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Athanasius, On the Incarnation, chapter 2 of 9 (Advent 2025)

Along with a group of pastors, this Advent 2025, I am reading through "On the Incarnation" by Athanasius. 

Here are some thoughts on chapter 2 of 9, which is entitled, "Divine Dilemma".
I found it inspiring and refreshing to read Athanasius' thoughts and logic as he considered the reason why God chose not to abandon the human race to corruption but to send his Son. The former would be "unfitting and unworthy of himself"

"It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption."

Athanasius' thought is that the corruption following from the transgression means that "repentance could not meet the case"

"The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death"

Explaining the effect of Christ's incarnation and work, Athanasius speaks of the "solidarity of mankind" and compares the incarnation to the presence of a king in a humble city, thereby honouring it and ensuring its defence and protection.

"For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining
incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection."

(In my own imagination, I relate this explanation and these metaphors to the film "Matrix" and the decisive fight scene between "Neo" and "Agent Smith".) 


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