For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us.

Athanasius gives us an astounding vision of mysterious scope; using words like incorporeal, incorruptible and immaterial is supposed to mess with our minds. We can’t picture the incorporeal and immaterial. We can only let our images and metaphors be shattered and our minds be humbled. We have NO conception of what the Word was before He became one of us. It is beyond our abilities to grasp; we can only use negative descriptors to enforce intellectual humility.

It is with very cautious language here that A. explains this. “In one sense” the Word was not far from the world before the incarnation. This is truth and the Bible validates this claim. Jesus was present in every page of the Old Testament, if we have eyes to see. However, we can only see this in hindsight, BECAUSE of the incarnation.

Athanasius carefully words this: “No part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are.” In Him we live and move and have our being, as Paul said in Acts 17. In Colossians 1, he also says that ALL THINGS are held together by Christ. This is cosmic and universal in scope and yet how would we have known if God did not REVEAL it? Our philosophers still try to formulate reality and haven’t come anywhere close to what we can know only through revelation. This is a “God-drenched” world, no square inch of creation is God-forsaken. Yet we are unable to see it without Him revealing Himself to us.

“But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us.” Only love can motivate someone to “stoop” to another’s level to communicate something for their sake. Since Christ is the Word of God, this means He is the Communication of God. Some of what God has revealed has been revealed in the crudeness of human language, but God becoming human is also a communication. What did God want to reveal to us that could only be communicated in the ACT of becoming one of us? The answer can only be His great love for us, since one can very easily communicate contempt and disdain without making oneself available and vulnerable to the offending party.

He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father’s Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father—a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man.

This is already familiar territory, God was moved (and it would be unthinkable that God wouldn’t be moved) by our predicament. It was out of compassion for our sakes, but it was also for His sake. That the work of His hands should fall under the power of death was unacceptable to Him. He was “unable to endure” that death should have mastery over us. It is important to use this language of passion and emotion in this context because God is passionate and displays plenty of emotion in the Bible. Read the prophets and you will find God angry and grieved and at times exasperated with His beloved Israel. He doesn’t simply use legal language cleanly and evenly as in “you have transgressed my law therefore I must punish you” but He also uses language like, “you have played the whore!” This is language of jealousy and intense passion. The legal language is Biblical but it isn’t the only language God uses. He is not an impartial judge, He is a father, lover and warrior for His beloved. And this is how we should think of God becoming human. Not out of a bland sense of “well, I suppose I must” but out of an inability NOT to. “How could I NOT?!” He was unable to endure the alternative, Athanasius says.

Also, it is important to note that it wasn’t enough to simply “become embodied.” He had done that before, in numerous stories in the Old Testament. This was to be different. He would not only APPEAR as one of us, but actually BECOME one of us. He would be born as a baby and grow up human. He would experience human existence authentically; this was no divine trickery. We need to remind ourselves of this…He EMPTIED Himself and did not count equality with God something to be self-servingly clutched. This act of being born as a human baby was a divine act of self-emptying. So many Christians want to dismiss Christmas as sentimental bosh and move straight to the cross, even on Christmas (!) but they are misguided. The manger was an equal act of self-sacrifice for God as the cross. You don’t have the cross without the manger. God has to make himself nothing before He can even have the possibility of being nailed to a piece of wood. The manger speaks its own profound word on the sacrifice Christ made. We don’t need to rush right to Golgotha to get a picture of His sacrifice; there is an abundance of Christ’s self-emptying to be found in Bethlehem.

He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

This is a deep mystery. God prepared His own body in the womb as “a temple for Himself.” As with the Temple which He filled in a special way, the fetus of Jesus would be a much more potent temple. He would fill it in a way He had never filled the temple: this would be His DEFINITIVE revelation to humanity. He took a body liable to the corruption of death. He didn’t have to, since He never sinned, but He took on our corruptible nature. He experienced every temptation any other human did without succumbing to any. This is why the manger is such an act of self-sacrifice. He could have taken on an incorruptible human body (of the kind He had after the resurrection) but He willingly chose a body of the kind WE have. He was pulled from the womb screaming and crying like the rest of us. In a sense every human is still dealing with the trauma of being pulled from that safe little sanctuary into this turbulent existence. Yet when we outgrow the womb, we are brought out of it. God Himself experienced this when He was born. Out of the safety of the womb into the dangerous adventure of human existence. Only He entered our shared existence and utterly transformed it into a place of hope and longing, rather than death and despair.

“He did this out of sheer love.” Again, Athanasius seems to feel like he can’t stress this enough. The baby in the manger is the way God irrevocably broke into the world. The light has punctured the darkness and the darkness will never recover. The love of God now has a tangible expression: Christmas, Good Friday, Easter. We celebrate these momentous events in human history because they were done definitively by God FOR us. We no longer have to wonder what or who is responsible for life, the universe and everything because the Creator has revealed Himself. And not only that, but there is a participatory element to this event: none of us are able to be neutral. What about this person Jesus – born in a manger, crucified on a Roman cross and seen alive after He died? We can ignore it or look into it, but however we react we cannot feign ignorance. We either find ourselves captivated by this person or we can try to avoid Him but it is impossible. His influence has completely changed the world and all things lead back to Him. In Him we live and move and have our being – in Him all things are held together. God has invaded Earth in this child and we are all faced with a choice: swear allegiance or remain in darkness. There is no neutral soil in this battle between Heaven and the Abyss. None but this child can cross over into both and this child has defeated the Abyss FOR each and every one of us. This is the Christmas proclamation. The Birth of the Eternal One into Time; the Author of Life submits to Death and blows up Death from the inside. The defeat of Death and the Abyss (Hades) was already sure when this child came screaming from the womb of Mary. Our hope and victory were born when He was, and that is what we celebrate on Christmas.

Yet, true though this is, it is not the whole matter. As we have already noted, it was unthinkable that God, the Father of Truth, should go back upon His word regarding death in order to ensure our continued existence. He could not falsify Himself; what, then, was God to do? Was He to demand repentance from men for their transgression? You might say that that was worthy of God, and argue further that, as through the Transgression they became subject to corruption, so through repentance they might return to incorruption again. But repentance would not guard the Divine consistency, for, if death did not hold dominion over men, God would still remain untrue. Nor does repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning.

Adam and Eve hide, deep in the rainforests of Eden. The world is now a frightening place. Every noise, every change in the wind, and every shift in the atmosphere carries a sense of foreboding. They have hidden themselves from each other and whatever other dangers may be lurking. Suddenly, and with no warning save that which was given explicitly by God, the beautiful delights of Eden have become sinister and numinous. There is a feeling of terror rising up inside of them. So this is how things are, in the real world. We were fools to believe in the illusion of Eden. “All things in their right place and all for our joy!” Ha! So we thought in our innocence and naivety. We know better now. All things are no more in order than we are, and the illusion of order and delight were all to keep us enslaved. Now we know that God is a strange being that knows more than we do and uses His secrets to trap us. Eden was a cage anyway.

