Dr. Kevin L. Hester

In the mid-fourth century, Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, composed an apologetic treatise against Arianism that would become one of the classic treatments of Christology. Athanasius demonstrates Christ’s full divinity and his full humanity as necessary for God’s salvific purposes in redeeming humanity. His reflection centers on the incarnation of Christ and because of this, I often reread this work during the Christmas season. If you have never read On the Incarnation, I would heartily recommend it. It provides a gospel-centric vision of the incarnation and supplies many opportunities to spiritually reflect on Christ’s ministry and death, and to look forward to His return in glory.

As an encouragement to read this book, I thought I would highlight several of his main points in this essay. Even if you can’t make time to read On the Incarnation this Christmas, I am sure you will benefit from thinking about the theological truths he highlights in his reflection.

Historical Context of the Work

Athanasius was the primary opponent of the teachings of Arius, a presbyter from Alexandria, who taught a heterodox Christology in the early third century. Arius pressed an extreme form of ontological subordinationism that understood Christ’s divinity as a divinity of honor rather than a divinity of substance. He taught that Christ’s “divinity” was given to him by God rather than being intrinsic to His nature. In Arius’ mind, Christ was the first creature of God who had a beginning in time. Arius and his teachings were condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325 which also introduced Athanasius’s term homoousios (consubstantial) to describe the shared inter-Trinitarian divine nature.

Athanasius’s battle against Arius would lead to significant development in the doctrine of Christology. This debate clarified the relationship between God the Father and God the Son as it had been expressed in the earliest kerygma of the Church. While Athanasius’s language could sometimes feel more philosophical than biblical, he always rooted His teaching in Scripture. In this work, he used clear biblical principles to demonstrate how an orthodox view of Christ and His incarnation is central to the Gospel. His life is a testimony to the cost that can sometimes come from standing boldly for biblical truth but he refused to be silenced.

Teachings of On the Incarnation

In this work Athanasius begins with the eternal Christ, the Logos of God. Contra Arius, the Son has always existed together with the Father and was instrumental in creation. God’s ex nihilo (from nothing) creation occurs through His personal Word (the Logos). Humanity, created in God’s image, tragically turned to sin and through them corruption entered God’s good world. But God had a plan. The agent of God’s creation would also become the very agent who would restore His creation in humanity (salvation) and the world (consummation). Athanasius says,

Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 2.7.)

To redeem a fallen humanity, the “incorporeal, incorruptible, and immaterial” Word of God took up flesh and was united to a body just like ours, excepting sin. This incarnation was necessary for salvation. It was only through a human body that the Son could die for the sins of fallen humankind.

Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 2.8.)

For Athanasius, the chief reason for the incarnation of the Son was to pay the penalty for humanity’s sin. But the incarnation was revelatory as well. Because of humanity’s fall into sin, the likeness of God was no longer fully seen within them. Through the incarnation, the Son would reveal the perfect image of the Father showing a fallen humanity both who the Father is and what humanity was created to be. The incarnation reveals the Father and His image in humanity. In the incarnation, the Son condescended to humanity revealing God’s law and His love. In His teaching he embodied God’s law and through His miracles he demonstrated both his divine nature and his intent to recreate what was broken by sin.

The incarnate Son suffered a public death for the sins of humanity and was publicly raised to declare God’s victory over sin, death, and corruption. In this light we need not fear death but gladly anticipate our salvation. Christ be praised for the fruit of His incarnation.

He it is Who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all, and taught the world concerning the Father. He it is Who has destroyed death and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised His own body as its first-fruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument to His victory over death and its corruption. (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 5.32.)

Finally, Athanasius calls his readers to recognize the connection between the Son’s first advent and his second advent. The incarnation looks forward to the coming kingdom of God. Christ’s return brings vision to our faith and the completion of our salvation. But it also brings with it the prospect of judgment for those who have not believed.

From the Scriptures you will learn also of His second manifestation to us, glorious and divine indeed, when He shall come not in lowliness but in His proper glory, no longer in humiliation but in majesty, no longer to suffer but to bestow on us all the fruit of His cross—the resurrection and incorruptibility. No longer will He then be judged, but rather will Himself be Judge, judging each and all according to their deeds done in the body, whether good or ill. (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 9.56.)

Conclusion

My prayer for each of us this Christmas season is that we will recognize the Gospel in the incarnate Son we celebrate. In Christ, the Son became a man, so that humanity might have life. The manger prefigures the cross and on the cross, Jesus died for the sins of the world. His resurrection declares His victory and ours if we are united to him in faith. For those not yet converted, Christmas instead looks forward to the prospect of judgment.

May our preaching this Christmas worship the humility of the Son in the incarnation and anticipate the terrible prospect of His return as Judge. Let us, like Athanasius, call our hearers to wonder and to repentance.

Links to On the Incarnation.

Athanasius’s work is available for free through the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (https://ccel.org/ccel/athanasius/incarnation) and through most Logos Bible study software packages. The work is also available in a number of different translations from various booksellers, on Kindle, and as an audiobook. My preferred modern translation is from Penelope Lawson.