Why You Should Read On the Incarnation by Athanasius

What is the book about, why has it had such a deep influence on Christianity, and why should you read it today

Athanasius’s On the Incarnation is worth reading yearly. I do not make this claim lightly. Not many books deserve frequent re-reads. On the Incarnation makes the cut because of its classic treatment of the cross of Christ and its wide-ranging acceptance among Christian communions. And pointedly, it has stood the test of time for about 1,700 years. Most of our books will disappear from memory in 17 years.

So what is the book about, why has it had such a deep influence on Christianity, and why should you read it today? Let me answer each question in order.

What Is It About?

On the Incarnation is the second part of a two-volume book that aims to explain why Jesus went to the cross. In this regard, the title of the book On the Incarnation may sound strange to our modern ears. For Athanasius, however, the term "Incarnation" referred not only to the moment of Jesus's virginal conception in Mary's womb but to the whole scope of his life and ministry. For that reason, Athanasius's work on the Incarnation fittingly speaks about the cross.

Athanasius himself talks about Christ’s death on the cross as being “the chief point of our faith” (§19). That said, readers of On the Incarnation will note that the cross as such does not appear to be the main subject of every part of the book. And that is because, again, Athanasius views the whole scope of Jesus’s life as redemptive and the cross as a sort of climactic moment of his redemptive work.

To put the work’s major argument in brief form, Athanasius argues that the reason why God the Word became man was due to the Goodness of God and his love for mankind (philanthropy). Of the latter in particular, Athanasius identifies love for mankind as the cause (αἰτία) of Christ’s manifestation in the flesh (§4).[1] Our transgressions and sins evoked, Athanasius says, the love of God in Christ for humanity (§4). So much so, that God the Word made a body his own in order to save us from our liability to death through sin and to make known God to us in a way that we could grasp.

Athanasius spells out a double dilemma that God overcame. First, since all humans die because of sin (Gen 2:17), then God would seem to have lost that which he created to death (§2–§10). So God the Word and Creator made a body for himself, so that he could offer it to death and conquer death through his incorruptible life, being by nature Immortal. Christ broke the chain of our liability and debt to death because of our transgression. And he in himself became the Word who recreates humanity through the cross.

Second, since humans do not pay attention to invisible truths but often remain fixated on the visible world, God the Word made a body for himself to make God the Father known. Had this not happened, humans could not have known God savingly (§11). God overcomes this epistemological dilemma then through the Incarnation as well (§11–§20).

That, at least, is the bare bones of Athanasius’s major argument. I’ll say a little more about the details below to help contextualize it, but one must simply read the book to really get it.

Why Has It Had Such a Deep Influence on Christianity?

One reason why On the Incarnation has had such a deep influence on Christianity has to do with the reputation of Athanasius himself (AD c. 296 – 373). Athanasius led the charge against Arius and the doctrine called Arianism that denied the full status of deity to the Son. Through this controversy and his work as the bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius had become known around the world as a key orthodox theologian of the church. That is how he would be remembered after his death in AD 373.

Yet his reputation alone did not make his works stand the test of time. Their quality, the depth of their theological and biblical insight, has led to their wide readership over the ages. Athanasius gave words to explain how God the Word saved us.

As the Creator of all life, Christ submitted to being created, so that he might recreate all those who believe in him. Death could not hold Life itself, and so by being born into human flesh, Christ already doomed death. Sheol could not hold him (Ps 16:10–11) because he was the Author of Life (Acts 3:15; cf. Acts 2:24). Death ended at the resurrection, and its liability was crucified at the cross.

Athanasius connects sin, corruption, death, and the power of the devil together. So the cross and resurrection overcome all of these things, although he focuses on death as the major problem, for obvious reasons: we all die.

However, the epistemological focus in On the Incarnation is equally important. The works of the Logos testify to God and make him known (§16). This is important to Athanasius, partly, I suspect because of how important the knowledge of the Lord is throughout the Old Testament. Read the key passages in Isaiah to see how God’s coming offspring will make the nations know the Lord—“the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord” (Isa 11:9).

