The Incarnation of the Word of God

The Incarnation of the Word of God: Being the Treatise of St. Athanasius: De Incarnatione Verbi Dei by Athanasius, translated by A Religious of C.S.M.V. S.Th., with an introduction by C.S. Lewis (the one I linked to here is a different edition than the one I read, but fortunately it still has the intro by C.S. Lewis)
Read: 5/1/09-5/3/09
LibraryThing tags: Theology, Incarnation, Christology, Classics, SLOBS

A beautiful little book. I wasn't sure what he could say about the incarnation that I hadn't heard before, but Athanasius surprised me (despite Lewis' recommendation to that effect...) with his depth and simplicity. I was especially impressed by his meditations on the impossibility of the Author of Life remaining dead. It was, as I said, beautiful. I highly highly recommend it. I think I'm going to have to start reading it regularly. For one thing, it didn't really feel like I let it soak in. Letting it soak would definitely be a good thing.

“The Greek philosophers say that the universe is a great body, and they say truly, for we perceive the universe and its parts with our senses. But if the Word of God is in the universe, which is a body, and has entered into it in its every part, what is there surprising or unfitting in our saying that He has entered also into human nature? If it were unfitting for Him to have embodied Himself at all, then it would be unfitting for Him to have entered into the universe, and to be giving light and movement by His providence to all things in it, because the universe, as we have seen, is itself a body. But if it is right and fitting for Him to enter into the universe and to reveal Himself through it, then, because humanity is part of the universe along with the rest, it is no less fitting for Him to appear in a human body, and to enlighten and to work through that. And surely if it were wrong for a part of the universe to have been used to reveal His Divinity to men, it would be much more wrong that He should be so revealed by the whole!”