Scripture and God in Christianity

comprehensive discussion of the person is beyond our limitations. Therefore we will restrict ourselves
just to his christology.
For Athanasius the central objective of Christian religion was "Redemption" and he subordinated
every other thing to this objective. Archibald Robertson finds Athanasius' greatness in this allpervasive
view of Christ's redemption: "Athanasius was not a systematic theologian; that is, he
produced no many-sided theology like that of Origen or Augustine. He had no interest in theological
speculation, none of the instincts of a schoolman or philosopher. His theological greatness
lies in his firm grasp of soteriological principles, in his resolute subordination of every thing
else, even the formula homoousia [identical in nature, consubstantial], to the central fact of Redemption,
and to what the fact implied as to the Person of the Redeemer." 573
According to Athanasius 'Salvation' or 'Redemption' demands incarnation, "the salvation was
possible only on one condition, namely, that the Son of God was made in Jesus so that we might
become God." 574 In his "De Incarnatione et Contra Arianos" he discussed the matter at length:
"For in speaking of the appearance of the Savior amongst us, we must need speak also of the origin
of men, that you may know that the reason of his coming down was because of us, and that
our transgression called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, that the Lord should both make
haste to help us and appear among men. For of his becoming incarnate we were the object, and
for our salvation he dealt so lovingly as to appear and be born even in a human body. Thus, then,
God was made man, and willed that he should abide in incorruption; but men, having despised
and rejected the contemplation of God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves ...received
the condemnation of death with which they had been threatened; and from thenceforth no longer
remained as they were made, but were being corrupted according to their devices; and death had
the mastery over them as king." 575 Hence "the rational man made in God's image was disappearing,
and the handiwork of God was in process of dissolution." 576 Therefore "The Son of God became
the Son of man in order that the sons of men, the sons of Adam, might be made sons of
God. The Word, who was begotten of the Father in Heaven in an ineffable, inexplicable, incomprehensible
and eternal manner, came to this earth to be born in time of the Virgin Mary, Mother
of God, in order that they who were born of earth might be born again of God, in Heaven....He
has bestowed upon us the first-fruits of the Holy Spirit, so that we may all become sons of God in
imitation of the Son of God. Thus He, the true and natural Son of God, bears us all in Himself, so
that we may all bear in ourselves the only God." 577
In "On the Incarnation" Athanasius argued: "For he was made man that we might be made God;
and he manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and he
endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality. For while he himself was in no
way injured, being impassable and incorruptible and very Word and God, men who were suffering,
and for whose sakes he endured all this, he maintained and preserved in his own impassability."
578 This human divinization was impossible if the Logos, who appeared to us in Jesus, was
not the uncreated, eternal Son of God. In his "Second Oration Against the Arians" he argued
that, "Nor again would man have been deified if joined to a created being, or if the Son were not
true God, nor would man have come into the Father's presence unless he who took on a body
were by nature and in truth his Logos. And as we should not have been freed from sin and the
curse unless the flesh which the Logos assumed were real human flesh (for there could be no
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