Thomas Cattoi, 09/13/2002
Notes for the study of Athanasius’ De Incarnatione
Biographical notes on St. Athanasius
The city of Alexandria where Athanasius was born around the year 295 had long been a major intellectual centre, whose dominant intellectual tone was Hellenistic. The legacy of figures such as the Jewish philosopher Philo (ca. 20 BC-50 AD) and the Christian thinker Origen (ca. 185-255) played a major role in the formation of Athanasius, whose appropriation of the Christian theological tradition was shaped by their religious and theocentric interpretation of Platonism. Unlike earlier authors such as Justin the Martyr (100-165) or Clement of Alexandria (150-215), who converted to Christianity after a pagan education, Athanasius was brought up as a Christian and his attitude towards the Greek philosophical heritage was always tempered by his belief that earlier authors were not to be studied for their own sake, but rather to acquire the necessary tools that could bring to a more accurate exposition of Church teaching.
According to later biographical sources as well as the correspondence of Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius’ piety and intellectual ability attracted the attention of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, whose personal secretary Athanasius was to become shortly before the Council of Nicaea (325). Later hagiography would report Athanasius’ role in this occasion as having given a major contribution to the defeat of the Arian heresy; it is however more likely that his role was rather an indirect one through Bishop Alexander, who is recorded as one of the most influential figures of the anti-Arian faction. The rejection of Arianism was crucial for the credibility of the patriarchal see of Alexandria. The more rigorist groups inside the Egyptian Church- including the Gnostics and various pseudo-Manichean currents- laid a strong emphasis on Christ’s full divine nature and on his being the complete manifestation of the deity; for them, any leniency towards Arius would call into question the teaching authority of the patriarch. The term homoousios, which, though not scriptural, was eventually ratified by the Council as fully expressing the relation of the Son towards the Father, was hoped to pacify these unruly supporters of high Christology. On the other hand, the Nicene canons posited homoousios as alternative to hypostasis and therefore could be also interpreted as meaning “of the same person”, and could therefore be used to justify a moderate modalism weakening the distinction between the Father and the Son. When, shortly after the Council, Athanasius was chosen as patriarch, he was to face considerable opposition both from inside Egypt and from the court of Constantinople, whence the Emperor Constantine, having witnessed Arius’ personal recantation of his former errors, had directed Athanasius to readmit the Egyptian priest into communion.
Athanasius’ refusal to comply with this imperial request resulted in a series of events leading to his first exile. The Emperor Constantine started more openly to support the pro-Arian Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, whom he believed was more capable of restoring theological peace within the Church. A first Council held at Caesarea in 334 led to the rejection of homoousios on the ground that the term was not scriptural. Athanasius, who had refused to attend this Council as he believed that he would only encounter the hostility of a pro-Arian audience, was however reluctantly persuaded to attend a Council held at Tyre during the following year. This Council was eager to remove Athanasius from his see and therefore fabricated a number of accusations against him that led to his deposition on disciplinary grounds; the reasons, however, were clearly doctrinal, since the Council proceeded to restore the Arian confession of faith that had been condemned at Nicaea. Athanasius sailed to Constantinople hoping to make his case in the presence of the Emperor, but the result was that Athanasius was exiled to Trier, in Northern Germany.
The death of Constantine in 337 left the Empire in the hands of his three sons, Constantine II, Constans and Constantius II- the first two supported the Nicaean declaration of faith, while the third inclined more towards a subordinationist Christology. In November 337 Constantine II proceeded to recall many Eastern bishops from their exile, so that Athanasius could return to Alexandria, only to meet the opposition of the Arian clerics, who, with the approval of Eusebius of Caesarea –by now Patriarch of Constantinople-, were soon to choose Gregory of Cappadocia as the legitimate leader of the Egyptian Church. In early 339 Athanasius found himself having to flee for the second time, this time for Rome, where he appealed to Pope Julius (337-352). Here, a council of Western bishops cleared him of the accusations raised against him by the Council of Tyre. In 341, however, a council of Eastern bishops meeting at Antioch informed Pope Julius that the papacy had no authority in Eastern matters and that Athanasius could only be reinstated by the local clergy. At this occasion, the Eastern bishops proceeded to anathematize Arianism, without however accepting the term homoousios. A Council held in 342 in Serdica- just inside the Western frontier- to rehabilitate Athanasius and to stress the “unity of the hypostasis of Father and Son” while stressing the ultimate authority of the bishop of Rome was soon to be condemned by another Council of Eastern bishops held in Thrace.
In 344, however, events started to take a different turn. An Eastern Council held in Antioch drafted a profession of faith (the Macrostichos) that condemned every form of Sabellian understanding of the Godhead and declared Christ to be “like in all things” to the Father. This notion of “likeness” could easily be developed to include the notion of substance indicated by the term homoousios. At this stage, yielding to pressure from his brother Constans, Constantius II relented from his hostile attitude towards Athanasius and invited the latter to come to Constantinople. Athanasius arrived in the capital of the Eastern half of the empire only to be informed of the death of his rival Gregory of Cappadocia. As the see of Alexandria was now vacant, Constantius II thought it expedient to reconcile himself with Athanasius and to allow his reinstatement as patriarch of the Egyptian Church. In October 346 Athanasius arrived back in Alexandria after an absence of over seven years.