On and on their thoughts may have spun. Their nature was changing and they began to form their thought patterns around the serpent’s lies. This lone act of defiance sparked in them thoughts of fear and sorrow. Those who are disenchanted usually console themselves by making themselves believe that they are somehow more advanced and can see through all illusions. Life may be pure misery, they tell themselves, but at least I know what things are really like. This is the nature of the serpent’s lie – it spreads out within us in a million different directions and changes our natures from childlike wonder to jaded and cynical.

Athanasius asks if it would have simply been enough for God to simply demand a change of heart from humanity. Why not just command them to “repent”? Because we are unable to repent. The serpent’s venom has seeped so deeply into each of our hearts, the bite is fatal. Our thoughts poison our spirits which weakens our bodies. We fear God and do not trust Him. Our religion (even, sadly much that calls itself Christianity) is mostly about appeasing an angry judge and brutal taskmaster. Our loving companion in the garden has been slandered by the serpent and we run from Him. He must now REVEAL Himself and DO something that will make it possible to change our hearts and redeem us from the nightmare. Our actions are not the problem; the hearts from which our actions stem: THEY are the problem.

Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. No, repentance could not meet the case. What—or rather Who was it that was needed for such grace and such recall as we required? Who, save the Word of God Himself, Who also in the beginning had made all things out of nothing? His part it was, and His alone, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father His consistency of character with all. For He alone, being Word of the Father and above all, was in consequence both able to recreate all, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father.

The “subsequent corruption” is the main issue. When we fell, our hearts and minds began to lie to themselves. We made believe that the act of eating forbidden fruit was “liberating” and “brave.” We consigned ourselves to an existence of silent fear and angst. We let ourselves become isolated from the source of life and our hearts began to die within us. We carry with us that deep longing for reconciliation with God but do not know where it comes from. There is a deep sorrow in every human that longs for a return to Eden but we do not have the words to express it. There are times we may glimpse Paradise in our earthly lives and reach out to touch it, only to find it disappears. Moments of bittersweet joy and yearning that come at the least expected times. What is this deep memory of something we cannot name? Eden. In this present age of human-created chaos, the dream of Eden is alive and well, yet we never seem to be able to realize it. It is beyond our power to return; something must be done FOR us.

About our self-inflicted exile from the garden, Frederick Buechner writes, “To say that God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden is apparently a euphemism for saying that Adam and Eve like the rest of us made a break for it as soon as God happened to look the other way. If God really wanted to get rid of us, the chances are he wouldn’t have kept hounding us every step of the way ever since.” And it is important to remember who came looking for who. God sought Adam and Eve out, punished them, but then gave them a promise. That promise was that one day a man would be born of the woman (God is careful to single out the woman) and He would crush the head of the serpent.

And out they went, Eden closed behind them – but not closed forever. Their hope was in the future, toward One who would win the battle they lost. Until then, they were to hold on to the promise. This was the only promise strong enough: that the Word Himself would come to save them and all of us who recognize Him and believe the promise.

We saw in the last chapter that, because death and corruption were gaining ever firmer hold on them, the human race was in process of destruction. Man, who was created in God’s image and in his possession of reason reflected the very Word Himself, was disappearing, and the work of God was being undone. The law of death, which followed from the Transgression, prevailed upon us, and from it there was no escape. The thing that was happening was in truth both monstrous and unfitting. It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, having transgressed, should not die; but it was equally monstrous that beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption. It was unworthy of the goodness of God that creatures made by Him should be brought to nothing through the deceit wrought upon man by the devil; and it was supremely unfitting that the work of God in mankind should disappear, either through their own negligence or through the deceit of evil spirits.

This section of “On The Incarnation” is on “The Divine Dilemma and it’s Solution in the Incarnation.” Too often we can see God’s justice as His real nature and His love and goodness as an eccentric quality in the Divine Character. Athanasius does not. He sees God’s “goodness” as equally binding as His holy justness. In this passage we see a divine Catch-22. God has created humans a certain way: we bear His image and are intended to reflect His image through loving communion with Him. As we saw in the last chapter, this is where our very existence comes from. We were not made to live apart from His life in us. Without it, we fade and eventually die, spiritually and physically (although A. seems to think physical death was a reality before the Fall, since creation is temporal).

When we distrusted God and acted on that distrust, something irrevocable reverberated through space and time. In some sense, creation itself was impoverished due to our negligence and bad stewardship. It wasn’t God’s intention for us, but God couldn’t just pretend it didn’t happen. One, because we were not created to be puppets, over-rided by His will against our own. And two, because this world has a reality in itself that God gave it, so that events in this world cannot be erased. This happened and there is no undoing it. On top of this, our ability to reason, A. says, began to fade, since it was a major part of His Image in us. The “law of death prevailed” over us. There were real consequences to mistrusting God and misrepresenting His intentions and promises toward us expressed in the act of eating forbidden fruit.

Here we see that A. considers the goodness of God as an equal counterbalance to the holy justice of God. When we wade into this territory, words are notoriously unreliable. We can’t simply speak of God’s mercy, love, goodness, holiness and justice as if they are warring factions in the divine nature. They are distinct characteristics that God has revealed, but they are in harmony with each other. And John tells us that God is Love, which is an important statement. John didn’t say God is partially Love, and nowhere in scripture is any other attribute given such a place in God’s character. It is said that God is holy, but not that God is holiness. God is merciful, but nowhere in the pages of scripture is God revealed to BE mercy. Yet in John’s epistle, we are given this golden key to unlock a deeper understanding of who God is: God is Love. So if God is holy, He is lovingly holy. If God is just, He is lovingly just. Apply “lovingly” to any of God’s attributes and you will see God accurately, if we believe in the inspiration of John’s epistle.

Athanasius gets this which is why he would see God letting humanity self-destruct as equally unthinkable as God simply sweeping the whole incident under the rug and leaving Adam and Eve in Eden. Athanasius points out a divine dilemma; He can’t do either and stay true to His character. He cannot let Adam and Eve off scot-free nor can He bear to leave them to their own devices. We will see how the Incarnation is God’s brilliant solution to this dilemma.

As, then, the creatures whom He had created reasonable, like the Word, were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that case, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? Surely it would have been better never to have been created at all than, having been created, to be neglected and perish; and, besides that, such indifference to the ruin of His own work before His very eyes would argue not goodness in God but limitation, and that far more than if He had never created men at all. It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.

