Athanasius on the Incarnation

You know what happens when a portrait that has been painted on a panel becomes obliterated through external stains. The artist does not throw away the panel, but the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material. Even so was it with the All-holy Son of God. he, the Image of the Father, came and dwelt in our midst, in order that He might renew mankind made after Himself, and seek out His lost sheep, even as it says in the Gospel: "I came to seek and to save that which was lost." This explains also his saying to the Jews: "Except a man be born anew..." He was not referring to a man's natural birth, but to the re-birth and re-creation of the soul in the Image of God...the Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which the, the Word of God, did in the body.


--St Athanasius De Incarnatione pp.41-43

I need to start this by saying that Athanasius’ metaphor of the Incarnation utilizing the image of a subject of a ruined painting having to re-sit so the artist can redo his masterpiece is probably one of my favorite images ever. It is such an aesthetically pleasing explanation (which seems appropriate given the content of the analogy). This type of aesthetic relation of God to man doesn’t appear to be a merely marginal or passing theme in this work, either. Later he goes on to say that the Incarnation is an entirely aesthetic accommodation to man of the God who is by nature invisible, “the Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which the, the Word of God, did in the body.” (p.43). In fact I think it might be interesting just to analyze On the Incarnation as a whole from a standpoint of Athanasius’ theological aesthetics. I think this is something that is absolutely lost on the modern church in many ways. Christ seems for us still to be—even though God in the flesh—the pointer to the invisible transcendence of God. But here the very man is revelatory of God in a tangible physical way. Nor do these signs necessarily have to be abandoned, but each intonate in their own way, as the physical things they are, their analogical participation in the splendor and beauty of God: “God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in His Image was sufficient to give them knowledge of the Word and through Him of the father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace, He provided the works of creation also as means by which the maker might be known” (p.39) In fact it is in portion due to the original purpose of visible creation declaring the glory of God that the very visible Incarnation had to take place (p.40f) so that again the visibility of God in man and creation could be revealed through the Incarnate Christ (e.g: “His bodily acts still declare Him to be not man only, but the Power and Word of God.” p.47).

This is not to deny the distinction between God and world, or eternal Son, and the assumed flesh, for Athanasius is very specific that the two natures in Christ maintain their integrity (p.46) and that the Son is “distinct in being [from creation]” (p.45) and “his being in everything does not mean that he shares the nature of everything, only that he gives all things their being and sustains them in it” (p.46). Nonetheless the eternal hope of the Christian in Christ is that the aesthetic particularity of the body is maintained, in opposition to the Docetics and the Gnostics “the supreme object of His coming was to bring about the resurrection of the body” (p.52) In fact to bring out a portion of Athanasius’ logic more explicitly: assuming that the Son “contains all things in Himself” (p.45) so that the operations of nature reveal His sustaining work, the Son as the Incarnate embodiment is the very visible, tangible, aesthetic proportion whereby to judge the invisible operations of nature (p.47: “Again…would not anyone who saw the substance of water transmuted into wine understand that he Who did it was Lord and Maker of the water that He changed? It was for the same reason that He walked on the sea as on dry land…”) This is seen above all in Athanasius’ opening statement of his thesis, namely “The renewal of creation has been wrought by the self-same Word who wrought it in the beginning.” (p.26)

Nor is aesthetic dimension which affirms the essential beauty and goodness of finite creation (without recourse to the Gnostic vision of salvation as a necessary escape from finitude) limited to the more grandiose pictures of the Incarnation itself—it extends even into the repugnant death on the cross. Christ did not shrink from this horrible, public death. It was public because His resurrection was to be visible, so too must His death be visible lest people think it merely a ruse “without proof or evidence” (p.53) and it was also a submission to the most horrible and gruesome form of death in order to reveal that it could conquer even the most powerful opponent (pp.53-54). Given too that Athanasius repeatedly defines sin not only as transgression of law, but primarily as corruption of the original goodness of creation (e.g. p.35) the atonement leading to resurrection is not other than the grand re-beautification of the world by renewing the world order to God and hence demonstrating how the goodness of creation itself reveals God’s own goodness. Again this is via the very specific, visible-tangible contours of the Incarnate Son.

This theological-aesthetic interpretation is reinforced by Athanasius’ when he perceives the steady decay of the world as an assault on the ramparts of heaven, as it were, a defamation of God’s glory. “It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil,” this ruination “would argue not the goodness in God, but limitation,” because it would show a decisive “indifference to the ruin of His own work” (p.34). The image of God as a painter not letting his masterpiece go to ruin should be seen here as more than “mere” metaphor: the high dignity of creation is precisely its reflection of the goodness of the Creator, its aesthetic tangible participation in God’s beauty. But what does it mean to participate in God’s beauty? What is the justification for this statement, and what are its ramifications? The whole theo-aesthetic motif of Athanasius seems to reside in the concept of both God through His Word as Creator—but also a very specific type of creation, namely ex nihilo (pp.26-27). Ex nihilo creation implies that creation, conceived in and of itself, apart from God is nothing (p.29). This is why in sin, once “unhooking” itself from reliance upon God, creation tends back toward the nothingness that undergirds it (Ibid). Logically then one can extend this to say that all things have qualities by “participation” in God’s qualities—at an analogical remove that maintains the distinction between finite and infinite, created and creature. There are no created qualities which exhibit characteristics that can be understood without their proper relation and proportion to the infinite being understood, since they are literally no-thing in themselves. Athanasius writes “the presence and love of the Word had called them into being…by nature of course man is mortal, since he was made from nothing;…[but] if he preserves the Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt” (p.30). Hence the idolatry and corruption of sin, focusing as it does on the immanent realm and so tending back into nothingness, is renewed into an eikon of God, so to speak, by the Incarnation’s overturning of corruption, and its true beauty and goodness is thereby revealed again.