The assassination of Constans in 350, however, and the ensuing period of anarchy in the West enabled Constantius II to return to his earlier pro-Arian policy. The increasing power of the Emperor in ecclesiastical affairs, however, could not but encounter the opposition of many Eastern bishops who claimed that it was for the good of both the Church and the state that these two ambits remained separate. Athanasius was once again at the forefront of this battle for the independence of the Church; as a result, he found himself accused of maintaining a secret correspondence with Western opponents of Emperor Constantius and to plot his overthrow. In 356, to escape arrest, Athanasius had to flee Alexandria and to go into hiding in the Egyptian desert. In 357 a Council held in Northern Italy declared that “there was no question that the Father was greater than the Son” and banned the use of the term homoousios.
In the East, Arianism seemed to be losing momentum among the bishops. In 358, a number of bishops meeting at Ancyra restored theological respectability to the term ousia; they stopped short, however, of rehabilitating homoousia, which they feared could justify Sabellianism, while suggesting the use of homoiousia, which retained a milder form of subordinationism. The Emperor, however, after consulting a number of bishops both in the East and the West, went on in 360 to issue a declaration of faith that did only state that Christ was “like” the Father. Many churches, both in Constantinople and in Alexandria, were handed over to the Arians. In the eyes of the supporters of the Nicaean definitions, Constantius II had come to represent the leader of the Arian party, and pamphlets started to circulate depicting him as the anti-Christ. Only the death of Constantius and the accession of Emperor Julian allowed Athanasius to return to Alexandria in February 362.
Athanasius immediately summoned a council where he insisted on the legitimacy of the term homoousios, stressing however that no modalism was implied by the term and that the distinction of the three hypostaseis was in no way diminished. The party supporting homoiousia, however, forced Athanasius back into the desert from October 362 to June 363, when the new Emperor, Jovian, recalled him to Alexandria. Matters, however, were far from settled; Emperor Valentinian, who succeeded to the throne in early 364, appointed his Arian brother Valens as ruler of the East, resulting in a last brief exile for Athanasius from October 365 to February 366. Military threats from the East, however, induced Valens to adopt a more lenient policy towards the supporters of Nicaea, allowing Athanasius to spend the last seven years of his life on the patriarchal throne of Alexandria. Athanasius was to die in 373, having spent about eighteen years of his life in exile because of his understanding of the Catholic faith; the Arian controversy, however, was far from being over, as we shall see from our later analysis of the Theological orations by Gregory of Nazianzus.
Summary of De Incarnatione
In the first paragraph, Athanasius briefly summarizes the argument of the first half of the treatise, which was concerned especially with “the error of the heathen concerning idols”, so that one could then proceed to appreciate “the divinity of the Word of the Father, and (…) his universal providence and power”. Athanasius addresses an imaginary disciple, Makarios, inviting him to turn his thoughts to “what relates to the Word’s becoming man, and to his divine appearing among us”. Athanasius concludes by saying that it is necessary to address the subject starting from the creation of the universe, so that it might be “duly perceived that the renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning”. In (2), Athanasius rejects the Epicurean view of creation that denies providence, which would not account for a movement away from unity into multiplicity, as well as the Platonist understanding that argued for the pre-existence of matter. The only author of the universe is “the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ”.
God has “made the universe out of nothing, without it having any previous existence”, by the power of His Word (3), because “God is good, or rather the source of goodness”. Upon man He has taken such special pity that he has made him “after His own image, giving them a portion even of the power of His own Word” and giving them a law so that they might preserve the gift of life they had received. Human transgression (4) called forth the “loving-kindness of the Word”, because the sin of man had turned the latter back to his natural state of non-existence from which he had been called into being. God (5) had given us a life “in correspondence with Him”; because of the Word dwelling in us, even natural corruption could not come near us. But after sin entered the world, man began to die, moving on towards ever worse forms of corruption. The human race (6) “was wasting, God’s image was being effaced”. Of course it would have been unseemly for God to forego his earlier condemnation of sinful man, but equally, he could not allow that “the things He had made should waste away”, because that would contradict His essential goodness.
Repentance, for Athanasius, could not “avert the execution of the law” (7) and still less it could “remedy a fallen nature”. In fact, “none could renew but He who had created”, since He alone could “recreate all, suffer for all and respect (sic) all to the Father”. The Word of the Father alone “of natural fitness” was able to recreate everything and to “suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father”. To do so, “He took for himself a body” (8) as an instrument, so that he could “give it over to death in the stead of us all”. In this way, all being held to have died in Him, “the law involving the ruin of men might be undone”, since all the might of death was spent on the Lord’s body. As a result, the Word clothed us all with incorruption (9), so that the “great conspiracy of the enemy against mankind is checked, and the corruption of death which was prevailing against them is done away”.
In (10), Athanasius sets out to discuss “the reasonableness of this work of redemption”, rehearsing scriptural arguments underlining the love of God for creation and pointing out how his death has put an end to the law of death and given us the hope of resurrection. A second reason for the incarnation (11) was also the destruction of idolatry. Man was made in the image of the Image of the Father; however, he did despise this and left God “for magic and astrology”, despite “God’s manifest revelation of Himself”. In fact God, aware of man’s tendency towards forgetting his maker (12), had “provided the works of creation to remind man of Him”, as well as “the Law and the Prophets”. Through the ancient law, the possibility was open to man “to abandon lawlessness” and to practice a holy life. Man however “loaded himself all the more with evils and sins, so as no longer to seem rational”. God could not let man fall into the service of demons (13), and the only way to rescue mankind from self-destruction was to intervene and to let “the Word of God come in his own person”, so that He, the Image of the Father, “could create man again in his image”. Man did not have the ability to renew himself, since all men “were smitten and confused in soul by demoniacal deceit” (14). The contemplation of the works of creation was no longer sufficient; rather, the Word had to take a body like that of all other men so that man might “even from the works done by His actual body know the Word of God which is in the Body, and through Him the Father”. The Word actually “met halfway” all human superstitions (15), so that “to those inclined to worship Nature, Man or Demons” He showed himself Lord of all these. In fact, He came “to attract man’s attention to Himself”, so as to lead him “to know Him as God” (16). By his works, He made Himself “visible enough” so that he should be known no longer as man, but as God “accomplishing both works of love”, “putting away death from us and renewing us again”, while “manifesting and making Himself known by His works to be the Word of the Father, and the Ruler and the King of the Universe”.