Athanasius is making an amazing statement here: any God who would create humanity and then be indifferent as humanity destroyed itself would be no God worthy of the name. Some today would say that since God is perfectly good and we are not very good at all, we have no place to evaluate the goodness of God in any meaningful way. Many things we might call evil could very well be good and vice versa. But this is a horrible thought and denies that we have any moral knowledge whatsoever. We do, for the most part know right from wrong. It is our will that fails to act on what we know, but our knowledge of good and evil is somewhat universal. The moral component (apart from the covenantal component) of the Ten Commandments have found expression in every civilization known to humanity. There may be secluded tribes in rainforests that subvert some of them, but they would be the exception that proves the rule. To make the words “good” and “evil” be so subjective in relation to God renders both words meaningless, and that leads straight to relativism.

We know goodness when we experience it, and even we know that for God to be indifferent to the self-destruction and suffering of humans would disprove His goodness. That is not to say that we don’t deserve His absence, but since God is good, loving and merciful, He does not abandon us, because that “would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.”

This, then, was the plight of men. God had not only made them out of nothing, but had also graciously bestowed on them His own life by the grace of the Word. Then, turning from eternal things to things corruptible, by counsel of the devil, they had become the cause of their own corruption in death; for, as I said before, though they were by nature subject to corruption, the grace of their union with the Word made them capable of escaping from the natural law, provided that they retained the beauty of innocence with which they were created. That is to say, the presence of the Word with them shielded them even from natural corruption, as also Wisdom says: “God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world.” (Wisdom ii. 23) When this happened, men began to die, and corruption ran riot among them and held sway over them to an even more than natural degree, because it was the penalty of which God had forewarned them for transgressing the commandment.

Here we find Athanasius addressing the interlocked doctrines of Sin, the Fall of Man and Human Depravity. These are touchy subjects today and many Christians shy away from openly preaching or discussing them. The Biblical word “sin” is replaced with less offensive words like “mistakes” or “imperfections” in an attempt to be less harsh and dogmatic. This is based on a misapprehension of these doctrines and a misguided assumption that the reality of sin is a negative and pessimistic view of humanity. After all, isn’t it better to simply call people to their higher, more spiritual natures without mucking about with sin and judgment?

There are good intentions behind this approach, because the doctrine of sin and human depravity has been misused by self-righteous religionists and now the subject is fundamentally misunderstood. When people hear the word “sin” today, they generally think we are talking about “being naughty” or just breaking rules. This assumes that God’s highest goal for us is to be good little rule-followers. No, God created us for abundant life and intimate relationship with Himself. Of course there are moral implications, but that morality is intricately linked with relational experience with God. Without that relational experience, the keeping of morality for its own sake is pointless and potentially harmful as it can lead very easily into spiritual pride and self-righteousness; the law-keeping religion of Pharisees. Unfortunately Pharisee-Religion is as prevalent today as it ever was, and it is practiced often in the name of One who definitively denounced it as devilish. So when we treat the topic of sin in a Pharisaical manner in the name of Jesus, we are teaching falsely.

Eve ate the forbidden fruit and that act was breaking a rule God gave them. That’s true. But what happened in the heart of Eve as she was deluded by the serpent is where the real damage was done. Eve was made to mistrust the heart God and the act of eating the fruit was an act of self-glorification. Eve felt she could no longer trust God to do what was best for them, even after He had put them in such a lush and extravagant garden with a rich variety of fruits for their pleasure. God’s generosity was called into question and Eve began to see God as miserly and withholding. When she believed this untruth and acted upon it, the fabric of reality was forever changed. It was an act that could not be undone. Adam and Eve were suddenly thrust into the cruel, harsh godless world of their own making. They were deeply wounded by their misapprehension of God, hiding from Him and from each other. From now on, fear and shame would be the prime motivators in their lives.

Tim Keller, in his excellent book “The Reason for God” gives what is probably the best treatment on the subject of sin for today’s ears. Keller knows that the term has been misused to manipulate and control, but realizes the problem is an all-too superficial view of sin as rule-breaking and general naughtiness. Keller’s definition of sin is, “the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from Him.” This shows both sides of the mirror-maze: sin is all-out rebellion against God through self-destructive behavior and apathy toward the good of others, BUT sin is also attempting to find an identity in being seen as religious or spiritual. Jesus spent more time angrily denouncing the latter, because it’s much more devious and duplicitous than the former. The former is mere carnality which one can be shocked awake from; but self-righteous religious pride is almost a perfectly air-tight hiding place from the very God that one is pretending to know and worship. This is a glimpse of how depraved humanity is. We really have no hope apart from a savior. We will either choose one of these two extremes or settle down somewhere in the middle in which we can alternate between them.

Sin is, at its core, an identity issue. It is seeking to create our own identity with whatever raw materials we can manufacture on our own. Whatever we are good at or gravitate towards, we can make sinful by hiding behind. Or whatever group we want to be accepted by (sadly Christianity included) all one has to do is learn the lingo and fit in. When we find our identity in what we do or who we mingle with, we are attempting to create an identity that is bound to be revealed as a hollow mask, sooner or later. We cannot create an identity, we can only be given an identity; and there is only One qualified to give that gift. So here we see, as A. describes, “the plight of man.” We were created to bear God’s Image and this is a high calling. Yet we fell into corruption and are now under the power of death. Athanasius sees God’s Image as His presence literally. We were given a share of “His own life by the grace of His Word.” When we fell, we lost that share of His own life in us and now our core is empty. Sin is the attempt to fill that emptiness with anything other than God Himself. Yes, there are certain acts that are sinful acts, but our condition is much worse than bad behavior; we are hopelessly self-destructive. We don’t need candles, crystals, self-help books or red rock vortexes: we need a savior – each and every one of us.

Indeed, they had in their sinning surpassed all limits; for, having invented wickedness in the beginning and so involved themselves in death and corruption, they had gone on gradually from bad to worse, not stopping at any one kind of evil, but continually, as with insatiable appetite, devising new kinds of sins. Adulteries and thefts were everywhere, murder and raping filled the earth, law was disregarded in corruption and injustice, all kinds of iniquities were perpetrated by all, both singly and in common. Cities were warring with cities, nations were rising against nations, and the whole earth was rent with factions and battles, while each strove to outdo the other in wickedness. Even crimes contrary to nature were not unknown, but as the martyr-apostle of Christ says: “Their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature; and the men also, leaving the natural use of the woman, flamed out in lust towards each other, perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex, and receiving in their own persons the due recompense of their pervertedness.” (Rom. i. 26)

Sin is not static. It progresses like a cancer. If we read the first third of Genesis, we will see that which began with the plucking of a fruit ended with cold-blooded murder. What began with cold-blooded murder progressed into endless variations of depravity and perversion.

