Here is an excerpt from On the Incarnation by Athanasius
What is meant by this statement? "He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God."
As, then, he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld,
may yet perceive and know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ
with his understanding at least consider Him in His bodily works and test whether they be
of man or God. If they be of man, then let him scoff; but if they be of God, let him not mock
at things which are no fit subject for scorn, but rather let him recognize the fact and marvel
that things divine have been revealed to us by such humble means, that through death
deathlessness has been made known to us, and through the Incarnation of the Word the
Mind whence all things proceed has been declared, and its Agent and Ordainer, the Word
of God Himself. He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God. He manifested
Himself by means of a body in order that we might perceive the Mind of the unseen Father.
He endured shame from men that we might inherit immortality. He Himself was unhurt
by this, for He is impassable and incorruptible; but by His own impassability He kept and
healed the suffering men on whose account He thus endured. In short, such and so many
are the Savior'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. One cannot see all the waves
with one's eyes, for when one tries to do so those that are following on baffle one's senses.
Even so, when one wants to take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, one cannot
do so, even by reckoning them up, for the things that transcend one's thought are always
more than those one thinks that one has grasped.
may yet perceive and know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ
with his understanding at least consider Him in His bodily works and test whether they be
of man or God. If they be of man, then let him scoff; but if they be of God, let him not mock
at things which are no fit subject for scorn, but rather let him recognize the fact and marvel
that things divine have been revealed to us by such humble means, that through death
deathlessness has been made known to us, and through the Incarnation of the Word the
Mind whence all things proceed has been declared, and its Agent and Ordainer, the Word
of God Himself. He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God. He manifested
Himself by means of a body in order that we might perceive the Mind of the unseen Father.
He endured shame from men that we might inherit immortality. He Himself was unhurt
by this, for He is impassable and incorruptible; but by His own impassability He kept and
healed the suffering men on whose account He thus endured. In short, such and so many
are the Savior'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. One cannot see all the waves
with one's eyes, for when one tries to do so those that are following on baffle one's senses.
Even so, when one wants to take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, one cannot
do so, even by reckoning them up, for the things that transcend one's thought are always
more than those one thinks that one has grasped.
Comment