It is important to remember (17) that the Incarnation did not limit the ubiquity of the Word, since He was “not circumscribed in the body”, nor, when He was in the body, was “the universe devoid of his presence”, since “so far from being contained by anything, he rather contained everything himself” and was also “quickening the universe”. In fact, “not even when the Virgin bore Him did he suffer any change”, but on the contrary, He sanctified the body, which in itself was mortal. Athanasius emphasizes how the Word of God manifested himself through his human actions (18), by his virginal birth, his miracles and the casting out of demons; since man had failed to be impressed by divine providence (19), he had to “recover his sight” from the contemplation of this particular case of divine condescension. “None then could bestow incorruption, but He who had made, none restore the likeness of God, save His own Image, none quicken, but the Life, none teach, but the Word” (20); in the same way, none else could teach man to worship the Father and abandon the worship of idols.
By virtue of its union with the Word, the body was placed out of the reach of corruption, so that, while “the death of all was accomplished in the Savior’s body”, death and corruption were done away with forever. Christ could not have died in another way, since, if he had died in private upon a bed (21), it would have appeared that he was doing so out of the weakness of his body; nor could he have hidden from the Jews (22), since he had come to receive death “as the due of others”. In fact, his death had to be public, so that no doubts were possible at the moment of resurrection that he had really come back from the dead (23); and such death was devised by others, so that no suspicion could arise as to the Word being afraid of some type of death and choosing an easier path (24). On the cross, he had to bear the curse for all of us (“Curseth is he that hangs on a tree”), he could unite Jew and Gentiles in one embrace, and also had to defeat “the Prince of the powers of the air” in his own region, “clearing the way to heaven” (25) (cfr. Eastern Orthodox doctrine of the “customs houses”, or mitarstvo). Resurrection on the third day (26) is again justified on the ground that the Word “could not leave his disciples too long in suspence”, nor could there be doubts as to the identity of the body. Athanasius claims in (27) that the best proof of the fact that death has been defeated is that Christ’s disciple no longer fear death, but on the contrary they rush to meet it; the victory of Christ over death is like the asbestos that Indians use to keep away fire (28). The effects of the victory of the Cross are now pervading the world, and their connection with the victory of Christ is as obvious as the connection of daylight and sunrise (29). The resurrection leads man across the world to abandon idolatry and to obey the teaching of the Word (30), and the fact that this trend continues is the best proof that Jesus Christ is still alive and active. The impotence of death and the demons to counter the power of the cross just show that they have lost their sovereignty over man and creation (31). In (32), Athanasius stresses again the inner consistency of the work of Christ with the works of God in history, a God who is invisible and is known only through these works. But no “work” is as obvious and evident as the victory of Christ over death, to the point that “even if men be maimed in their intelligence, yet with their external senses they might see the unimpeachable victory of Christ”.
(33) introduces a more directly apologetic section of the treatise, where Athanasius challenges the Jewish rejection of Christ on the basis of Scripture. In (34), prophecies concerning Christ’s passion and death are examined- Scripture is shown to foretell the atoning death of Christ, as well as the “difference of His nature” compared with ourselves. (35), in particular, surveys those passages where the death of the Messiah by crucifixion are foretold, to move on to passages detailing his miraculous birth. In (36), Athanasius addresses the prophecies of Christ’s sovereignty, comparing the destiny of David and Salomon, who spent their life at war with the enemies of Israel, with that of Jesus, who on the Cross triumphed over his enemies for the salvation of all. (37) compares Christ with some Old Testament Prophets, none of whom is presented as the savior of all, while the entire cosmos pays homage to the divinity of Christ. (38) goes on to argue that the miracles of Christ were unprecedented, and that they correspond to the descriptions that the Jewish Scriptures make of the Messianic age. In fact, the Prophet Daniel (39) claims that after the coming of the Holy of Holies Jerusalem shall no longer stand, and “prophecy and vision shall cease”: and (40) this is exactly what has happened after the coming of Christ, since Jerusalem no longer stands, “nor is any prophet raised up nor vision revealed to them”. Athanasius concludes this section by stating that it is against reason that the Jews reject the victory of Christ when even the Gentiles “are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham”.
From (41), Athanasius goes on to challenge the incredulity of the Greeks, who refuse to recognize the Logos. He asks rhetorically: “If He manifests Himself in the organism of the universe, why not in one body? For a human body is a part of a whole”. This section addresses those Greeks who, following various forms of Neo-platonic philosophy, affirm the existence of the Logos and of divine providence; Athanasius argues that if the Logos rules over the whole cosmos, there is no reason why it should not be united with a man. In (42), it is stressed again that the union of the Word with the body “is based upon (the Word’s) relation with the universe as a whole”, and since humanity is part of this whole, the Word could choose an individual body as an instrument. The Word came in a human body, and not in a “nobler” form, because “He came to save, not to impress”, and also because “of all creatures, man alone had sinned” (43); also, man would not so easily recognize the intervention of the Word in the universe if it taken any other form. Even Plato says that the author of the cosmos, “beholding the universe tempest-tossed”, would “take his seat at the helm of the soul and come to the rescue and correct all calamities”; so why should the Word not save mankind when the latter has lost any notion of the true God? Answering a common objection, Athanasius argues that God could not restore creation “by a word”, since “creation out of nothing is different from reparation of what already exists” while “man was there with a definite need, calling for a definite remedy” (44). “The corruption that had set in was not external to the body, but had become attached to it”; as a consequence, in the same way as death was engendered by the body, life had to be engendered by the body also. The body, “putting on life” instead of death, would cast off corruption, acquire immortality and remain immortal (cfr. asbestos simile); now the body “has put on life as a garment, and corruption is done away in it”.
