As is clear from this conclusion, the book has a catechetical feel; it is for the most part didactic rather than dialectic (except in its refutations of the Jews and Gentiles). It is not a technical discussion of the unity of divine and human natures in the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ (and to seek for that here would be anachronistic). The key for Athanasius is to demonstrate the reality of the divine Word of God, the reality of the flesh he took in becoming incarnate, and the reality of the union of himself and his body. “As Man He was living a human life, and as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe, and as Son He was in constant union with the Father.” He was not changed “nor was He defiled by being in the body. Rather, He sanctified the body by being in it.” (17). Normal bodily functions such as eating, drinking or being born “are rightly said to be His acts, because the body which did them did indeed belong to Him and none other… His body was a real one and not merely an appearance… [and He was] actually present in the body” (18).

To speak of the Incarnation is to speak of Creation. For Athanasius as for Irenaeus, the whole dispensation or economy of God is one, and the incarnation is inseparable from it. In Creation, the Word of God is already intimately linked with the material world: it is “through Him that the good Father gives order to creation, by Him that all things are moved, and through Him that they receive their being” (1). Thus Incarnation constitutes both a continuation and a renewal of Creation – although “no part of creation had ever been without Him”, in the Incarnation, he “entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level” (8). The “first fact” for Athanasius is that “the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning” and there is therefore “no inconsistency between creation and salvation” (1). Through the presence of the Word of God, Creation is a means of knowledge of God (12) – though a means secondary to the Image of God itself. Just as in Creation we were intimately, existentially linked with God, in his Creation we also saw him reflected whom we knew, increasing in knowledge of him. Athanasius will show how both these aspects of Creation are reflected in the Incarnation.

When man is created, he is created in the Image of God: from the beginning, man is only truly man in a participation in the life of God. “Upon men… He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked – namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself” (3). In the fall – our voluntary separation of ourselves from this participation, in “throwing away [our] birthright of beauty” as Athanasius puts it (3), we lose not only the grace of God, but also what it means to be truly human. In place of all this, we gain only sin and the consequent death and corruption.

Having thrown this away, who can rescue us? Who is able to overcome the gulf between creature and Creator? There is only one who is able to do this: the Word of God incarnate (10)[1]. We cannot ascend to him, so he descended to us: “He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God” (54). The fall represented a victory for death over life, and a victory for confusion over being in touch with reality, the knowledge of God (for example, Rom. 1:25ff). In the Incarnation, the overthrow of death and corruption is achieved through the Incorruptible One’s taking a body (Athanasius’s “first cause” of the Incarnation), and the unreality in which we live as a result of our turning away from God is remedied by the renewing in us of the knowledge of God through his revelation in the incarnate Word (Athanasius’s second cause of the Incarnation).

Man apart from God the source of life can achieve only corruption and death and a tendency towards non-existence as our being was called into life and is sustained in life by the Word of God. So the Word of God reunited himself with us in the reality of incarnation: “Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear… He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin… Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt…” (8)

In using the word “instrument” Athanasius is not anticipating what Apollinarius would later say. (It would be anachronistic to seek in Athanasius answers to questions that had not yet been asked.) The Word makes the flesh his own, not only for manifesting himself in but for dying in – all is inextricable: the Word+flesh dies, the Word+flesh rises (31) – in the unity of his person, the Saviour dies (as all flesh must, the Word of God suffering against his nature, as his taking flesh is also kenotic) but equally in the unity of his person, the Saviour rises (since the Life of God will not die). Both death and life are the response to the nature of the fall – it was “…unthinkable that God should go back upon his word” and therefore there is death, 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” and therefore there must be life (6).

Epistemologically, the Incarnation is a continuation of the revelation of God in history from Creation. Creation was followed by the law and the prophets (not only for the benefit of the Jews, though given to them) as a “sacred school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the spiritual life for the whole world” (12). This revelation was fulfilled in the revelation of God in his incarnate presence (33-40). Athanasius uses the analogy of a stained canvas being repainted with the same image by the same painter. Who else could teach about God but the very Image of God: “You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself” (14). The incarnate Word’s miracles and signs are retelling the same story of Creation – the giving of Life in abundance.