This is completely against God’s heart for us. This is to go backwards, into hiding. This is to fall more and more into a self-centered life focused around mere survival and immediate pleasures at the cost of long-term peace and joy. God did not create us for a miserable existence, He created us to be citizens of Paradise and agents of Paradise in His creation. He created us to journey through life with Him as our Father, Shepherd and Companion. He wants us to discover our true identities in Christ (our share in His own life by the grace of His word). God did not put us here to eke out a dull existence of tedious rule-keeping nor did he put us here to implode on ourselves spiritually and take in everything without a filter. He created us to truly live and to know His love experientially. More than anything, it is that lack of experiencing His love that leads us out into strange directions in an attempt to find the love we were created for.

Yes, Athanasius ends this passage by quoting Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality in Romans 1. The Bible teaches in various places that homosexuality is against our God-given nature, and I also believe that. However, it is a sin and a temptation I have never struggled with. We need to read Romans 1 realizing that Paul is springing a trap on the self-righteous (it’s amazing how often this passage is quoted without reference to that). At the beginning of Romans 2, Paul reminds the reader that he or she is no better than anyone who has been referenced in Romans 1. Paul opens Romans 2 by saying: “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.” He lists some obvious carnal sins in Romans 1 to get the spiritually prideful all riled up and then he turns the entire thing around on the self-righteous. “For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself…” Yes, we need to take sin seriously, but if we pass judgment on other humans (ascribe worth or worthlessness based on performance, while communicating those judgments in our actions and behavior) we condemn ourselves, because this goes against the very grace of God we are hopefully growing in. The way we judge certain sins is also quite telling. It is easy to condemn homosexuals in our churches because they are an outsider group. It is more difficult to use equally condemning tones when speaking of divorce and remarriage since that strikes closer to home, even though Jesus speaks definitively about divorce in the gospels and never once mentions homosexuality personally. I believe we must show grace to both homosexuals and divorcees and humbly (not condescendingly) serve them, leading them to Christ. I believe it is possible to be truthful about what the Bible teaches and patient at the same time, realizing that it is a real person in front of you who needs to be healed by God. We need to speak truth without making the person God loves feel hopeless and condemned. God wants us to repent, but repentance isn’t a mere shift in performance; it is quite literally a change of heart. And if we pretend it was easy for us to repent, we are hypocrites. We recieved grace when it was hard for us to repent; God was patient, and we need to pass that grace on.

So sin is a major theme in the Bible and it needs to be addressed. There are two ditches we can fall into on this (and many) subjects. One is failing to address it altogether and to pretend that all humanity needs is improvement, not redemption. The other ditch is judgmental condemnation. Sin is a common wound we all share. Sin is a cancer of the soul, eating us alive. We need to be loving and patient when confronting those in obvious patterns of sin and offer hope whenever we preach or teach on sin in general. Paul says as much, in Galatians 6:1, “Brethren, even if someone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.” Confronting sin is for the spiritually mature, who are able to do it gently with caution, the spiritually mature know they are not immune from falling themselves. Confronting sin should never be undertaken in a harsh, judgmental manner by someone who acts as if they are above it. I’ve tried to convey the spirit of Galatians 6:1 in my treatment on sin so far, and in real life situations when I’ve had to confront someone. Gentle, humble and loving is always the way to go.

Yes, sin is bad news, but its better news than any other explanation for the human condition. It’s better news than saying we are merely evolved animals acting on instinct. If we are mere evolved animals, this is as good as it gets. If we are sinners, than this isn’t what we were meant to be; there is a possibility of a better existence, which thankfully, we will move on to in subsequent passages.

You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of men when we set out to talk about the Word’s becoming Man. The former subject is relevant to the latter for this reason: it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body. For God had made man thus (that is, as an embodied spirit), and had willed that he should remain in incorruption. But men, having turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising, had come inevitably under the law of death. Instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, they were in process of becoming corrupted entirely, and death had them completely under its dominion.

One thing I find myself doing quite a bit as a minister is returning to Genesis 1-3. Why? Because the beginning of the story is crucial to understanding the rest of it. Also, because in our day and age, much is glossed over that appears in the first three chapters of the Bible. God’s boundless creativity as the Great Artist is virtually ignored and the artists that are called into our churches are overlooked and undervalued. The place of eye-pleasing delight God placed the first humans is hardly remarked upon, yet it is an important point in Genesis 2 and reflects His generous nature. The crucial concept of being created in God’s Image is downplayed and sometimes outright ignored so that our original dignity as God’s Image-Bearers is abandoned in favor of merely being created “without sin.” That phrase, “without sin” is found nowhere in Genesis 1-3, and yet being created in God’s very Image is an idea that is made very clear. The serpent tempts Eve by calling into question the heart of God. Is God merely a strict authoritarian who arbitrarily makes rules to assert dominance? The serpents says so. The fact that God gave His command for their good is what the passage implies but the serpent obscures.

Athanasius has a wonderful way of putting this: it is “our transgression that called out His love for us.” Not just His wrath or punishment or condemnation; His love. “For the Son of Man did not come to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:17) So He said Himself. It is also interesting to me how Athanasius words this Fall from paradise: turning from the “contemplation of God” to “evil of their own devising.” They were not simply given a few propositions about God and asked to memorize them. They were “contemplating God” in their un-fallen state. They were actively beholding and reflecting this God; not merely learning how to repeat densely-worded sentences about Him.

The way this story had been presented to me early in my journey with Christ, I imagined Adam and Eve “without sin” standing around looking bored. Probably because I was bored as a Christian who was looking forward to going to Heaven someday and trying not to mess things up in the meantime. All I had heard about Christianity up until then seemed to be communicated with negative descriptors. I knew the people I wasn’t supposed to like, the things I wasn’t supposed to do and the things I wasn’t supposed to think. But I had a longing and thirst to “contemplate God.” Thankfully this led me straight to the Bible where I found a God worth contemplating. We need to carefully preserve what Genesis 1-3 tells us about this Great Generous Artist and Lover of Humanity. We need to spend more time in the presence of this Dangerous, Fierce and Fatherly God in contemplation and wonder, and less time thinking up things we’re not allowed to do. Our Shepherd is more than capable of leading us past dead-ends and pitfalls if we focus on Him.

For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again. The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good. By nature, of course, man is mortal, since he was made from nothing; but he bears also the Likeness of Him Who is, and if he preserves that Likeness through constant contemplation, then his nature is deprived of its power and he remains incorrupt. So is it affirmed in Wisdom: “The keeping of His laws is the assurance of incorruption.” (Wisdom vi. 18) And being incorrupt, he would be henceforth as God, as Holy Scripture says, “I have said, Ye are gods and sons of the Highest all of you: but ye die as men and fall as one of the princes.” (Psalm lxxxii. 6 f.)