In (45) Athanasius repeats once more how the Word has done this so as to “leave nothing void of His divinity, and of the knowledge of Him”, so that Gentiles might see “the divinity of the Word unfolded everywhere”. Before the coming of Christ (46), men worshipped local idols and listened to the response of oracles, but now “Christ alone is worshipped as one and the same thing”. In fact, “while the wise among the Greeks had written so much, but were unable to persuade even a few” (47), Christ managed to take over the world “by men not clever with the tongue”. Of course some Greeks might say that Christ Himself was a demon (48), or a charlatan; but such assertions are countered by the continence and the courage of the disciples of Christ, as well as by the power of the Cross over demons and magic. The miracles of the Word incarnate are incomparably greater than those of the pagan deities (49); and the latter are certainly unable to stop the spread of belief in Christ. The works of the sophists (50) did not have as great an impact on the world as the cross of Christ, nor were the Greeks able “to feign a Resurrection of their idols”. The argument from the continence of Christ’s disciples is rehearsed once more in (51), where Athanasius also argues that Christianity has brought about a complete change in the structure of society, which has abandoned the more barbaric customs of antiquity. “Demons” (52) “formerly set men to make war against one another”; but now the disciples of Christ “stand arraigned against the demons”, and “mock at their captain the devil”. In fact, “the whole fabric of Gentilism” (53) is “leveled at a blow by Christ secretly addressing the conscience of man”, with the result that no one “can point out similar works on the part of men of former times”.
In the last four paragraphs, Athanasius sets out to summarize the main argument of the treatise. “The Word incarnate”, he says in (54), “as is the case with the Invisible God, is known to us by His works”, so that “by them we recognize his deifying mission”. Through the incarnation “things divine have been manifested to us”: by the death of the incarnate Word, “immortality has reached to all”. In fact, the achievements of the Savior are such that human thought is unable to encompass them; it is better to talk of one and “leave the whole for you to marvel at”. Idolatry and the “wisdom of the Greeks” are fading (55), and all eyes are “turning to the True God, the Word of the Father”, who is the only one who abides forever. What is left us to us, then, (56) is to search Scripture for clues concerning his second, glorious coming, since we must all stand in front of the seat of the eternal judge. In the last paragraph, Athanasius warns us that “without a pure mind and a modeling of the life after the saints” a man cannot hope to understand Scripture: in fact, man must “approach the saints themselves imitating their works”, so that, “closely knit” to those already saved, he might on the last day receive what is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven.
The theological relevance of De Incarnatione
The treatise Contra Gentes- De Incarnatione (CG-DI) is the earliest doctrinal treatise of St. Athanasius. The apparent lack of reference to the Arian heresy has led some scholars to claim that the work was composed before the condemnation of Arius around the year 318, but the implicit references to Arian thought that can be detected in the text induce us rather to think that the silence is motivated by political expediency. At the same time, the discussion of idolatry contained in the CG would have certainly mentioned the Roman policy of deification of the Emperor if Athanasius had been informed of it. We can therefore argue that the work was composed either during Athanasius’ exile in Germany, or shortly before his departure for Rome in 339.
The purpose of the DI -much as that of CG, of which it is essentially the second part- is to show that faith in Jesus Christ is not incompatible with reason. CG’s refutation of idolatry necessarily leads to the apology of Christian faith in DI; the progressive decline of paganism that was evident in the Roman Empire in the IV century AD is used by Athanasius as an argument for the religion of the cross. It is ultimately Jesus Christ who destroys idolatry, thereby revealing himself to be truly God; it is Christ who restores the true knowledge of God that had been obscured by pagan superstition. The history of paganism is therefore deployed to posit the event of the incarnation as the redemption of human history through the Word’s entrance into it. From his perspective, the Arians were no different from the pagans, since they had tried to subvert the true knowledge of God by denying the authentic divinity of Christ. Athanasius was inclined to think that, through the Church’s condemnation of Arianism at Nicaea, the incarnate Word had also triumphed over these adversaries, thereby moving on towards His ultimate victory. The key feature of the DI is the constant interlocking of soteriological and historical categories, reflecting Athanasius’ understanding of the relation in time between God and creation as determinative for his whole theology. We can therefore argue that, while the incarnation of the Word is the specific focus of DI, the foundational theme of the treatise –which is also the foundational element of Athanasius’ ontology-, is the relation between God and creation.
Of course the relation between the world and the realm of the divine was a crucial theme for Plato’s philosophy. The latter had tried to move the horizon of the traditional pagan religion and at the same time was reluctant to espouse the ethical relativism of the Stoics, where moral values were turned into mere conventions. Plato postulated the existence of an immutable realm of Ideas or Forms, while claiming that the whole universe is essentially an image of the Forms in whose likeness it is patterned. Plato stresses the difference between the realm of Being and the realm of Becoming, the first being the topos hyperuranios of the unchanging Forms, the second being the domain of the changing world. Plato elaborates the notion of participation, according to which the human soul, though under the constraint of the body, is characterized by an essential kinship with the world of the Ideas. The philosopher, through the practice of dialectic and ethical purification, can ultimately enable his own soul to move from the realm of Becoming to that of Being. Within this realm, the Idea of the Good is posited as the supertranscendent principle, to which the other Ideas are subject.
