On the Incarnation

On the Incarnation by Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria, Circa 296 to Circa 373. Chapter 1. Creation and the Fall. In our former book, we dealt fully enough with a few of the chief points about the heathen worship of idols, and how those false fears originally arose. We also, by God's grace, briefly indicated that the word of the Father is himself divine, that all things that are owe their being to his will and power, and that it is through him that the Father gives order to creation, by him that all things are moved, and through him that they receive their being. Now, Macarius, true lover of Christ, we must take a step further in the faith of our holy religion, and consider also the words becoming man and his divine appearing in our midst. That mystery the Jews traduce, the Greeks deride, but we adore. And your own love and devotion to the word also will be the greater, because in his manhood he seems so little worth. For it is a fact that the more unbelievers pour scorn on him, so much the more does he make his Godhead evident. The things which they as men rule out as impossible, he plainly shows to be possible. That which they deride as unfitting, his goodness makes most fit. And things which these wise-acres laugh at as human, he by his inherent might declares divine. Thus, by what seems his utter poverty and weakness on the cross, he overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly and hiddenly wins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognize him as God. Now, in dealing with these matters, it is necessary first to recall what has already been said. We must understand why it is that the word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to his own nature, far from it. For as the word, he is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of his Father for the salvation of us men. We will begin then with the creation of the world and with God, its maker. For the first fact that you must grasp is this, the renewal of the creation has been wrought by the selfsame Word who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation, for the one Father has employed the same agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word who made it in the beginning. In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things, there have been various opinions, and each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance, some say that all things are self-originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these. They deny that there is any mind behind the universe at all. This view is contrary to all the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of mind, though they existed, they would all be uniform and without distinction. In the universe, everything would be sun or moon, or whatever it was. And in the human body, the whole would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact, the sun and the moon and the earth are all different things, and even within the human body there are different members, such as foot and hand and head. This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation, but a prevenient cause, and from that cause we can apprehend God, the designer and maker of all. Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things out of preexistent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is himself the cause of matter is to impute limitation to him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. How could God be called maker and artificer if his ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself? If he only worked up existing matter and did not himself bring matter into being, he would be not the creator, but only a craftsman. Then again, there is the theory of the Gnostics, who have invented for themselves an artificer of all things other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These simply shut their eyes to the obvious meaning of Scripture. For instance, the Lord, having reminded the Jews of the statement in Genesis, He who created them in the beginning made them male and female. And having shown that for that reason a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, goes on to say, with reference to the Creator, What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder. How can they get a creation independent of the Father out of that? And again, St. John, speaking all-inclusively, says, All things came by him, and without him came nothing into being. How then could the artificer be someone different, other than the Father of Christ? Such are the notions which men put forward, but the impiety of their foolish talk is plainly declared by the divine teaching of the Christian faith. From it we know that, because there is mind behind the universe, it did not originate itself, because God is infinite, not finite. It was not made from preexistent matter, but out of nothing, and out of nonexistence, absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and again, through that most helpful book, the Shepherd, believe thou first and foremost that there is one God who created and arranged all things and brought them out of nonexistence into being. Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared. For God is good, or rather, of all goodness he is the Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none, therefore, he made all things out of nothing through his own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, and of all these his earthly creatures he reserved especially mercy for the race of men. Upon them, therefore, upon men who as animals were essentially impermanent, he bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked, namely, the impress of his own image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word himself, so that, reflecting him and themselves, becoming reasonable in expressing the mind of God even as he does, though in limited degree, they might continue forever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that he had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things, namely, a law and a place. He set them in his own paradise and laid upon them a single prohibition. If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain, or care, and after it, the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us proclaiming the command of God. Of every tree that is in the garden, thou shalt surely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall not eat. But in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die. Ye shall surely die, not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption. You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of man when we set out to talk about the words becoming man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason. It was our sorry case that caused the word to come down, our transgression that called out his love for us so that he made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who are the cause of his taking human form and for our salvation that in his great love he was both born and manifested in the human body. For God had made man thus, that is, as an embodied spirit, and had willed that he should retain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature. And as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the word had called them into being. Inevitably, therefore, when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it. For it is God alone who exists. Evil is non-being, the negative and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing. But he bears also the likeness of him who is. And if he preserves that likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power, and he remains incorrupt. So it is affirmed in wisdom, the keeping of his laws is the assurance of incorruption. And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, I have said, ye are gods and sons of the highest, all of you. But ye die as men, and fall as one of the princes.