Here is the heart of the matter: it’s not just that Adam and Eve “broke a rule” and needed to be punished, as if the mere keeping of rules was what they were created for. They willingly turned back according to their nature. Athanasius gives the potent image of Adam and Eve returning to non-existence; the same non-existence they had originally appeared from. They were fading and becoming wraiths. When they lost their knowledge (and the word “knowledge” in this context is relational knowing) of God, they lost the very source of their being. They became less real. They became trapped in a never-ending night terror.

My youngest daughter Kyrie used to have “night terrors.” These were like nightmares, only it was impossible to wake her and my comforting voice seemed to cause her more distress. The best we could do was put her somewhere she wouldn’t get hurt and wait for it to pass. This analogy fits perfectly with Athanasius’ description. Adam and Eve became trapped in a frightening non-reality in which they hid from God and each other. The very God who loved them into existence was now the one they couldn’t bear to face. The garden of abundance and delight became a fearful place. The God they had once walked with in the cool of the day now seemed like a distant monster to them, because of the serpent’s lie. And the thing about night terrors is, you can’t be woken up from them. Kyrie’s eventually passed, but humanity’s night terror is still ongoing. God, however, possesses the ability to ENTER our ongoing night-terror and give us the truth about Himself and us.

Even though the night-terror isn’t real and we are deceived, we can do real damage to ourselves and others when we believe it. It may be a delusion, but the effects are real. Two people who have bought the serpent’s lie of self-centered survival at all costs have good reason to hide from each other. So we continue to hide from each other, behind locked doors, gated communities, national borders and nuclear bombs. And we continue to hide from God by either open rebellion or self-righteous religion. God will mercifully destroy all of our barriers between us and Him. He did this by becoming one of us; entering into the darkness so that our darkness would be overcome. If we recognize Him as Jesus and follow Him, He will lead us back into reality (i.e. “the light”). It will be a painful process at times but our lives will be real and meaningful. If we hide in the darkness and cling to the nightmare, reorienting ourselves to pretend the delusion is reality, there will eventually be a point of no return. We will literally be incapable of ever being able to handle the slightest bit of reality. This is what Christ called “the outer darkness.” These are the highest stakes there are, which is why God went to the lengths He did to rescue us.

Upon them, therefore, upon men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked—namely the impress of His own Image, a share in the reasonable being of the very Word Himself, so that, reflecting Him and themselves becoming reasonable and expressing the Mind of God even as He does, though in limited degree they might continue forever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise. But since the will of man could turn either way, God secured this grace that He had given by making it conditional from the first upon two things—namely, a law and a place. He set them in His own paradise, and laid upon them a single prohibition.

Athanasius is painting a picture here: humans are not animals, nor are we angels. In some sense, humanity is an animal; if you look at things in a strictly biological way. We are mammals or “featherless bipeds” as Plato put it. There is an impermanence to animals – they do not think, or conceptualize. They do not reason. They have no understanding of eternity or their own mortality. They are born, they eat, sleep, mate, survive and die. Athanasius locates humanity in the progression of Genesis 1 – after the animals. Humanity is the apex of creation. There is something different about how God created humans when compared to the rest of creation.

God imbued upon humanity the strange gift of His own Image. I say “strange gift” because it proved to be more than we could handle, and yet it was better than being created a mere brute. God made Adam from the dirt and breathed into him the “breath of life” which made him a “living soul.” As Athanasius puts it, God bestowed a grace upon humanity which other creatures lacked, “the impress of His own Image.” The phrase Athanasius uses afterward to further explain what this grace was is fascinating: “A share in the reasonable being of the very Word himself.” It seems that A. is painting a picture of “temporal” mud being dug out of the ground, formed, animated and given a “shard of eternity.” This gift is meant to bring us meaning, love, truth, beauty and exhilarating freedom. What we see in Genesis is that this can also be an infuriatingly difficult gift to come to terms with. It can be exploited and misused so that we hide behind it and fall backwards when God intends us to go forward in it and thrive.

It’s difficult to describe this gift, because it covers so much; basically it is what separates us from animals. Try putting THAT into a succinct definition. We can come up with words like rationality and creativity. We can point to the fact that all human cultures came up with elaborate mythologies to explain the world around them, independent of each other. We need stories to make sense of things. We are not simply content with mere survival; we need something more. So the ability to reason – that’s a huge piece of this, but what God seems to be after is a creation that He can RELATE to. The Image of God in us makes us relational beings. It is when God brings up the subject of the Image in Gen. 1 that we glimpse a plurality in God (“Let US make man in OUR Image”) so this is a big part of what the Image is all about – it encodes within each of us a relational nature. We are not created to be Lone Wolves; remember the first thing God notices in His creation that ISN’T good – that the man was alone. Humans are also creative because of the Image of God in us. We can observe the world around us and take notes. We feel the desire to express ourselves; to tell our stories. We laugh and we sigh. The Image of God is a bewildering gift. It can be used rightly and it can be misused.

Notice that God does not simply give this puzzling gift and leave humans to figure it out by themselves. God desired that we would use this gift to its fullest and go bravely into all the world, “subduing it.” But He gave us very definite boundaries and instruction for “going forward” into the fullness of this gift. God doesn’t seem to like stagnation. He wasn’t content to give us this gift and watch us bury it for safe-keeping. He placed humans in a garden (Eden) and gave them a very simple test. Do not eat from this tree. Eat from ANY other tree but this one.

If they guarded the grace and retained the loveliness of their original innocence, then the life of paradise should be theirs, without sorrow, pain or care, and after it the assurance of immortality in heaven. But if they went astray and became vile, throwing away their birthright of beauty, then they would come under the natural law of death and live no longer in paradise, but, dying outside of it, continue in death and in corruption. This is what Holy Scripture tells us, proclaiming the command of God, “Of every tree that is in the garden thou shalt surely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat, but in the day that ye do eat, ye shall surely die.” (Gen. ii. 16 f.) “Ye shall surely die”—not just die only, but remain in the state of death and of corruption.

What is paradise? We in our fallen state try to recreate our own paradise here and now, but what was it then? Was it a couple of hammocks on the beach and bottomless margaritas? According to our paradise-themed resorts, yes. Paradise is being pampered, because after all, we deserve it. Our idea of paradise comes from a self-centered fantasy and a general misplaced desire to be lazy. But God didn’t create us to lay around and be pampered. God created us to explore His vast creation, to make discoveries, to interact with Him and live in this world in relationship with Him and each other. Paradise is a vibrant, dynamic place. It is a place where we named the animals; co-creating with God. It is a place of deep interaction with God and each other. The fact that it was “pleasing to the eye” is a testimony to the generosity and overflowing creativity of God.

