Conclusion

Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable. PSALM 145:3

Sixteen chapters may give the impression that Athanasius taught many different things. In one sense he did; he wrote on creation and salvation, on the Son and the Spirit, on the Scriptures and the desert. But at the centre of it all is one conviction, and it is the conviction of his first book. God has come the whole way down. The Word who made the world has taken a real body, died a real death and risen again, so that what He made might be remade.

Follow that thread, and the whole shape of his teaching appears. The world was made out of nothing by a good God who grudges existence to none. Man was made in God’s image, sharing His Word, and when he turned away he began to slide back towards nothing. God could neither break His word nor abandon His work, and repentance alone could not heal a corrupted nature. So the Word Himself came, the original to restore the portrait on the same wood. In His body the death of all was accomplished, and death was trampled underfoot; the martyrs and the changed lives of ordinary believers were the proof. He was made man so that we might share His life. And because only God can give the life of God, the Son must be of one substance with the Father, and the Spirit who joins us to Him must be God as well. In the desert, Antony showed what that victory looks like in one human life: renunciation, spiritual warfare, discernment, daily prayer and work, humility. And through it all, the Scriptures were the fountains from which every believer must drink, and the truth was worth standing for, even against the world.

What must be read with care

This book has not hidden the harder parts of Athanasius’s legacy, and it would be a poor tribute to pretend they were not there. He was harsh with opponents, and did not always tell the sincere from the cruel. His party in Alexandria was accused of violence, and not every charge can be waved away. On the Incarnation speaks of the Jews in a tone Christians should not repeat. The Life of Antony is full of demons and wonders that must be read with discernment, and it prizes an ascetic ideal that can make ordinary Christian life seem second-rate. And his great sentence about being made God is easily misread unless it is read in its setting.

None of this is raised to diminish him. It is raised because he himself would have us test everything by Scripture. At the end of On the Incarnation he sent his reader away from his own sketch to the Bible, to learn the whole more fully there. We honour him best by doing just that: reading him gratefully, critically, with the Word of God open.

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. ISAIAH 8:20

What to carry away

If you carry nothing else from this book, carry two things.

First, carry the wonder of the Incarnation. Do not let familiarity make it small. The One who holds the universe in being lay in a manger and hung on a cross. He did not send a messenger; He came Himself. He did not save us from a distance; He took our nature and healed it from within. Whenever you say the creed, whenever you sing at Christmas, whenever you take the bread and cup, let that astonishment come back.

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh. 1 TIMOTHY 3:16

Second, carry his courage. Most of us will never be exiled by an emperor. But all of us will face moments when the truth about Christ is unwelcome, when it would be easier to say something vaguer, when the crowd has signed and we are asked to sign too. In those moments, remember the small bishop in his chair in the church of Theonas, with soldiers at the door, calling his people to sing that God’s mercy endures for ever.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. 1 CORINTHIANS 15:58

A last word about the man

Athanasius died in Alexandria in May 373, in his own city, having outlived every emperor who had banished him. He did not live to see the council of 381 confirm the faith he had held. He had simply held it long enough for others to receive it. Every Sunday since, when Christians confess that the Son is of one being with the Father, they are standing where he stood.

And among his possessions was an old sheepskin and a worn garment, left to him by the dying Antony — the garment, Antony said, that Athanasius had once given him new. The Life tells us that those who received such gifts guarded them as a precious treasure. It is a fitting picture of the man: a bishop who gave, and who was loved in return by the humblest and holiest of his people, because in all his fighting he never stopped pointing to the Word made flesh.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Return to the chapter of this book that unsettled you most, not the one you enjoyed most, and work through its application points again.

2. Read On the Incarnation from beginning to end this month, a few sections a day, with a pencil and a prayerful heart.

3. Write down one truth about Christ that you are resolved never to deny, and one habit of harshness you are resolved to put away.

4. Say the Nicene Creed each day this week as an act of worship, not a recitation.

5. Tell one other person what you have learned from Athanasius, and invite them to read him with you.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, eternal Word, You came the whole way down to us, and You did not come in part.

Thank You for Your servant Athanasius: for his clear mind, his steadfast heart and his long faithfulness. Forgive us where we follow him into harshness, and keep us where he followed You.

Fill us again with wonder at Your coming, and give us courage to confess You when it costs.

Remake in us what You first made, until we see You face to face and share Your life for ever. Amen.