At the cross itself, the ground quakes, the sun goes dark, and creation itself witnesses to its Creator crucified on the cross of shame (§19). “These things,” Athanasius explains, “showed the Christ on the cross to be God and the whole of creation to be his servant, witnessing in fear the advent [parousia] of the Master” (§19).

Athanasius also recognizes that we naturally focus on visible things in front of us, and so we needed God to come down to us to make himself known to us because our weakness. So the descent of God here is also evidence of his deep love for mankind.

Possibly the most famous passage in On the Incarnation occurs in section 54 in which Athanasius writes, “For he was incarnate that we might be made god.” While Athanasius does not belabour this point, and it appears as a rhetorical flourish near the end of his treatise, interpreters have nevertheless made much of this comment.

It is worth reading the passage in whole to see the context before making an interpretive judgment as to just what Athanasius means:

“Therefore, just as if someone wishes to see God, who is invisible by nature and not seen at all, understands and knows him from his works, so let one who does not see Christ with his mind learn of him from the works of his body, and test whether they be human or of God. And if they be human, let him mock; but if they are known to be not human, but of God, let him not laugh at things that should not be mocked, but let him rather marvel that through such a paltry thing things divine have been manifested to us, and that through death incorruptibility has come to all, and through the incarnation of the Word the universal providence, and its giver and creator, the very Word of God, have been made known. For he was incarnate that we might be made god; and he manifested himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father; and he endured the insults of human beings, that we might inherit incorruptibility. He himself was harmed in no way, being impassible and incorruptible and the very Word and God; but he held and preserved in his own impassibility the suffering human beings, on whose account he endured these things. And, in short, the achievements of the Savior, effected by his incarnation, are of such a kind and number that if anyone should wish to expound them he would be like those who gaze at the expanse of the sea and wish to count its waves. For as one cannot take in all the waves with one's eyes, since those coming on elude the perception of one who tries, so also one who would comprehend all the achievements of Christ in the body is unable to take in the whole, even by reckoning them up, for those that elude his thought are more than he thinks he has grasped. Therefore it is better not to seek to speak of the whole, of which one cannot even speak of a part, but rather to recall one thing, and leave the whole for you to marvel at. For all are equally marvelous, and wherever one looks, seeing there the divinity of the Word, one is struck with exceeding awe.” (On the Incarnation, §54; bold added)

Athanasius seems to mean that we become god because we live in a divine way, namely, by an incorruptibility that the Word himself bestows upon us.

Since Athanasius in all his writings emphasizes that the Father and Son are God qua God and we are creatures, he may use this language in ways akin to Peter who says: “through [God’s promises] you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Pet 1:4). Due to escaping corruption (which Peter associates with sin), we partake of the divine nature by incorruptibility (which Peter explains as virtues). Peter thus does not mean we become God by some metamorphosis into deity, but rather through the gifts of God we become like him.

Athanasius almost certainly means something like this. I will leave the exact meaning of his words to historians and theologians better equipped to do so. But suffice it to say, we should let Athanasius have his rhetorical and theological flourishes, knowing that he cannot mean that humans become equal to God in nature literally, since he everywhere else emphasizes the qualitative difference between God and creatures in his debates with Arius.

Why Should You Read It Today?

You should read On the Incarnation today for two reasons. First, you do not have time to read everything, so you should read only the best books. On the Incarnation has stood the test of time, proving itself to be a valuable and brilliant work that transcends its age. Why read a new and untested book when you can read a book known for its great virtues across the ages?

Second, you should read On the Incarnation because it is readable and often clearer than modern books that have to endlessly throat-clear about academic concerns. Athanasius is a pastor, and he writes for the church without apology. It is clear, theological, and biblical.

It may require a number of re-reads, but that alone suggests a great virtue to the book. If you can understand it when you read it the first time, but continue to grasp deeper truths in it as you re-read it, you may have just found a work of great virtue.

More could be said, but I will leave you to read the book for yourself. I recommend the St. Vladimir’s press edition, translated by John Behr. You can find it by clicking here. If you know Greek, be sure to get the Greek-English edition here.

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[1] Divine Goodness plays another important role as Athanasius makes clear in On the Incarnation §6 and §9.