The Divine Dilemma
St. Athanasius on the Incarnate & Incorruptible Word of God2019 Nativity Feast Reflection #1
by Fr. Geoffrey R. Boyle
Feast of the Theophany of Our Lord and Savior Jesus ChristAnno Domini 2020, January 6
by Fr. Geoffrey R. Boyle
Feast of the Theophany of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
Anno Domini 2020, January 6
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? …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.
For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world.”
~St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation
(St. Vladimir's Press, 1996), 32-33
Corruption is the movement towards non-existence, non-being, no-thing-ness.
But our Lord is the God who IS—I AM—in whom there is life and from whom everything that is has come to be (Jn. 1:3).
So, for something to corrupt, to reverse the course of being and become non-being, well, that’s just not how it is with God. And how much less so with those who were made in His image, after His likeness (Gen. 1:27). Corruption simply can’t be the end of man.
But this same God who IS—Yahweh—is also the truth (Jn. 14:6). And He cannot lie (Num. 23:19; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18). The Word He spoke to Adam—“for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17)—must be fulfilled.
That’s the Divine dilemma. God must carry out His word and He must undo the corruption. But how?
St. Athanasius says it beautifully: “For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world.”
He didn’t enter our world as if He wasn’t already a part of it. But it was new. It was now in love—redeeming love. It was compassion that moved Him to take a body—our
body.
The only solution to this Divine dilemma was the offering of a body—His body—to the Father. His death means the end of death, the fulfillment of the Law, the reversal of corruption back to life. It also means that a sufficient exchange takes place. He takes what’s ours so that we might take what is His. Or, to say it a bit more Athanasius-ly, “He assumed humanity that we might become God” (93).
Of course, Athanasius doesn’t mean that the distinction between Creator and creation disappears. But He does mean that the image in which we were created is restored—by His taking our flesh and going to the cross, dying and rising for us.
“Naturally, therefore,” Athanasius says, “the Saviour assumed a body for Himself, in order that the body, being interwoven as it were with life, should no longer remain a mortal thing, in thrall to death, but as endued with immortality and risen from death, should thenceforth remain immortal” (81).
We Christians, through our Baptism into Christ, have been interwoven with life. As such, our corruption is reversing, our death is defeated, and our life is hidden with God in Christ. The Divine dilemma is solved. The Law is fulfilled, the Gospel upheld, and Christ lives for us.
Merry Christmas!
*Fr. Geoffrey R. Boyle
is Pastor of Grace and Trinity Lutheran Churches in Wichita, KS. He's the father of five and recently completed his PhD at the University of Toronto, studying Old Testament Biblical Theology.
**Originally delivered at the 11th annual Feast of the Nativity in the Year of Our Lord 2020 in Wichita, KS at The Ladder, headquarters for Eighth Day Institute.
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