In the Republic, the Ideas are posited to mediate between the Idea of the Good and phenomenal reality. The necessity to reconcile the transcendence of this ultimate principle with the fact the Ideas account for the multiplicity of human phenomena leads to the myth in the Timeus where Plato postulates the existence of a Demiurge who, faced with a pre-existent matter, creates the world according to the patterns determined by the Ideas. Plato’s strategy is therefore that of positing a link between the divine and the phenomenal, while preserving the absolute transcendence of the One or the Good.
Aristotelian philosophy abandons the notion of the Ideas and sets out to explain material reality in terms of the immanent dynamic of nature, or physis. The Metaphysics of Aristotle, however, posit the existence of a prime mover, which is described in terms of absolute actuality and transcendence. The latter is stressed by way of emphasizing its self-containment and non-involvement with the world; it would not befit the highest being to concern itself with anything but the highest, which of course is itself. This divine nous does “move all things”, but only to the extent that it is loved by the lesser realities that it influences. The Stoics, for their part, postulated a divine principle known as pneuma or logos, which however did not exist outside the cosmos, but rather was distributed in the logoi spermatikoi that pervaded all things. Rather than contrasting immanence and transcendence, the Stoics developed a sort of immanent duality, where the immanent logos actualizes himself in a receptive matter reminiscent of the Timeus.
By the fourth century AD, Hellenistic philosophers trying to reconcile the Christian revelation with earlier Platonist or Aristotelian views about the dialectic of immanence and transcendence were mainly concerned with preserving the absolute transcendence of the first principle, attributing contact with the world to other subordinate entities. It is quite straightforward to see how this approach results in the postulation of different “levels” of divinity: though the eternal archetypes of material reality (Plato’s “Ideas”) are often posited to reside in its mind, the higher level comes to resemble the Aristotelian nous in its lack of concern for the world; on the other hand, it is only in the mind of the Demiurge (such as Plutarch’s logos) that the Ideas are conceived in relation with the world. The climax of this tendency to remove the divine principle from the universe is reached by Plotinus’ theology of the One, which rules out any intentional involvement of the transcendental sphere with the world. The contact with the world is ensured by the overflow of emanations: according to Plotinus, the Ideas that are present in the nous in a unified manner are transmitted to a “hypostatic soul” and eventually to a “world soul” that effects differentiation in the phenomenal realm. The One is briefly accessible through contemplation, but cannot be expressed in human terms (apophaticism) and is eternally separate from human reality.
The challenge posed by Christianity to this Hellenistic conception of the divine stems directly from the understanding of God that is articulated in Scripture. The Old Testament God is a Creator God that enters into a covenant with a nation without this in any way limiting His absolute transcendence. On the contrary, the omnipotence of God becomes manifest as He intervenes in human affairs: intermediaries such as angels or prophets only act following His personal command. Most importantly, the event of Christ’s life, death and resurrection represents the highest instance of divine intervention in human affairs and thereby introduce a substantial reordering of the relationship between God and creation. At the same time, however, the introduction in the New Testament of the Father-Son dialectic seemed to provide theologians imbued with Hellenistic culture with an excellent opportunity to replicate the opposition between the One and the Demiurge, associating the Father with the transcendent order and the Son with the immanent order. Athanasius was familiar with the work of Justin the Martyr, who repeatedly stressed how the task of the Logos was to bridge the gap between the inaccessible Father and the world. This doctrine necessarily implied the subordination of the Mediator to the transcendent deity and was therefore amenable of Arian interpretations.
The earliest precedent of Athanasius’ articulation of the relationship between God and creation can be traced to Ireneus’ attack on Gnosticism in his Adversus Haereses. Ireneus stresses the distinction between the transcendent and the immanent realm, but interprets it not from a perspective of opposition, rather within the context of God’s free decision to make His immutable, perfect being the source of creation’s constant growth. The perfection of the divine realm, in a rather Platonic fashion, is instead the source of the existence of mankind as well as of the differences that characterize mankind. In this way, there is no need of intermediaries; on the contrary, the notion of a God uninvolved with finite reality as Plotinus’ One would be inconsistent with divine majesty, which is actualized in love and concern for creation. Ireneus does also anticipate Athanasius in his emphasis on the eternal co-existence and contiguity of the Father, the Word and the Spirit, as well as in his stressing the fact that their mediation does not imply the existence of a wedge between the Father and the world. The persistent tendency to attribute a lower status to logos and pneuma resurfaces for instance in the writings of Origen and eventually is given a more sustained doctrinal formulation in the writings of Arius.
While the relation between God and creation is the main leitmotif of Athanasius’ theology, in DI the focus is on the relationship between God and mankind, so that the cosmology underpinning the text is developed in function of the author’s anthropology. The relationship between mankind and the transcendent realm of the divine is developed analogically already in CG 30, where Athanasius argues that God is beyond human thought, but man enjoys a structural similarity with God in virtue of man’s natural goodness. Despite this essential kinship, the fact that mankind shares with the rest of creation the fact that it was created ex nihilo should render it unable to acquire any knowledge of God. God’s special love for humanity, however, ensures that He orders creation through His Word so as to render Himself knowable through His works (CG 35). The discussion within CG of the structural coincidence of God’s transcendence and ultimate “otherness” with His care for creation introduces the discussion of the God’s “works” and therefore of the role of the Word that is developed in DI.
