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254 JOHN R. MEYER He unites us to the Son and the Father by means of an intellectual generation. The life of Our Lord is engendered in the mind by the act of faith so that we can receive the form of Christ and be united to the Father 196 . 4. The «bonus odor Christi»: the practice of Christian virtue For the early Church Fathers the term «to dress» referred to the faculties of a specific nature. When Adam sinned our human nature was wounded, making it impossible to achieve salvation. Our nature was «redressed» with a tendency to offend God. We are now pronus ad peccatum. Christ came to re-dress us with a pure and clean human nature. Athanasius also used the term evSufia (garment) when writing about putting on the maris TOO Xptaxou, the «faith of Christ» . Even the cross is like a garment: he urges us to «wear the sign of the cross» . We can 198 197 contemplate the Father in Jesus Christ through his words, his sacrifice and his human virtue. God's wisdom has become man, and we gain access to God through Christ, albeit still shrouded in mystery . In speaking about nonbelievers, Athanasius urges 199 Christians to carry out their apostolate in such a way that others can encounter Christ in them: «let him accept the faith of Christ and come over to his teaching, and he will see the weakness of death and the victory won over it» . A convert to Christianity puts on the faith of Christ , that is, he or she accepts the 201 200 divine revelation of God as taught by Jesus Christ and struggles to live it. The Word became Incarnate so that his assumed body might be united to Life, sanctified and raised to eternal life 202 . Our body is like straw, naturally susceptible to fire, but covering it with a fire-proof material protects it from damage 203 . Everyone who puts on the «faith of Christ» is protected from eternal death. The soul receives an internal transformation by faith: «if death were kept away from it [the body] by only a command it would still be mortal and corruptible (...), to prevent this from happening it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and thus men no longer fear death or corruption having life itself as a covering, and by it corruption is destroyed* 204 . Men that are baptized in Christ are «redressed» with the sanctified human nature of Our Lord. In the final analysis, the reason for receiving Christian bap-
THE SOTERIOLOGY OF SAINT ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA 255 tism, and of being redressed with Christ, is to confer divine immortality to the body 205 . Faith is the indispensable foundation of this new life in Christ, it eliminates fear of all evil and the sense of insecurity so common in the present life. He purifies us of sin and binds us to himself together with the other members of the Church 206 . In St. Antony, Athanasius discovers a man who really lives by the «faith of Christ». He struggled to make the faith operative through the practice of human virtue and the renouncement of earthly pleasures in favor of the eternal treasures of heaven: « v AXXooc. xs ocpstXofxev XoYt£sa9ai, oxi, xav \p\ acpwfxev St' apsxTjv, aXX' uaxspov arco9vT|axovx£c; xaxaXi[xitavo[xsv auxa TCoXXaxie, xat ot ou JSXOJXSV, toe, iixvr|[x6v£v
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UNIVERSITY OF NAVARRE FACULTY OF TH
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PREFACE Athanasius of Alexandria is
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PREFACE 189 himself as if looking i
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NOTES 1. KANNENGIESSER, Ch., Athana
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194 JOHN R. MEYER CHAPTER III: THE
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196 JOHN R. MEYER b) The Spirit ren
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198 JOHN R. MEYER — Ed. and Frenc
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200 JOHN R. MEYER POLLARD, E., Logo
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202 JOHN R. MEYER IDEM., Tertullien
Page 20 and 21: 204 JOHN R. MEYER Mart. Polycarpi P
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Page 95 and 96: NOTES 279 166. AMBROSE, De Virg. I,
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Page 99 and 100: NOTES 283 nominally or for an exter
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