by St. Athanasius
This is one of the books suggested for supplemental spiritual reading for Level 5 Year 1 in the Mater Amabilis™ high school beta plans (available in the high school facebook group).
My copy includes a letter from St. Athanasius to Marcellinus on the psalms in an appendix, but I didn't read it yet.
Lewis wrote a brief introduction for the Popular Patristics Series edition published by St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. (This is the translation Kansas Dad recommended when I was deciding which one to purchase.) One of the points he makes, one I think I've heard Bishop Robert Barron talk about as well, is that reading primary sources and older books (in this case about theology) is important for our own growth in the faith and, according to Bishop Barron, for evangelism as well. Every time period has its own bias and false assumptions.
None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false, they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.It's easy to see where older books are wrong. We use a lot of older books in our history studies and my children are quite adept at identifying Victorian bias (as an example). What is more difficult, but also vastly rewarding, is learning to sift through an older book to discover the truths that are within and which have been clouded by time or, more often, resurfaced as a "new" argument against the faith that has been addresses time and again throughout the past two thousand years.
On the Incarnation addresses some of the most basic tenets of our faith:
- Why do we need to be "saved?" (Creation and the Fall)
- How can salvation be accomplished and what the incarnation does (The Divine Dilemma and its Solution in the Incarnation)
- Why Christ had to die on the cross (The Death of Christ)
- Why Christ had to rise again (The Resurrection)
But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death...For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again.Though the whole book is about the incarnation, this one sentence is almost all you need.
He assumed a body capable of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the resurrection.My favorite chapter is the seventeenth. In it, St. Athanasius writes of the paradox of an eternal being dwelling in a mortal body.
The marvellous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself.You can read the chapter on the New Advent site, but I liked the translation in my copy better.
Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole; and He is revealed both through the words of His body and through His activity in the world.St. Athanasius addresses many doubts about the incarnation, death, and resurrection. In one chapter, he considers the number of days between the death and the resurrection. If it had been less than one or two days, people would have doubted he had really died. If he had waited longer, they would have forgotten about his death on the cross or the people would have left Jerusalem and returned home, unable to witness and confirm the resurrection.
No, while the affair was still ringing in their ears and their eyes were still straining and their minds in turmoil, and while those who had put Him to death were still on the spot and themselves witnessing to the fact of it, the Son of God after three days showed His once dead body immortal and incorruptible; and it as evident to all that it was from no natural weakness that the body which the Word indwelt had died, but in order that in it by the Saviour's power death might be done away.In the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters, St. Athanasius speaks directly to some of the specific concerns of Jews and Gentiles of his time. These refutations are provided "for the student" with a note they can be skipped, but I enjoyed them and recommend them. It turns out the likes of blog posts denouncing the stupidity of those who refuse to acknowledge Christ have a history that goes back at least to fourth century.
Many of the arguments are still wavering, not yet completing understood or explained as we would find today in the catechism. Yet the heart of many of the doctrines are already clear and it is interesting to read the arguments St. Athanasius thought most important to make.
In short, such and so many are the Saviour'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 things that one has grasped.Because I have assigned a commentary on Genesis for First Son, this book is listed as optional on his plans. I highly doubt he'll read it this year, but I am glad I did.
I purchased this book at a local retreat center and received nothing in exchange for this blog post. The link above to Amazon is an affiliate link.
