bishop of Alexandria in the fourth century, he went into exile five times for a combined period of over 15 years. Our friend Paul Henderson has given us an imaginative telling of his story in Athanasius: Someone from Nothing (Compass Foundation, 2013). This book is available at Venn’s store, and we warmly recommend it. Alongside reading On the Incarnation, it will give you a glimpse of a man both humble and brilliant.

Notes

¹Athanasius, On the Incarnation 1: Greek Original and English Translation, trans. and Introduction John Behr. (Younkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011).
²See, for example, On the Incarnation 1 and 4. For a further description of philanthrōpia, see Khaled Anatolia, Retrieving Nicea (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 104.
³Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 14.