An important notion in DI’s anthropology is that of “remaining” (menein) within the sphere of God’s knowledge and love, which is of course derived from John’s Gospel and which recurrently resurfaces in Athanasius’ later works against the Arians. God wanted mankind to remain within the original structure of its relationship with Him, but mankind turned away from it to indulge into self-centered pleasures. As a result, the notion of history that emerges in DI is one of a constant movement between two poles, one representing the experience of full communion between God and man, and one where man drifts imperceptibly into self-destruction and non-being. DI 4 points out that it belongs to the physis of everything that is created to spontaneously drift into the nothingness of corruption- and human sin resulted in a further widening of the gap between mankind and God. Athanasius argues that God could not simply dispose that mankind returned to its original situation of communion with Him, since that would not have eliminated the intrinsic orientation of man towards non-being. It was necessary instead that God took more radical action so as to ensure that man is stably reoriented towards Being. In DI 44, Athanasius states that “the Savior fittingly put on a body, so that the body would be joined to life and would no longer remain (apomeine) in death, but having put on immortality, it would then rise up and remain (diameine) immortal”.
In this way, the transcendent, invisible divine realm becomes fully accessible through the humanity of Christ, since the closeness of God to mankind becomes mankind deification. Athanasius’ strategy is also to move beyond the Plotinian and Arian strategy that establishes an ontological prioritizing of the Father over the Son, but at the same time he does not give up on the distinction between the hypostaseis. He moves beyond a purely apophatic characterization of the supreme principle to argue for goodness and mercy (charis) as God’s primary characteristic, but does not diminish the divine otherness, rather positing the externality of the divine essence (including Father and Son) to creation as being integrated by the intervention of both hypostaseis (not to mention the Spirit) within creation. At the same time, Platonist echoes are present in the notion that creation participates (metalambanei) in the Word, as well as in the emphasis on the cosmos’ and on mankind’s being the natural receptacle of the activity of the Word. The notion of participation is deployed by Athanasius to stress how the universe has not only its temporal beginning in God, but also its ontological basis as well as its epistemological ground. In an almost Bonaventurean fashion, the reality and pervasiveness of the Word in the universe is what grounds its intelligibility. The Son, on his side, does not participate in the Father; rather He is the perfect image and issue (kalpos) of the Father; it is His being the Image of the Father in a rather Origenian fashion that ensures that he is also the archetype of creation.
The notion of deification, or theosis, would receive its full systematic elaboration by the later theologians of hesychasm; the text of DI, however, provides one of the earliest treatments of this issue, that Athanasius develops more fully in his oration Against the Arians. We already pointed out how for Athanasius a mere fiat on God’s part would have been inadequate to secure mankind’s destiny- it might have returned man to its pre-lapsarian status, but it would not have secured him against his tendency towards nothingness, turning human history into an endless series of sins and absolution. In fact, Athanasius believes that, once it has learnt to sin, even a forgiven mankind would drift back to its corrupted state. Creatures are naturally mortal and thus they do not have the ability to grant exemption from death. The implication of this fact is that even if the savior were the most sublime of all creatures as the Arians believe, mankind would still be left vulnerable to the attack of the devil; how could a creature “be saved by another creature that itself needs salvation?” (CA, 3, 33). In DI 7, Athanasius argues that the Son alone “is able to suffer for all and is competent to be an advocate on behalf of all before the Father”, because only God is able to bestow that which is lacking to individuals drifting towards death so that they might “ever abide immortal and incorruptible” (CA, 3, 33).
The effect of divine charis towards man is that man becomes an image of the one Image that is the Son, thereby being transported onto an ontological level that is entirely different from either the fallen or the pre-lapsarian state. While CG repeatedly sets out to interpret the relationship between God and the cosmos within a framework emphasizing divine governance over created reality, DI qualifies this approach in relation to humanity pointing out how mankind is not only ordained to receive this “added grace” of deification that is reserved for man, but it is also expected to act responsibly so as to guard (phylaxein) this grace. In DI 3, Athanasius discusses man’s free will, or rather, his power of free choice (proairesis), which must deployed so as not to disperse the benefits of the Word’s action in creation. In Prof. Anatolios’ words, “with humanity, as with all creation, its maintenance and well being is derivative from the grace of participation in the divine power. In the case of humanity, it is only a question of an attenuation (…) of this state of passivity, as if (…) humanity’s special position is that of being ordained to actively maintain its passivity”.
Once more, Athanasius’ anthropology in DI does reflect the Platonic overtones of much Alexandrian philosophy of the time, with its talk of vous, psuche and soma. The human vous is always understood relationally as that disposition enabling the individual to come in contact with God and eventually to achieve the vision of the transcendent realm. The psuche, on the other hand, is understood in relation with the body, of which it is “the pilot” or the “guide”. The soma is what is “closer to man” (CG 3) and in this sense it competes with God for the attention of man. The psuche is not considered per se superior to the soma, but rather because its task is that of reorienting the whole of the individual away from self-centeredness towards God. This task, however, cannot be achieved without the help of the divine grace, which alone can effect a stable reorientation of the individual towards God. And of course, the source of this grace is the providential incarnation of the Logos as the highest instance of divine involvement with creation.
