On the Incarnation. Athanasius of Alexandria
earth; ” secondly, in the most edifying book of the Shepherd, “First2 of all believe that God is one, which created and framed all things, and made them to exist out of nothing. ” 2. To which also Paul refers when he says, “By3 faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the Word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear. ” 3. For God is good, or rather is essentially the source of goodness: nor4 could one that is good be niggardly of anything: whence, grudging existence to none, He has made all things out of nothing by His own Word, Jesus Christ our Lord. And among these, having taken especial pity, above all things on earth, upon the race of men, and having perceived its inability, by virtue of the condition of its origin, to continue in one stay, He gave them a further gift, and He did not barely create man, as He did all the irrational creatures on the earth, but made them after His own image, giving them a portion even of the power of His own Word; so that having as it were a kind of reflexion of the Word, and being made rational, they might be able to abide ever in blessedness, living the true life which belongs to the saints in paradise. 4. But knowing once more how the will of man could sway to either side, in anticipation He secured the grace given them by a law and by the spot where He placed them. For He brought them into His own garden, and gave them a law: so that, if they kept the grace and remained good, they might still keep the life in paradise without sorrow or pain or care besides having the promise of incorruption in heaven; but that if they transgressed and turned back, and became evil, they might know that they were incurring that corruption in death which was theirs by nature: no longer to live in paradise, but cast out of it from that time forth to die and to abide in death and in corruption. 5. Now this is that of which Holy Writ also gives warning, saying in the Person of God: “Of every tree5 that is in the garden, eating thou shalt eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, ye shall not eat of it, but on the day that ye eat, dying ye shall die. ” But by “dying ye shall die, ” what else could be meant than not dying merely, but also abiding ever in the corruption of death?
Footnotes
1 Gen. i. 1.
2 Herm. Mand. 1.
3 Heb. xi. 3.
4 c. Gent. xli. and Plato, Tim æus 29 E.
5 Gen. ii. 16, sq.
§4.
Our creation and God ’s Incarnation most intimately connected. As by the Word man was called from non-existence into being, and further received the grace of a divine life, so by the one fault which forfeited that life they again incurred corruption and untold sin and misery filled the world.
You are wondering, perhaps, for what possible reason, having proposed to speak of the Incarnation of the Word, we are at present treating of the origin of mankind. But this, too, properly belongs to the aim of our treatise. 2. For in speaking of the appearance of the Saviour amongst us, we must needs speak also of the origin of men, that you may know that the reason of His coming down was because of us, and that our transgression1 called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, that the Lord should both make haste to help us and appear among men. 3. For of His becoming Incarnate we were the object, and for our salvation He dealt so lovingly as to appear and be born even in a human body. 4. Thus, then, God has made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves (as was said2 in the former treatise), received the condemnation of death with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer remained as they were made, but3 were being corrupted according to their devices; and death had the mastery over them as king4. For transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time. 5. For if, out of a former normal state of non-existence, they were called into being by the Presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back to what was not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they derive their being from God who IS, be everlastingly bereft even of being; in other words, that they should be disintegrated and abide in death and corruption. 6. For man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not; but by reason of his likeness to Him that is (and if he still preserved this likeness by keeping Him in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption, and remain incorrupt; as Wisdom5 says: “The taking heed to His laws is the assurance of immortality; ” but being incorrupt, he would live henceforth as God, to which I suppose the divine Scripture refers, when it says: “I have6 said ye are gods, and ye are all sons of the most Highest; but ye die like men, and fall as one of the princes. ”
Footnotes
1 Cf. Orat. ii. 54, note 4.
2 c. Gent. 3 –5.
3 Eccles. vii. 29; Rom. i. 21, 22.
4 Rom. v. 14.
5 Wisd. vi. 18.
6 Ps. lxxxii. 6, sq.
§5.
For God has not only made us out of nothing; but He gave us freely, by the Grace of the Word, a life in correspondence with God. But men, having rejected things eternal, and, by counsel of the devil, turned to the things of corruption, became the cause1 of their own corruption in death, being, as I said before, by nature corruptible, but destined, by the grace following from partaking of the Word, to have escaped their natural state, had they remained good. 2. For because of the Word dwelling with them, even their natural corruption did not come near them, as Wisdom also says2: “God made man for incorruption, and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death came into the world. ” But when this was come to pass, men began to die, while corruption thence-forward prevailed against them, gaining even more than its natural power over the whole race, inasmuch as it had, owing to the transgression of the commandment, the threat of the Deity as a further advantage