On the Incarnation

What it's about

Why did God become man? Athanasius's answer, written as a young deacon in Alexandria: the Word who made the world entered it to undo death from the inside, and the cross and the empty tomb are the proof. The founding classic of Christian theology, complete, in its fifty-seven sections.

Who it's for

- Anyone asking what Christmas and Easter actually claim - Readers of C. S. Lewis, who called it a masterpiece - Students of the early Church and the Nicene faith

What’s inside

1. 1

   §1. Introductory

   2 min
2. 2

   §2. Erroneous views of Creation rejected

   3 min
3. 3

   §3. The true doctrine

   3 min
4. 4

   §4. Our creation and God's Incarnation most intimately connected

   2 min
5. 5

   §5. For God has not only made us out of nothing

   2 min
6. 6

   §6. The human race then was wasting, God's image was being effaced, and His work ruined

   2 min
7. 7

   §7. On the other hand there was the consistency of God's nature, not to be sacrificed for our profit

   2 min
8. 8

   §8. The Word, then, visited that earth in which He was yet always present

   2 min
9. 9

   §9. The Word, since death alone could stay the plague, took a mortal body which, united with Him, should avail for all, and by partaking of His immortality stay the corruption of the Race

   2 min
10. 10

    §10. By a like simile, the reasonableness of the work of redemption is shewn

    3 min
11. 11

    §11. Second reason for the Incarnation

    3 min
12. 12

    §12. For though man was created in grace, God, foreseeing his forgetfulness, provided also the works of creation to remind man of him

    2 min
13. 13

    §13. Here again, was God to keep silence

    3 min
14. 14

    §14. A portrait once effaced must be restored from the original

    3 min
15. 15

    §15. Thus the Word condescended to man's engrossment in corporeal things, by even taking a body

    2 min
16. 16

    §16. He came then to attract man's sense-bound attention to Himself as man, and so to lead him on to know Him as God

    1 min
17. 17

    §17. How the Incarnation did not limit the ubiquity of the Word, nor diminish His Purity

    3 min
18. 18

    §18. How the Word and Power of God works in His human actions

    3 min
19. 19

    §19. Man, unmoved by nature, was to be taught to know God by that sacred Manhood, Whose deity all nature confessed, especially in His Death

    1 min
20. 20

    §20. None, then, could bestow incorruption, but He Who had made, none restore the likeness of God, save His Own Image, none quicken, but the Life, none teach, but the Word

    3 min
21. 21

    §21. Death brought to nought by the death of Christ

    3 min
22. 22

    §22. But why did He not withdraw His body from the Jews, and so guard its immortality

    2 min
23. 23

    §23. Necessity of a public death for the doctrine of the Resurrection

    2 min
24. 24

    §24. Further objections anticipated

    2 min

Showing the first 24 of 57 chapters — open the book for the rest.

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