In DI, the fittingness of the notion of Incarnation is emphasized deploying the Stoic notion of the universe as a body (DI 41), going onto argue that if the Word of God is in the universe, “and is present to it as a whole and to every part”, there is nothing incredible or unsuitable (atopon) in saying that the Word came as a man. Mankind is a part of the totality of the universe: and since it is not unsuitable that God should be known by means of His works throughout the universe, there is nothing wrong with a part of the human race becoming an instrument of the Word. The fact that the Word takes up a soma has seemed to some interpreters problematic; Athanasius seems to develop a Logos-sarx Christology that is apparently amenable of an Apollinarian interpretation. Apollinaris envisaged the source of sin in human flesh, so he argued that that the incarnation of the Word consisted in the Logos taking the role of the soul in the body of Jesus Christ, so as to govern man’s unruly flesh and to enable mankind to be assimilated into this structure of reformed governance by the sacraments and especially the assumption of Christ’s body in the Eucharist.
Grillmeier argues for instance that the body for Athanasius is merely an organon; the problem of such criticism, however, is that it superimposes a later analytical Christology reflecting the Chalcedonian definition on Athanasius’ earlier soteriology, where there was no place for the human soul of Christ as a further mediating link between the supernatural and the natural agency of the Word incarnate. The silence on the soul and the emphasis on the human body in dealing with the Incarnation –nous and psuche remaining the mediating characteristics- is rather to be regarded as Athanasius’ emphasizing the Word’s condescension in being united to us in what is “closest to ourselves” (DI 16). Since human reason had “stooped to sensible things”, the Word submitted to appearing “through a body”, so that he might “as a human being, transfer humanity and turn their senses to himself”, eventually persuading mankind “through the works he did that he was not merely a man but God, and the Word and Wisdom of the true God”.
The notion of the “works” accomplished by the Word in the body, again echoing the Johannine notion of ta erga ta kala which are also ta erga tou Patros, is pervasive in the whole of DI. In DI 16, it is listed as one of the two main motives for the incarnation: “by his becoming human” the Word expressed his love for mankind in two ways: “he rid us of death and renewed us”; at the same time, “by his work” he manifested and made himself known “to be the Son of God and the Word of the Father, ruler and king of the universe”. The repeated emphasis on the interplay between the divine nature and ta erga in the person of the incarnate Word is part of Athanasius’ strategy of positing the incarnation as renewing the knowledge of God through an episode of intensified divine condescension. On the other hand, the emphasis on the bodiliness of Christ reemerges as Athanasius discusses the importance of Jesus’ offering of his body as a redemptive sacrifice. In DI 10 and 19 Athanasius mentions Christ’s offering of his body as “the primary reason” (aitia prote) of the incarnation. In DI 6, it is said explicitly that through sin, death entered into the world and the whole of mankind was subject to it, according to God’s decree that established death to be the necessary consequence of sin. This divine disposition was fulfilled in Christ’s body, which in virtue of its participation with the Word was sufficient to atone for the death of all. This sacrifice is made possible by the attenuation of the Word’s transcendence through the assumption of the body, though its efficacy stems from the participation of this body with the Word. The body allows the Word to undergo death; on the other hand, the Word’s immortality is communicated to the body. In DI 9, Athanasius argues that “because of the Word that was dwelling in it, (the body) would remain incorruptible, and so corruption would depart from mankind through the grace of the resurrection”. The incomparable dignity of the Word’s body is such that “by offering his temple and the instrument of his body as a substitute for all”, he could “pay the debt” of mankind and “grant incorruption to all humanity by the promise of resurrection”. We might also wish to stress that Athanasius’ Christ is not a “collective” figure, but rather a representative one; he is the first fruit of the final resurrection, since his flesh was the first to be freed from sin and corruption (Contra Arios, 2, 61); but eventually what has befallen to the body of the incarnate Word shall befall each one of us.
An important element in Athanasius’ understanding of the mission of the Word is the notion of the latter’s unrestrained activity throughout the cosmos. When the Word was in the body (DI 17), the universe “was not deprived of its guidance”; being incarnate, “he was not constrained by anyone, but rather himself contained everything”; being in a body “and enlivening it himself, he also enlivens the universe, and was both in all and outside all”. According to Prof. Anatolios, “it is in virtue of this unrestrained activity that the presence and action of the Logos in the body is to be differentiated from the normal activity of the soul”; Athanasius’ failure to mention Christ’s human soul merely reflects this strategy. Again, we should not move too hastily towards an analytic dissecting of Athanasius’ incarnate Word; rather, we should remind ourselves that Christ is posited as representing a certain type of relation between God and creation. The Word is present in the body in the same way as He is present in creation; He pervades all, but does not partake in anything. The Logos is “controlling” the suffering and the passions of the body that he has assumed: in this sense Athanasius can say that the Word “suffered for all” (DI 20), while asserting at the same time that “neither when the Virgin gave birth did he suffer himself, nor when he was in the body he was defiled (…) for he was not bound to the body, but rather he controlled it” (DI 17). The issue is therefore not how the body - physical suffering and death in particular- have affected the incarnate Word, but rather how the Word has transformed the human body and the experience of suffering and death through the incarnation.
The problems arising from the presence in Scripture of statements that appear to pertain to Christ’s divinity and of others that seem to refer to his humanity are of course strictly connected with any attempt at interpreting the suffering of Christ in a coherent fashion. This problem would resurface later on in the dispute between Cyril and Nestorius and in the controversies surrounding the Chalcedonian definition; again, in the work of Athanasius a more thorough treatment of this issue is included in the Contra Arios. However, DI already addresses the issue by means of the concept of appropriation (idiopoiesis). Through the Incarnation, the Word appropriates human flesh and makes it his own (DI 31); it was therefore right to say of him that he was born and suffered because he had “a true, not a phantasmal, body” (DI 18). Human attributes are ascribed to the Logos, but at the same time they only do so because of his free assumption of human flesh. As a result, both the statement “suffering can be ascribed to the Logos” (cfr. DI 16-17) and “suffering is intrinsically external to the Logos” (cfr. DI 43) are necessary if we are to attain an understanding of the incarnation that is consistent with divine mercy while retaining an adequate conception of God’s transcendence.
