On the Incarnation: Athanasius

The work by Athanasius begins with an introduction by C.S. Lewis, a note from the translator and a survey of the life of Athanasius. Athanasius wrote On the Incarnation when he was still young and before the Arian controversy had broken out, but the book fits the theology of the rest of his life quite well. The book is in the form of a letter to a certain Macarius in which Athanasius undertakes to explain the Christian faith and the Incarnation in particular. Methodologically he uses the entire metanarrative of history to show how the incarnation is needed. He begins with creation and the fall, demonstrates how the incarnation was needed to fix the divine dilemma, discusses the death and resurrection of Jesus and ends with refutations specifically of the Jews and the Gentiles. I enjoyed reading how Athanasius fit the incarnation into the whole Bible, including the Old Testament: it was not simply a truncated view of the New Testament. The book ends with an appendix which is a letter Athanasius wrote Marcellinus about the interpretation of the Psalms. In this letter he tells his reader the kind of time of life to read virtually every Psalm, based on what is found in the Psalm. While modern readers will debate about whether he was exactly right with each psalm, I think that he has understood the psalms much better than most moderns: the psalms are not to be read simply for intellectual knowledge.

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