Known by His Works

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. 1 PETER 3:15

Athanasius wrote for a world that found the Christian message ridiculous. The educated pagans of Alexandria had been raised on Plato and the poets. To them the idea that the supreme God should take a human body, be born of a woman, and die on a cross like a slave was not only false but absurd — a joke in poor taste. The first lines of On the Incarnation admit it: the Word’s appearing among us is the thing “which Jews traduce and Greeks laugh to scorn, but we worship.” Athanasius did not pretend the objections were not there. He answered them.

Faith is not afraid of reason

The first thing to notice is his confidence. He does not treat the pagan objections as dangerous questions that must be hushed. He takes them one by one and asks whether they hold. Is it absurd for the Word to be in a body? Why a human body rather than something nobler? Why not save us by a mere command? He reasons with his opponents on their own ground, using their own philosophers against them.

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. ISAIAH 1:18

Take the charge that it is unworthy of God to be in a body. “The philosophers of the Greeks say that the universe is a great body; and rightly so,” he replies. And the same philosophers agree that the Word, or Reason, of God pervades the universe, ordering and giving life to it. Very well, then. If the Word can be present in the whole great body of the universe without absurdity, why is it absurd for Him to be present in one part of it, a human body? A man’s power is in his whole body, and no one thinks it foolish that it reaches his toe as well.

Why not by a word

Another objection went like this: if God made the world by a word, why did He not simply restore it by a word, without all this business of a body and a cross? Athanasius’s answer is profound. When nothing existed, a word of command was all that was needed to make everything. But once man existed and had fallen, the need was different. It was not things without being that needed saving, but a real man, already in existence, going to corruption. The cure had to be applied where the disease was.

And the disease was inside. Death was not something outside our bodies that could be kept at arm’s length by a command; it had become wound into our nature. So life had to be wound into our nature too. He uses the picture of straw and fire. Keep fire away from straw by a command, and the straw is still straw, always liable to burn. But wrap it in asbestos, and it no longer fears the fire. So the Word put on a body, and now the body “has life as a garment, and corruption is done away in it.”

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 1 CORINTHIANS 15:53

Known by His works

The heart of Athanasius’s reasoning is that God, who is invisible, is known by what He does. We do not see God; we see His works in creation and infer the Maker. In the same way, he says, we may not see the risen Christ, but we can see His works. Where His name is named, idols are abandoned, fear of death is conquered, and lives are changed. He offers a simple image: “For even a blind man, if he see not the sun, yet if he but take hold of the warmth the sun gives out, knows that there is a sun above the earth.”

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead. ROMANS 1:20

Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake. JOHN 14:11

This is reasoning from evidence, and it is reasoning of a very practical kind. Athanasius does not ask his readers to accept a proof on paper. He asks them to look at the world around them and ask what explains it.

The hermit and the philosophers

The Life of Antony adds a different note. When Greek philosophers came to the desert to test the unlettered hermit, Antony asked them which came first, mind or letters. When they said mind, he answered that one with a sound mind has no need of letters. Later, when some tried to mock the cross, he answered them first with arguments and then with a question: which is better, faith that comes through the working of God, or demonstration by argument? They admitted that faith was better. “Sight itself carries the conviction of these things,” Antony told them.

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. 1 CORINTHIANS 1:18

The two approaches belong together. Athanasius shows that the faith is reasonable; Antony shows that it is more than reasoning. Arguments can clear away objections, but they cannot give faith. Faith, as Antony told the philosophers, is “faith through love which is wrought in us towards Christ.” We should give reasons for our hope, gladly and carefully. But we should not imagine that a clever argument will bring anyone to Christ without the work of God.

A caution

Honesty requires a word about one part of On the Incarnation. Several of its later sections are an argument against the Jews of Athanasius’s day, drawn from the prophecies of the Old Testament. The argument from prophecy is sound and scriptural; the apostles used it constantly. But the tone is harsh and contemptuous. He calls the Jews perverse and irreligious and says that they “are trifling”. Christians who know the long and terrible history that such language helped to feed cannot read these pages without sorrow. We should use Athanasius’s arguments with his confidence, and never with his contempt.

A pure life to understand

The treatise ends on a note that every Christian thinker needs. To understand the things of God, Athanasius says, it is not enough to be clever. A pure soul and an honourable life are needed. Just as a man who wants to see the sun must clean his eye, so one who would understand the saints must cleanse his life and imitate their works. Reason matters. But the heart matters more.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Write down the objection to Christianity that you find hardest to answer. Look for how Athanasius or Scripture addresses something like it.

2. Ask whether you have been afraid of hard questions about the faith. Resolve to face one of them honestly this month.

3. Think of someone who scoffs at the gospel. Pray for them by name, and ask God for an opportunity to give a reason for your hope with meekness.

4. Where have you seen the works of Christ in changed lives? Write one example down, and be ready to tell it.

5. Consider whether any contempt has crept into how you speak of those of other faiths or none. Confess it, and ask for a gentler spirit.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You are invisible, and yet You have made Yourself known by Your works, above all by the works of Your Son.

Thank You that the faith is not foolish, though the world laughs at it, and that it stands up to honest questions.

Give me a clear mind to give reasons for my hope, a gentle tongue to give them kindly, and a pure heart to understand Your ways.

Work faith in those I love who do not yet believe, by the love that only You can give. Amen.