De Incarnatione (7)

Examen of chapters 31-32

“For the Son of God is living and active”

Athanasius continues in this section of the book talking about the apparent livingness of Christ as contrasted by the apparent deadness of idols and demons. He points to the worship and belief in Christ as subjecting the believer to desires of things eternal, such as virtue, and knowledge of the Father as revealed through the Son. Whereas we can assume that a love for and belief in idols will result in love of temporal goods, as each god was dedicated to temporal affairs. And when we look at history we see just how living Christ is and how dead the idols were, with Christianity growing at an unprecedented rate, destroying the idols in the hearts of men which were already dead.

Next, we draw from what Paul writes extensively about in his epistles to the Corinthians in chapter 8, talking about the non-existence of idols and how food sacrificed to them has no power over the Christian, thus once again showing the living power of Christ in comparison to idols. He is quoted in verses 4-6 as saying:

“⁴ Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” ⁵ For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— ⁶ yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”

Because we KNOW that God is one Father and one Lord Jesus Christ, we can KNOW therefore that no other god can exist and does not live in the same way Jesus Christ lives though He once was dead. And we witness now that the name of Jesus bears great power over the demonic, because they know and confess that He is resurrected.

Now looking at the argument from His divinity, we know that the Son of God is eternal. As the bishops and elders decreed of Him in the council of Nicaea:

“Begotten of the Father before all ages.

Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made,

of one essence with the Father by whom all things were made.”

And Athanasius being at this council, drawing from this fact, states that it would have been outside of His nature as the Son of God to not have resurrected His own human body. The body dying as was its nature, but because of the Life inside of it, it was raised again to eternal glory at the right hand of God, showing the power that Christ had over death, rendering it weak and futile. And extending these benefits to all those who have spiritually died and resurrected with Him, being promised to likewise resurrect bodily.

And finally, in conclusion, we see all the visible signs, in the historical growth of faith, never seen before as no other religion experienced such exponential growth without military conquest. Where we see mass conversions of pagans to Christianity, many abandoning or destroying their idols, once in for all declaring the truth of the One God revealed to us by the resurrected Son. In the witness of Paul, confessing only One God and one Lord, meaning there is only one who is alive. And the witness of the fathers including Athanasius that Christ is eternal and the God of all life and creation, therefore being able to give life to His own human nature.