Ancient Wisdom

What’s on your reading list? Today, Stephen Nichols introduces On the Incarnation by Athanasius, a timeless book defending the deity of Christ and the hope of the resurrection.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are beginning a series of looking at four books. It's August, and there's still time to get in your beach reading, and so the first book is an ancient book. It's by Athanasius and it's called On the Incarnation. You'll likely be the only person at the beach with that book, but I'm telling you it's worth it.

Now find an edition that has Lewis's preface. For one of the published translations, Lewis wrote a preface, and that preface has come to stand on its own as a piece of literature. He begins the preface by saying, “There's a strange idea abroad, that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals and that the amateurs should content himself with the modern books.” He says he learned this as a professor of English, and a student would encounter Platonism, and they wouldn't go, they wouldn't even think of, Lewis says, “going to a shelf in the library and pulling off a book by Plato. Instead, they'll read some modern author,” and Lewis says, “and that modern author is likely to be 10 times more boring than the original text.” Lewis points out that this is especially true in theology, that reading a lot of the modern books, rather than going back to the classic authors and to the ancient authors such as Athanasius. Lewis gives what he calls a “good rule,” and that is that every time you read a new book, you don't allow yourself to read another new book until you read an ancient book in between. And he does make a concession. How about go three modern books and then read an ancient book?

Well, that's Lewis's preface about ancient books. Let's look at what Lewis has to say about the author of this ancient book, and the author of course is Athanasius. Lewis tells us his epigraph is Athanasius contra mundum, Athanasius against the world. “We are proud that our own country,” he says, speaking of Britain, of course, “has more than once stood against the world. Athanasius did the same. He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, whole and undefiled, when it looked as if all the civilized world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius into one of those sensible synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today, and which then as now included among their devotees, many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times. It is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have passed away.”

Well, that's Athanasius, the author. And what about his book? Well, as you turn to On the Incarnation, you find that Athanasius makes three arguments. The first argument is regarding life and death, Athanasius says, and of course he begins with Scripture and begins with the human condition as all of us are dead in sin and as being dead in sin, we of course are helpless. There's really nothing we can do about it. And then Athanasius says, “It would not be in the goodness of God, would not reflect the goodness of God, to leave us in that state. Hence the God-man. The Word became flesh. God became man so that we who are dead could become alive.” So that's the first reason.

The second, Athanasius says, is knowledge and ignorance. Do you remember what Jesus says towards the end of his earthly life? In the gospel of John, he says that he has come to make the Father known. We all have partial knowledge of God and the witness, the testimony of his creation, but we don't have the knowledge of redemption apart from the incarnate Word.

The third argument is the resurrection of the body. Jesus really died because was truly human. He really rose again because he had a real body, and he is the first fruits of the resurrection, the reason and the proof that we will also rise from the dead and our resurrection. Then he deals with arguments against the incarnation and shows how they break down. And then he concludes his book.

Well that's Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, throwing in a little C.S. Lewis and his preface. And I'm Steve Nichols, and thanks for joining us for 5 Minutes in Church History.