The key to understanding the Incarnation is the restoration of life and the overthrow of death and corruption. As C.S. Lewis put it, “The whole book, indeed, is a picture of the Tree of Life”.[2] And while life is not restored over death without cost, paradoxically the power of God to achieve this is manifested in total weakness and in death itself: “by what seems His utter poverty and weakness on the cross He overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly… wins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognise Him as God… for the salvation of us men.” His divinity is made clear in his weakness (1). Athanasius argues that, though for the Greeks at first this appears foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23), even they should be able to accept this kenotic act for the Logos: since he is always present in Creation they should accept the possibility of his coming in flesh without its being degrading (41-42) and his coming in humility (42-43), quoting Plato (43).

Just as the first Tree of Life was at the centre of the garden (Gen. 2:9), the incarnation is at the centre of everything – Creation, Scripture, history – both existentially and epistemologically. All creation is recapitulated in the incarnation (Eph 1:10-11), so all can be re-created through the Image to which we are conformed in salvation. Sin works against this through disruption, dissolution, corruption and ultimately annihilation, total non-existence. The Incarnation makes possible the reversal of this fall from grace. When Christ the incarnate Word of God dies on the recapitulated Tree of Life, he destroys the power of death, offering to all people the grace of being included in his death and thence brought through death to life.

The centrality of the Cross (the new Tree of Life) is reflected even in Athanasius’s scheme for his book, his sections on Cross and Resurrection serving both as the culmination of his theological discussion of the Incarnation, and as the middle chapters of the whole work. Of the Lord’s body he writes: “Mortal and offered to death on behalf of all as it was, it could not but die; indeed, it was for that very purpose that the Saviour had prepared it for Himself. But on the other hand it could not remain dead, because it had become the very temple of Life. It therefore died, as mortal, but lived again because of the Life within it; and its resurrection is made known through its works.” (31).

The way in which this ultimate act of voluntary self-sacrifice effects the healing and salvation of mankind is portrayed by Athanasius, as in the New Testament, through a variety of images and metaphors. It is achieved through the Word of God’s taking flesh and offering “it to the Father… so that in His death all might die, and the Law of death thereby be abolished” (8). It is “a sufficient exchange for all” (9), “an offering and sacrifice” (9), “a substitute, [fulfilling] all that was required” (9). Because “there was a debt owing which must needs be paid”, it is to “settle man’s account with death” (20). It is because “… the death of the Lord is the ransom of all” (25). It is that “through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption” (9) and that “through His union with [His body, He] might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver them… enslaved by the fear of death” (20). Why so many images of the work of Christ? Athanasius explains this is necessary because when speaking of God “it is better to put the same thing in several ways than to run the risk of leaving something out” (20).

The Cross is clearly a stumbling block and apparent folly to those “outside the Church” (25), and Athanasius lays out some of their objections (21-24) and explains again how our salvation is obtained through it: “He did not lay aside His body by an individual act of dying… but He accepted death… thereby completely to destroy it in His own body” (22) in “the solidarity of mankind” (9). It is in our shared human nature (what Chalcedon would later refer to as the way in which we are ‘homoousios’ with Him) that death is defeated, since “He had come to bear the curse that lay on us; and how could He ‘become a curse’ (Gal 3:13) otherwise than by accepting the accursed death?” (25). As in Psalm 24:7: “lift up your heads, O ye gates”, so now he who calls himself the Gate (John 10:7) and the Way (John 14:6), the incarnate Word of God is lifted up in “that body which He first offered to death on behalf of all, and then made through it a path to heaven” (25).

St Paul said, “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). But in order to be made alive in Christ, we also must recapitulate the death of Adam in Christ: “…as all die in him, the law concerning the corruption of humans might be abolished (since its power was concluded in the dominical body and no longer held ground against humans who are like him), and, secondly, that as humans had turned towards corruption, he might turn them again towards incorruption, and give them life instead of death, by making the body his own…” (8). So in what sense does Christ die ‘as a substitute for all’ (9), and in what sense do we ‘die in him’? Athanasius continually juxtaposes these two images because there is a paradox at the heart of this mystery: “two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord’s body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished”. He takes our place in death, but only in the context of our life in him. But we have life in him only because we share in his death. We are members of his body: as he dies, we die, but as he is raised, we are raised (as in baptism: Rom. 6:4).

For those who wish to argue whether Cross or Incarnation are at the centre of our faith, Athanasius’s answer, more-or-less, is that the Cross is the Incarnation. Cross and Incarnation are inextricably linked as the means of our salvation, which is why a proper understanding of incarnation recurs again and again in history as key to the refutation of heresies which work against God’s grace in granting us the possibility of transcending our creaturehood, and which thereby destroy the possibility of our salvation in union with him.