So A. shows us that this choice or “test” given was between guarding this grace (God’s Image in us) and “retaining the loveliness of their original innocence” and “going astray and becoming vile” and continuing in death and corruption. Going forward in His grace (“growing in grace”) or falling backwards, misusing the gift and becoming agents of death and corruption in God’s good creation. We’ll see in the next installment how the choice went and the ramifications of it for us.

Such are the notions which men put forward. But the impiety of their foolish talk is plainly declared by the divine teaching of the Christian faith. From it we know that, because there is Mind behind the universe, it did not originate itself; because God is infinite, not finite, it was not made from pre-existent matter, but out of nothing and out of non-existence absolute and utter God brought it into being through the Word. He says as much in Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; (Gen. i. 1) and again through that most helpful book The Shepherd, “Believe thou first and foremost that there is One God Who created and arranged all things and brought them out of non-existence into being.” (The Shepherd of Hermas, Book II. I) Paul also indicates the same thing when he says, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that the things which we see now did not come into being out of things which had previously appeared.”(Heb. xi. 3) For God is good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men.

What we see around us every day has meaning. Today I am looking out of my window to a glorious day of snow reflecting sun. There is a crisp vitality outside and a coziness inside. When the snow melts, the ground sops up the excess. If you can wait three months until things start greening up, you will see that the excess was not wasted at all. If you think about it, that’s the way of things. Excess (or abundance) delights us yet it is never wasted. It brings forth something else: new life. We can’t create new life; we don’t know enough. That knowledge is hidden from us. But we can replicate this natural process and help the elements bring about new life. We cannot make a tree, but we can arrange natural things so that a tree can be made.

Athanasius marvels at the hilarity of a human, who is unable to make anything from scratch yet imagines he or she can figure out how all things came into existence. He calls this “the impiety of their foolish talk.”

What we have revealed to us through the teaching of the Christian faith is something we could never think up on our own: a completely transcendent God who created “ex nihilo” (out of nothing). We don’t have a natural conception of this as Athanasius’ pointed out in the last chapter. We tend to some up with simplistic explanations like sloppy gloppy splotchy randomness or pre-existent matter. The idea of “ex nihilo” is difficult for us to wrap our minds around even after it’s revealed. But Athanasius quotes some biblical passages which clearly state this. The Bible clearly reveals that God created matter and didn’t simply re-arrange it. This is important to the concept of God becoming incarnate in Jesus. Matter is not some foreign entity to God; He created it, He has control over it and He knows how it works.

For God is good—or rather, of all goodness He is Fountainhead, and it is impossible for one who is good to be mean or grudging about anything. Grudging existence to none therefore, He made all things out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ and of all these His earthly creatures He reserved especial mercy for the race of men.

This idea that God is not only good, but the Fountainhead of all goodness is probably the most important thing to know about God. Yes, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. are important things to know about God, but if a God who is omniscient and omnipotent isn’t omnibenevolent, we would probably be better off not knowing this God. Such a God would be able to create a universe but not sustain it. Such a God could create a lower existence but be unable to infuse it with His glory and beauty. To know that the God who created this world is GOOD will teach us that exploring His creation which is sustained and infused by Him is a noble and worthwhile pursuit. There is meaning and joy to be found in His creation. Where it isn’t found, we can safely assume that the Fall of humanity has rendered that part of God’s good creation corrupt, for there are other free wills at work in this world. Yet as Paul tells us in Romans 1, God has made Himself known in His creation so that no one is without excuse. So God is to be known via creation. The Incarnation is the apex of natural revelation.

Then Athanasius goes one step further. If God is good, He is not mean or grudging. God is not stingy. He does not have a mean spirit. God is generous and merciful. As believers, we should do our best to emulate God and not be mean-spirited or stingy. If we are mean-spirited and we claim to know God, we are liars and self-deluded. We may delude ourselves into thinking that we are a cut above regular or nominal Christians. Instead of serving and making ourselves available to those we deem beneath us, we judge and condemn, against the very teachings of Christ Himself. Surely we would do well to not take ourselves so seriously. We are recipients of God’s love, mercy and grace and we should not hoard these things. The more we hoard God’s grace, the less of it there is in our lives. But the more we give away of God’s love, mercy, joy and grace; the more of it we find. That’s how God’s economy works: the more we give away, the more there is. The more we keep for ourselves, the less there is. This is how things work when a generous, good Creator makes the cosmos.

In regard to the making of the universe and the creation of all things there have been various opinions, and each person has propounded the theory that suited his own taste. For instance, some say that all things are self-originated and, so to speak, haphazard. The Epicureans are among these; they deny that there is any Mind behind the universe at all. This view is contrary to all the facts of experience, their own existence included. For if all things had come into being in this automatic fashion, instead of being the outcome of Mind, though they existed, they would all be uniform and without distinction. In the universe everything would be sun or moon or whatever it was, and in the human body the whole would be hand or eye or foot. But in point of fact the sun and the moon and the earth are all different things, and even within the human body there are different members, such as foot and hand and head. This distinctness of things argues not a spontaneous generation but a prevenient Cause; and from that Cause we can apprehend God, the Designer and Maker of all.

Believe it or not, even before Darwin, many people believed that the entire universe came into being randomly and had no larger purpose for existing. That worldview existed long before the theory of evolution. What may, at first glance, look like a very crude appeal on Athanasius’ part is actually a strong argument for a Creator from common experience.

Athanasius is doing something here that Christians have always had to do; engage the culture around them. It is never enough to dogmatically quote Bible verses when conversing with someone who doesn’t already accept the Bible as God’s written revelation. It isn’t enough to get into a shouting match with unbelievers and yell past each other. Just because someone is emotional and loud doesn’t mean that their argument holds any water. Most of time it indicates the argument is lost from their end.

From the beginning of the Church there have been those who have given their intellects in service of God. Many of the early Christians found themselves in situations where they had to answer the questions of philosophers and spiritual seekers. What Athanasius is doing here is presenting alternate viewpoints to his own and deftly deconstructing them to see what is at their core. In this case, he is considering the viewpoint that nothing is created, everything we see around us is a product of random particles configured haphazardly. None of this was “intended,” it is simply an accumulation of the dust of dead stars and the time it took to morph into this present arrangement.

Athanasius’ rebuttal comes from observing diversity in unity. He claims that if everything we see around us was just thrown together “in this automatic fashion,” everything would be uniform and without distinction. How precise can an unguided process be? How could such intricacies as we see around us every day just have oozed into actuality?

