Blogging thru On the Incarnation: The Second Dilemma and Eudaimonia (part 10)

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This is part 10 of the series blogging through the book On the Incarnation by Athanasius. You might want to start with part 1 and work your way through the series.

As we have noted, a careful reading, and, at least in my case, several re-readings of On the Incarnation reveals major themes in Athanasius’ theology. Over the course of both this work and its prequel he has laid out a foundation and has continually built upon it as he makes his case for the Incarnation and why it was necessary. In this post we will unpack the second dilemma that necessitated the Incarnation of the Word.

The Good Life is found in Contemplation

In Against the Gentiles, Athanasius described the proper state of human existence as a relationship with God rooted in contemplation (see part 2). By using our rational facilities to focus on the things above we may learn and understand “divine realities”. For Athanasius the Fall was the result of humans taking our focus away from the things above and directing it towards lower or more worldly things. In chapter 11 of On the Incarnation, Athanasius reiterates these ideas in laying out the basis for the second dilemma.

Just as mankind as a created being was mortal by nature, Athanasius will argue, we are also unable by nature (as originally created) to know or receive knowledge about the Creator. But God, desiring to be known, bestowed mankind with His own image. Among all the things that being made in the image of God might entail. it refers to God’s providing us with a rational soul from which He can be contemplated and perceived. This ability was what separated humans from the rest of the “irrational” creatures.

creating human beings not simply like all the irrational animals upon the earth but making them according to his own image, giving them a share of the power of his own Word, so that … being made rational, they might be able to abide in blessedness, living the true life
(chap 3) 1

The blessed life was to know the Creator.

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Blogging thru On the Incarnation: The First Dilemma and the Atonement (part 9)

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This is part 9 of the series blogging through the book On the Incarnation by Athanasius. You might want to start with part 1 and work your way through the series.

In reading through On the Incarnation, we have been exposed to a great deal of Athanasius’ theology. As we start to explore the first dilemma that necessitated the Incarnation of the Word, we will do a quick recap of the main theological points Athanasius has made.

  • God created humans with a mortal nature
  • Humans enjoyed immortality through participation with the Word before the Fall
  • Participation with the Word was through contemplation of the Word
  • Humans turned their focus away from the Word to worldly pleasures and sunk deeper and deeper into evil
  • Humans were sentenced to death on account of the transgression. Without a connection with the Word to blunt their mortal nature they would die and return to non-being

Athanasius considers all of this and writes that “what happened was truly both absurd and improper.” The absurd and the improper each represent one of two horns of what Athanasius considers a dilemma for God to solve.

On the first horn Athanasius finds it “absurd that God, the Father of truth, should appear a liar for our profit and preservation.” Since God issued the law that humans would die if they transgressed He could not just dissolve the sentence. “If humans sentenced to death did not die then that would make God a liar. For God would not be true if, after saying that we would die, the human being did not die.” 1

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Athanasius and the Doctrine of Theosis

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This is part 8 of the series blogging through the book On the Incarnation by Athanasius. You might want to start with part 1 and work your way through the series.

In the last entry we explored Athanasius’ view on mankind as beings that were created as moral creatures who enjoyed immortality through their participation with the Word Jesus. In describing how man was to enjoy God forever, Athanasius quotes Psalm 81 and asserts that we are gods.

And being incorruptible, [human beings] would have lived thereafter like God, as somewhere the Divine Scripture also signals, saying “I said you are gods, and all sons of the Most High; but you die like human beings and fall like any prince” (Ps 81.6–7).

(On the Incarnation ch 4)1

The idea of saying “we are gods” would draw the ire of most modern Christian readers. Yet consider the more famous statement from Athanasius as he wraps up his work that says the same thing in rather blunt terms.

For [the Word of God] was incarnate that we might be made god. (On the Incarnation ch 54)

Before we write off Athanasius, let’s explore this topic a bit further. It was for this very purpose that C.S. Lewis, in the preface, advises us to read the old books. To understand the outlook of a different age and see certain truths from their perspective, perhaps learning from their mistakes or seeing clearer our own.

“We might be made god”. If we were to interpret this statement in a wooden literal sense we would get Athanasius all wrong. Just as we can often err when doing the same with the Scriptures themselves. Athanasius is not claiming that humans would become deities or advocating some form of polytheism. Nor should we think that in saying “we might be made god” that he was a radical teaching something novel.

The idea that humans would be “made divine” was to suggest we would become partakers of the divine nature.

For He has become Man, that He might deify us in Himself, … and [we might become] ‘partakers of the Divine Nature,’ as blessed Peter wrote (2 Peter 1:4)

(Athanasius to Adelphius in Letter 60.4)2

The idea being referred to here is called deification or theosis. It was a commonly held idea throughout early Christianity. In fact, by the mid to late 2nd century, we find the concepts involved in theosis in many extant writings by writers living throughout the Roman Empire. From Hippolytus in Rome (Refutation of All Heresies Book 10.30), Theophilus in Antioch (To Autolycus Book 2.27), Irenaeus in Lyons (Against Heresies Book 3.19), Tertullian in Carthage (Against Hermogenes chap 5) and Clement in Alexandria (Exhortation to the Heathen chap 1, 10) we find all of them at some point describing man as being “made gods”.3 That theologians held this idea across such a large geographic area by the mid 2nd century suggests that the view was widely held even earlier as it would have taken time to spread and gain traction.

So just what was the idea behind theosis?

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