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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