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Athanasius, On the Incarnation (chapter 7 of 9), Advent 2025

Here are my thoughts on chapter 7 of "On the Incarnation" by fourth century church father Athanasius of Alexandria. I have been reading this work along with some brothers/colleagues during the season of advent 2025. 

Chapter 7 (paragraphs 41 to 45) is responding to objections raised by "Greeks" i.e. non-Jews of the Hellenistic world of Athanasius' time. 

The main focus of the chapter is engaging with the idea that the concept of the incarnation of the Word is "unfitting". 

Athanasius begins by considering and dismissing the possibility that there is no Word in the first place, i.e. no governing reasonable principle underlying the universe. "If they deny that there is a Word of God at all, that will be extraordinary, for then they will be ridiculing what they do not know."

Assuming then that there is a Word, Athanasius engages with the idea that it would be "unfitting" for that Word to dwell in a human being. "But if the Word of God is in the universe, which is a body, and has entered into it in its every part, what is there surprising or unfitting in our saying that He has entered also into human nature?"

He also compares the incarnation to the case where "A man's personality actuates and quickens his whole body."

Christ's purpose in becoming human was not to "make a display" but rather "He came to heal and to teach suffering men."

Since people failed to see his presence in the whole of creation, he made himself in present in one part of the creation, namely the human body of Jesus of Nazareth: "He takes to Himself for instrument a part of the whole, namely ahuman body, and enters into that. Thus He ensured that men should recognize Him in the part who could not do so in the whole, and that those who could not lift their eyes to His unseen power might recognize and behold Him in the likeness of themselves."

He compares the human race to a ship in a storm heading for shipwreck. "What, then, is there incredible in our saying that, mankind having gone astray, the Word descended upon it and was manifest as man, so that by His intrinsic goodness and His steersmanship He might save it from the storm?"

While God originally created by his divine Word alone, now that we have been created, the healing of the created order requires something more than a divine fiat. "But once man was in existence, and things that were, not things that were not, demanded to be healed, it followed as a matter of course
that the Healer and Saviour should align Himself with those things that existed already, in order to heal the existing evil."

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