Athanasius’ understanding of the incarnation as the most appropriate entrance to the knowledge of God allows him to develop an idiosyncratic understanding of God’s pedagogy. The Word entered human history addressing the way in which people had distorted their understanding of God, thus treating particular problems and not general errors (DI 15ff.). Those who worshipped their contemporaries were shown that only Christ was God. Those who worshipped demons were corrected by Christ’s exorcisms. Finally, those Greeks who worshipped heroes of the past were enlightened by Christ’s resurrection into understanding that only Christ can defeat death. The externality of truth in the Old Testament is replaced by the intimacy of truth in the New Testament, where the Truth itself secures to mankind the gift of knowledge of the truth. In fact, the new dispensation continues even after Christ’s ascension to heaven, as the Church can continue the task of the Word in transmitting the divine wisdom. In DI 47 Athanasius develops the traditional contrast between the supposed wisdom of the Greeks and the simple oratory of the disciples of Christ, pointing out that the former have been unable to win many converts, while the latter have “persuaded crowded congregations across the world to despise death and think of things immortal”. The text dwells with abundance of detail on the existential change wrought in the life of the faithful by the acceptance of Christian revelation, something that puts continence and contempt of this world –things impossible to pagan philosophy- easily within the reach of apparently ordinary people.
Some considerations are due to the treatment of miracles in the text of DI. These events of course indicate that the Logos is divine. At the same time, they hint that people should both admire the goodness of the Father and the Son’s economy for our sake. But the miracles, which seem to operate a flaw in the normal course of history, are only there to highlight the ultimate harmony existing between God and the created order and to convince individuals worshipping the latter of their mistake. Through the miracles, the Word reveals himself to be the Lord of creation, but neither He, nor the Father, who is revealed through the Logos, are in any way “comprehended” or “contained in this revelation” (cfr. DI 18).
As it shall be elaborated later on by Gregory of Nyssa, even for Athanasius the Christian life is a journey in hope towards the infinite riches of the divine nature, and never the possessing or comprehending of the divine nature. Even at the end of time, the blessed shall not acquire a fully adequate understanding of God, but rather God shall be revealed to them inasmuch their deified nature shall enable them to receive. As a footnote, one might wish to deploy the notion of natural kinship between man and God developed by Athanasius as a resource in defense of analogia entis, countering Barth’s theology of analogia relationis where it sometimes seems that there is a structure of man which is “in and of itself”, independently of God. This of course does not deny the fact the relation between God and man in DI is deeply dialogical; there is an abyss between Athanasius’ understanding of the divine realm and later approaches to God (Kant/Schleiermacher) that tend to reabsorb the latter into human consciousness.
Rehearsing earlier Neo-Platonic beliefs, every individual is posited by Athanasius as naturally contemplative- in fact, contemplation is the response of the individual to the initiative of the invisible God who reveals Himself, and not a technique that the philosopher adopts so as to attain a fleeting vision of the One. Through contemplation the single individual can attain full reconciliation with the order of created reality, leaving aside anything that is sub-rational or any other form of Hellenistic intellectualism. The Incarnation of the Word does therefore reverse the hierarchy of the fall, where people thought that in acting against God’s commands, they would become “like gods” and acquire an understanding of reality independently of divine revelation. In Plotinus’ Enneads, it was argued that the human intellect, if purified by philosophy, could autonomously abandon the realm of multiplicity and return to the realm of the One, where its complex and changeable life would find completion in an ecstasy of contemplation. Athanasius, however, does not write of the renewed mind being mystically absorbed by the divine; rather, being renewed in the knowledge of God leads to renewed behavior, “a good life and a pure soul” (DI 57), so that the Christian “is included in the saints’ company”. The elitist understanding of the “holy life” articulated by the Platonist philosophers is replaced by a communitarian understanding of holiness, which entails a new approach to your neighbor and to the use of material possessions.
A few bibliographical suggestions[1]
Anatolios, K. Athanasius. The coherence of his thought, Ed. Routledge, London and New York, 1998
Barnard, L.W. “The antecedents of Arius”, Vigiliae Christianae 24, 1970, 172-88
Bienert, W. “Zur Logos-Christologie des Athanasius von Alexandrien in Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione”, Studia patristica 21, ed. E.A. Livingstone, Leuven: Peeters, 1989
Bouyer, L. L’Incarnation et l’Église-corps du Christ dans la théologie de Saint Athanase, Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1943
Brakke, D. Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995
Gregg, R.C. and Groh, D. Early Arianism: A View of Salvation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981
Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978
Mejiering, E.P. Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius. Synthesis or Antithesis?, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968; 1974
Pettersen, A. Athanasius, London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1995
Pollard, T.E. “Logos and Son in Origen, Arius and Athanasius”, Studia Patristica 2 (Texte und Untersuchungen 64), ed. Kurt Aland and F.L. Cross, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1957, pp. 282-287
Ritschl, D. Athanasius. Versuch einer Interpretation (Theologische Studien 76) Zuerich: EVZ Verlag, 1964
Roldanus, J. Le Christ et l’homme dans la théologie d’Athanase d’Alexandrie. Étude de la conjunction de sa conception de l’homme avec sa christologie, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969
Williams, R. Arius: Heresy and Tradition, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987
[1] As we need to be realistic, I am only listing a small sample of secondary sources