In the end, the arguments go back and forth, and they are both very simple. The Epicurean focuses on the chaotic parts of creation and sets forth his argument. Athanasius sees the complexity and harmony of creation and points it out. He insisted that this world was not simply glopped together; there is a beauty and grandeur to it that comes from deliberation. There is a wonderful symmetry to it that can only be explained by a Creator. In the end, you either see it or you don’t, but it’s glaringly obvious.

In Romans 1:18-20 , Paul writes, “18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

We don’t need to write 20 page explanations for why the universe must have a Creator. All we have to do is point out the obvious: there is remarkable intricacy, there is beauty, grandeur and symmetry; not only physically, but intellectually. This is not the kind of world that would come from random materials glopping together. That kind of world would be a total nightmare. There would be no complimentary elements or complexity, all would be rudimentary and uniform. It all come down to whether or not this life has intrinsic meaning or not. No 20-page explanations can convince us one way or the other; no matter how much scientific jargon they contain. The common things: love, joy, peace, relationships, art, recreation, etc. will show us that life has meaning and that we have a higher purpose than mere survival. If we do not find a hint to life’s greater meaning in everyday life, we definitely will not find it in scientific jargon. That is because this is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. So Athanasius sticks with a simple argument based on common experience.

That is Athanasius’ argument. Whether you think it is a strong argument or a weak one, he is at least trying to thoughtfully address an opposing worldview using the mind God gave him. We could all do better to emulate that.

Others take the view expressed by Plato, that giant among the Greeks. He said that God had made all things out of pre-existent and uncreated matter, just as the carpenter makes things only out of wood that already exists. But those who hold this view do not realize that to deny that God is Himself the Cause of matter is to impute limitation to Him, just as it is undoubtedly a limitation on the part of the carpenter that he can make nothing unless he has the wood. How could God be called Maker and Artificer if His ability to make depended on some other cause, namely on matter itself? If He only worked up existing matter and did not Himself bring matter into being, He would be not the Creator but only a craftsman.

Apparently, this was another argument wafting around among the intelligentsia that originated with Plato. Matter itself is eternal and the Creative Mind simple rearranged matter to bring forth creation. This is most likely because of the very rigid split between matter and the Ideal, in Plato. Platonic thought led one to Gnosticism. It is the idea that matter is somehow tainted and less “good” than spirit or intellect or perfect forms, which exist in a non-material sense.

The poor man’s version goes like this: You see a tree that is mangled and twisted. You have an idea of the perfect tree in your head. That physical tree doesn’t match up with the ideal tree. Therefore the physical is lesser. In the same way, if God didn’t create matter, God can be seen as not only transcendent but completely separate from our creation. It would then lead us to look down on physical things like our bodies, the world around us, etc. while elevating our thoughts, dreams or emotions to a higher status of importance. Here’s the problem: matter is completely objective by nature and our thoughts are not. The more we are in “the real world” the healthier we are. That’s why a good walk in the countryside and fresh air can do us good when we have been shut in all day staring at man-made screens or studying. We need to stay grounded and being out in God’s creation has a great way of doing that.

The truth about creation is that God created matter and called it good. It reveals Him with its beauty and grandeur. Just read the Psalms and notice how much David calls our attention to material things as they reveal God’s glory to us.

Then, again, there is the theory of the Gnostics, who have invented for themselves an Artificer of all things other than the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. These simply shut their eyes to the obvious meaning of Scripture. For instance, the Lord, having reminded the Jews of the statement in Genesis, “He Who created them in the beginning made them male and female . . . ,” and having shown that for that reason a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, goes on to say with reference to the Creator, “What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”22Matt. xix. 4–6 How can they get a creation independent of the Father out of that? And, again, St. John, speaking all inclusively, says, “All things became by Him and without Him came nothing into being.”33John i. 3 How then could the Artificer be someone different, other than the Father of Christ?

In “Christian Gnosticism” (and I use that term knowing it to be an oxymoron) the material world is created by a Demiurge, who is an evil and stupid god. This god not only creates matter (which the Gnostics believed to be evil) but he also enslaved our pure spirits (divine sparks) in these ghastly bodies. If you have ever heard of the expression that our spirits are trapped in our bodies, this is a Gnostic belief.

The apostle John had to stave off the Gnostic heresy in his writings, and we can see that it is still around in Athanasius’ time, hundreds of years later.

The idea that the god who created this world is evil and dim-witted is not a Christian idea, although it pops up here and there. Usually when we let ourselves think that the Old Testament God is only angry and vicious while the New Testament God is nice and gracious. A careful reading of both testaments reveals the continuity of God’s character from Genesis to Revelation. That is what is at stake here and Athanasius opposes the Gnostic influence fiercely.

In our former book, (i.e. the Contra Gentes.) we dealt fully enough with a few of the chief points about the heathen worship of idols, and how those false fears originally arose. We also, by God’s grace, briefly indicated that the Word of the Father is Himself divine, that all things that are owe their being to His will and power, and that it is through Him that the Father gives order to creation, by Him that all things are moved, and through Him that they receive their being.

John 1:3
All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

Acts 17:28
for “In him we live and move and have our being”

Colossians 1:17
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Creation itself is an overflowing act of love from the Trinity. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit created the universe, not out of loneliness or out of desire to control and manipulate, but to SHARE.

In Genesis 1, God creates by speaking. This is the divine Word, through Whom all things were created and continue to hold together. In Genesis 1, there is also mention of the Spirit “hovering over the surface of the deep.” In the very first paragraph of the Bible, we have the Father, the Word and the Spirit, each caught up in creativity.

It’s important to remember that before we are told anything about God, we are told He is wildly creative. God is an artist. For all the list-makers who would map out His attributes, this primal attribute always seems to escape them. It’s all well to speak of omniscience, omnipotence, etc. but looking at the world around us tells us volumes about this crucial first attribute of God: creativity.

God loves His creation. He calls it “good” over and over as He creates, so we get the sense of His delight with the work of His hands. He has created us out of love and has given us a unique capability for love. Yet, as the psalmist says, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps 139) Fearfully because of the “spine-tingling freedom” that has been entrusted to us. We cannot be capable of love unless we are free not to love, since love can’t be coerced. This is the fearful part of our creation; we are free to self-destruct and choose against that which gives us life. We are wonderfully made because we are made in His image. We need to start with our creation in the image of God because it gives us a glimpse of humanity’s original glory: we are the Image-Bearers. We are created to reflect the divine image to the rest of creation. We were created for relationship with the relational (triune) God.