Thus Athanasius shows how closely integrated are soteriology and christology: if our christology fails, it is our salvation that is at stake. Salvation is not just a transaction but a battle for the full humanity offered to us (and rejected by us) at Creation. Salvation is not just liberation from sin, but the destruction of death and corruption and the renewal or re-creation of our participation in the life of God. As Athanasius puts it, “Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning” (7). Only the Incarnate Word of God can achieve this re-creation: “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.” (7). In order to understand how the Cross effected our salvation, it is necessary to understand who he was who hung on it.

The closeness of our bond with Christ in the Church is taken for granted by Athanasius as he integrates the concept of the Incarnation through the Word of God taking a body on earth, and the Church as the body of Christ after the resurrection: “in death He preserved His body whole and undivided, so that there should be no excuse hereafter for those who would divide the Church” (24). This is so clear that for Athanasius “the resurrection of the body to immortality… [is] more effectively proved by facts than by words” and the facts are the works of Christ alive in his body the Church. When the incarnate Word should “first trample and destroy [death] in His own body… what other issue could there be than the resurrection of His body and its open demonstration as the monument of His victory… Dead men cannot take effective action [but]… The Saviour is working mightily among men… Can anyone… still doubt…?”

He sees Christ in his resurrection body making believers, turning people from sinful lives, overthrowing false gods, driving out evil spirits (30). “Christ alone, using common speech and through the agency of men not clever with their tongues has convinced whole assemblies of people all the world over to despise death, and to take heed to the things that do not die, to look past the things of time and gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire only to immortality” (47). It is in this context that Athanasius writes the phrase that is probably most famous of all he wrote in this book, “He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God” (54) – not in the sense of a person’s individual divinization through his communion with God, but that we as a body, the Church, may through his work be saved and, no longer in thrall to the fear of death, may participate anew in the very life of God (as ‘the body of Christ’). The ability to offer proof of Christ’s resurrection for Athanasius lies less in the bodily appearances of Jesus after he had risen (which Athanasius does not even mention) and more in the reality of his work on earth in his body – the Church.

The two ‘causes’ of the incarnation have already been mentioned, and there are two consequent effects: the primary effect of defeating death and corruption through the union of divinity and humanity, and the secondary effect of renewing us in the knowledge of God. Thus again is everything brought up into the incarnation, being and understanding; the existential and the epistemological. “There were thus two things which the Saviour did for us by becoming Man. He banished death from us and made us anew; and, invisible and imperceptible as in Himself He is, He became visible through His works and revealed Himself as the Word of the Father, the Ruler and King of the whole creation” (16). Through the uniting of Word and flesh, he transformed our humanity by uniting us in his death and resurrection, and he showed us God anew, teaching us thereby what true humanity looks like. If this is a result of the incarnation, it must also be apparent in Christ’s post-resurrection body described above, the Church. So our learning about God, our learning how to be fully human, how to live must take place in the context of our lives being transformed through membership in his body, through our participation in his death and resurrection. Learning how to live can properly take place only in the context of communion with him who is Life.

Athanasius displays great confidence in telling of Christ’s post-resurrection life: “A very strong proof of this destruction of death and its conquest by the cross is [that] all the disciples of Christ despise death; they take the offensive against it and, instead of fearing it, by the sign of the cross and by faith in Christ trample on it as on something dead.” They “prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection” (27). Not only men, but women and children mock death in this way. Death is a conquered tyrant (1 Cor. 15:55). The experience of God in Christ is rooted in the life of the Church whose members never tire of proclaiming the resurrection because they are living it. The martyrs are indeed true witnesses to the life of the risen Christ, participating in both his cross and resurrection.

The deconstructed world after post-modernism is searching for holistic meaning: here it is. The incarnation takes up everything we are and invests it with both existential and epistemological meaning. In Christ we are not faced with just a prophet or a teacher or a hero, though we are faced with all these, but more than this, we meet who we actually need – the incarnate Word of God who makes everything new: “In short, such and so many are the Saviour’s achievements that follow from His Incarnation, that to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves” (54).

[1] In (10) Athanasius quotes Heb 2:9ff and 1 Cor 15:21ff to show how rescue belonged only to the incarnate Word.

[2] His foreword to the CSMV edition of On the Incarnation, p9. (St Athanasius: On the Incarnation, 1953: Mowbray, England)