Taking the advice of C. S. Lewis, we want to help our readers “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds,” which, as he argued, “can be done only by reading old books.” To that end, our Rediscovering Forgotten Classics series surveys some forgotten Christian classics that remain relevant and serve the church today.
For some, the highlight of the Advent celebration is candles and wreaths. For others, it’s cookies and fellowship. But my favorite Advent tradition is reading On the Incarnation by Athanasius of Alexandria.
Many readers have stumbled across this masterpiece because of the introductory essay in some editions, written by C. S. Lewis and republished as “On the Reading of Old Books.” Lewis makes his famous appeal to read books like Athanasius’s classic text. On the Incarnation is a careful exposition of God’s power and love to save fallen humanity—and many of us, like Lewis, are more encouraged by this short theological work than by explicitly devotional material. It deserves to be read on its own merits.
On the Incarnation is a beautiful exposition of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It explains why and how he came to save us. The incarnation is the beating heart of orthodoxy, the story at the center of our faith. Athanasius fleshes this story out through scriptural engagement and philosophical meditation, keeping the miracle of Christ’s enfleshment front and center.
On the Incarnation
Athanasius
By any standard, this is a classic of Christian theology. Composed by St Athanasius in the fourth century, it expounds with simplicity the theological vision defended at the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople: that the Son of God himself became “fully human, so that we might become god.” Its influence on all Christian theology thereafter, East and West, ensures its place as one of the few “must read” books for all who want to know more about the Christian faith.
Christ’s Humanity
Athanasius wrote On the Incarnation around AD 330 during his early years as a bishop.
He begins with God’s nature. God isn’t a being among other beings. He is being itself, on whom all reality and existence rests and depends. Humans were made by God to know, love, and worship him. We, along with all creation, exist only by God’s grace.
But God has given us a special grace: we can enter into his being that sustains our lives and our souls and our existence. Through the fall, we misused our freedom and turned away from God and his grace. Since God is existence and essence and being itself—or, rather, himself—we thus turned to nonexistence, nothingness, and death.
God has given us a special grace: we can enter into his being that sustains our lives and our souls and our existence.
Yet God loved humanity too much to let us continue on this path to death and nothingness without hope. God’s love for fallen humans is at the center of the gospel. And that love is evident in the incarnation, which Athanasius argues was intended to undo the corruption of sin: “For seeing the rational race perishing, and death reigning over them through corruption, and seeing also the threat of the transgression giving firm hold to the corruption which was upon us . . . he takes for himself a body and that not foreign to our own” (II.8).
Our king came to drive away the bandit of death. Imagine, argues Athanasius, that a city has been captured by bandits. Would not any king go and liberate that city, driving the bandits away? And so long as the king is present in a city, will not bandits avoid it? So it is with us.
God came himself because no mere human was able to liberate us. But he came as a human because only a human could fulfill the law of humanity. As Athanasius writes, “Being the Word of the Father and above all, he alone consequently was both able to recreate the universe and was worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to intercede for all before the Father” (II.7). It was thus necessary that Christ was fully human and fully divine.
Christ’s Divinity
Athanasius provides several arguments for the full divinity of Jesus, the strongest of these being the crucifixion. Christ tramples down death by death—one of Athanasius’s favorite images. He ransoms us by his death, for he himself didn’t need to die. This is the great evil of nothingness that must first be overcome. And when death is overcome, the renewal of humanity can begin:
The Word of God came himself, in order that he being the image of the Father (cf. Col. 1:15), the human being “in the image” might be recreated. It could not, again, have been done in any other way, without death and corruption being utterly destroyed. So he rightly took a mortal body, that in it death might henceforth be destroyed utterly and human beings be renewed again according to the image. For this purpose, then, there was need of none other than the Image of the Father. (III.13)
On the Incarnation uses the Godward spirituality of the church as evidence of Christ’s divinity. Since the church is the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12–27), the moral transformation of believers provides evidence that Christ is God. Athanasius notes,
Those who become disciples of Christ, instead of fighting against each other, stand arrayed against the demons by their lives and deeds of virtue, putting them to flight and mocking their prince, the devil, so that, in their youth they are temperate, in temptations they endure, in toils they persevere, when insulted they forbear, and deprivations they disregard, and, what is most wonderful is that they scorn even death and become martyrs for Christ. (VIII.52)
Christ’s divinity is also evidenced by his resurrection, because only a living Savior can move sinners toward holiness. Athanasius argues, “The dead can effect nothing, but the Saviour effects such great things every day—drawing to piety, persuading to virtue, teaching about immortality, leading to a desire for heavenly things, revealing the knowledge of the Father, inspiring power against death, showing himself to each, and purging away the godlessness of idols” (V.31).
Only a living Savior can move sinners toward holiness.
Only God could save us, and when he did, he opened a pathway to heaven and true life that’s more glorious and more beautiful than anything we can imagine. This is the great truth at the heart of Christmas and the beautiful, orthodox gospel Athanasius fought to maintain and that he explains so carefully in On the Incarnation. This Christmas season, ponder this classic work and bask in the glory of Christ who died and rose to save you.