In Ecclesiates 3, Solomon writes that God has put eternity in the heart of man. There is something deep within us which yearns for our original relationship with God to be restored. We may not know that this is what it is and we try to fill it with anything else we can; sex, drink, food, consumerism, even religion. Yet it remains empty until we are put back in right-relatedness with the God who created us.

What we have lost in our time is an appreciation for Beautiful Theology. We map, we graph, we make lists, we draw doodles on napkins, we make pamphlets but we miss the depth that Christians gave to their study of God in the formative years of the Church. John of Damascus gives us a wonderful and beautiful picture of the Triune God:

“The subsistences [i.e., the three Persons] dwell and are established firmly in one another. For they are inseparable and cannot part from one another, but keep to their separate courses within one another, without coalescing or mingling, but cleaving to each other. For the Son is in the Father and the Spirit: and the Spirit in the Father and the Son: and the Father in the Son and the Spirit, but there is no coalescence or commingling or confusion. And there is one and the same motion: for there is one impulse and one motion of the three subsistences, which is not to be observed in any created nature” (The Orthodox Faith, 1.14).

Gregory of Nazianzus (as well as Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great) used the term “perichoresis” in regards to the Trinity; a term that means “dance.” We can see in it the root for the word “choreography.” The Doctrine of the Trinity began to be called “The Great Dance.” This inseparable God of Three Persons is a God who does not mingle or coalesce but cleave to each other while keeping to their separate courses within one another. That paradoxical description is like an M.C. Escher drawing in words. The best way many of the early Christians had to describe it was “The Great Dance of the Triune God.” A joyful, exuberant dance; and creation came out of that dance.

C.S. Lewis, who articulated this ancient Christian concept of the Great Dance, wrote: “God is not a static thing—not even a person— but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance … The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?” (“Mere Christianity”, pp. 175-176)

Tim Keller, following Lewis’ lead, went into the subject of Perichoresis in “The Reason for God.”

The God of the Great Dance is quite an antithesis to the irate, moody God who sits motionless and unmoved on an untouchable throne, making up arbitrary rules and then balking at our breaking them. The more Christian concept of the God of the Great Dance creates out of an overabundance of love, gives us “spine-tingling” freedom so that love will be possible, when we choose self-destruction, He gives us a law to reveal His goodness and holiness and our lack of it, while giving us the gift of order to stave off the chaotic abyss. Yet this God knew a bunch of words and rules would not be enough to communicate His love and intention to redeem us. He would have to become one of us to do that.

Now, Macarius, true lover of Christ, we must take a step further in the faith of our holy religion, and consider also the Word’s becoming Man and His divine Appearing in our midst. That mystery the Jews traduce, the Greeks deride, but we adore; and your own love and devotion to the Word also will be the greater, because in His Manhood He seems so little worth. For it is a fact that the more unbelievers pour scorn on Him, so much the more does He make His Godhead evident. The things which they, as men, rule out as impossible, He plainly shows to be possible; that which they deride as unfitting, His goodness makes most fit; and things which these wiseacres laugh at as “human” He by His inherent might declares divine. Thus by what seems His utter poverty and weakness on the cross He overturns the pomp and parade of idols, and quietly and hiddenly wins over the mockers and unbelievers to recognize Him as God.

In Jesus, God has made Himself vulnerable. For the almighty One to become an embryo and then a newborn baby speaks volumes on the nature of God. For one, God is not distant or standoffish. The lengths He will go to in order to rescue us is what the manger and the cross are both about. In the manger, God makes Himself nothing for our sakes. He is vulnerable. On the cross, He shows that it wasn’t an illusion; He was utterly human and able to be killed by our treacheries.

Because of this, He is mocked. The sign on the cross calling Him the king of the Jews was sarcastic. The soldiers mocked and beat Him mercilessly. And today He is parodied on television shows, in comedy routines and in a myriad of other media. All because He put Himself out there. He was mocked on the cross because He wasn’t fighting back. Jews mocked Him because he didn’t meet their expectations of a messiah. Greeks mocked Him because He did not seem to care about persuading people with logic and common sense.

Athanasius is saying here that Jesus did not go out of His way to meet human expectations, and so His enemies laugh at the humble way He was born and the meekness He showed when they put Him before the authorities. And yet, those things they laugh at we adore. That He would show such love for His people to endure the humility, the mockery, the taunts, the laughter and the blank stares. He came with His own agenda: to defeat sin and death. To fight and win FOR US the ultimate battle in which we were helpless.

These humble beginnings; Bethlehem, a manger, scraggly shepherds – these things show us that He wasn’t concerned with appearances. We are obsessed with how we appear and what kind of image we project to others, but He wasn’t. He was concerned with saving us, and that’s what He went about doing.
And on the cross, He makes a mockery of the impotent “power” that put Him there. The Religious authorities, scared of the crowds. Pilate, unable to find fault with Him but pressured into putting Him on the cross by the crowd. They were afraid of Him, so they killed Him. He died and rose again. Today He has millions of loving subjects, but their “power” died with them.

For the very things they mocked Him for, we adore Him. He beat the earthly powers at their own game and revealed His divinity through those events. We can say with the centurion at the cross, “Truly this was the Son of God.”

Now in dealing with these matters it is necessary first to recall what has already been said. You must understand why it is that the Word of the Father, so great and so high, has been made manifest in bodily form. He has not assumed a body as proper to His own nature, far from it, for as the Word He is without body. He has been manifested in a human body for this reason only, out of the love and goodness of His Father, for the salvation of us men. We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.

He has been manifested in a human body for THIS reason: out of the LOVE and GOODNESS of the Father, for our salvation. He came to rescue, to redeem, to enliven and to reveal the heart of the Father. He did not come “tsk, tsk”-ing, He did not come to proclaim doom and hopelessness to our world as so many self-styled “prophets” do in His name. He came out of the love of the Father, not to condemn the world, but to save the world.

What He came to do was to “re-boot” creation. In the same way that a computer virus can wreak havoc on a computer, the virus of sin has infected every square inch of creation. So just as we re-boot a frozen computer, the One who made the world in the beginning came to RE-create it. Just as the original creation is subject to death and decay, the new creation is not. The new is here, even in the midst of the old. As the old creation dies around us, we can live out abundant lives and overflow that life into the lives of others. Those of us who are in Christ are agents of the New Creation, re-booting the old order in our relationships and spheres of influence.

When exactly did the new creation begin? In Bethlehem, 2,000 years ago. Something happened which set off a chain of events that cannot be undone. A baby was born who grew up to be a man who revealed the heart of God and gave Himself for us, bringing God’s anti-virus into His creation to make all things new. This is why Christmas is so important, and why we need to dust off the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Incarnation and see them for the spectacular revelations they are.