Birthright of Beauty & The Word

Book Club | On the Incarnation: Chapter 1

Hello and welcome to the second iteration of Book Club!

In the post where I announced that we would be reading On the Incarnation, I said, “No other single work, outside of the Bible, has had more influence on my understanding of the person and work of Jesus than this one.”

I realized first hand just how true this was after giving a short talk on Discipleship at a nearby local church. The day after, I began working through this first chapter of On the Incarnation, and it was almost like Athanasius was giving that evening’s talk on Discipleship, not me. It’s funny when we think we are being original, using our own unique words, expressing our own ideas—when in reality we are simply drawing on and repeating those great, old Words.

I hope God magnifies Himself in our hearts and minds as we read this great, old book together. Thanks for joining. Here we go.

Right from the outset, Athanasius establishes a foundational pillar of this chapter, and the entirety of his book:

“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.” (p. 37)

Starting out nice and light, eh?

He derives much of the meat of this statement from John 1:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² He was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3)

This morning a friend stopped me, telling me he had started the Gospel of John recently.

“I got one sentence in and had to stop,” he said. It was so deep, he came to a halt to reflect just on that one verse for the entirety of his devotional time and into the next day.

“Maybe I’ll finish chapter one by the end of the week,” he added as the conversation ended.

That is the nature of trying to apprehend the ineffable God, especially while using human language. It is a wholly different challenge to try explaining the glories of God using human language. Still God calls us to do the impossible.

But Athanasius is in good company as he lays the cornerstone of this book on the Word’s Identity of Divinity—the Eternal Son of God.

We are also introduced to Man, a part of what God created “out of nothing through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.” (p.42)

But Man’s relationship to the Word is not simply creature & Creator.

“men who, as animals, were essentially impermanent, He bestowed a grace which other creatures lacked—namely, this 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 for ever in the blessed and only true life of the saints in paradise.” (p. 42)

Man was created in the Image of God—to be a visible expression of the invisible God—displaying His nature and character in Creation, to the degree which Man is able.

Man was created biological—body, bones, and breath given and sustained by God.

Man was created to live forever—spared from death and corruption through their unity with the Life.

Athanasius calls this our “birthright of beauty,” and I’m not sure I could offer a better description than that.

It is truly beautiful—Man made to live forever without pain or tears, reflecting the Goodness of our Maker, and walking with Him in a Garden teeming with life and abundance.

This is Joy. This is Peace. This is Life.

This is the great unrealized longing of humanity.

“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.” (p. 44)

We threw away our birthright of beauty, and we throw it away anew each day.

Being like God was not good enough for us, we wanted to be God; and we continue in our efforts to usurp the Throne even now, though all our efforts are in vain.

Athanasius also introduces an idea peculiar to most of us modern readers:

“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.” (p. 44)

Now clearly this does not mean that all that is corrupt or evil immediately is blipped out of existence or annihilated on the spot. Because, well, look around you.

The way he is using this language reminds me of the way Scripture describes us before our faith in Christ, and after we’ve placed our faith in Christ for forgiveness and resurrection:

you were dead in the trespasses and sins ² in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— ³ among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. ⁴ But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:1-5)

Paul says that before Christ we were dead, yet we were still alive biologically. And after our encounter with Christ, we are made alive. This makes a little more sense when Jesus sheds light on the real definition of Life:

“this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

True-lasting-full-eternal Life is knowing God—being united in relationship and communion with Him through faith in the Son whom He sent to give His life for us, and the fellowship of the Spirit who was sent to renew and dwell within us.

The glories of the Garden have begun to be restored through faith in Jesus: namely, fellowship with God and access to Life.

However, God is not finished. As Lewis says in Mere Christianity:

“The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods,” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and, in parts, very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.”

Lewis’ description of our destiny as Christians—what Jesus is making each of us into—sounds quite similar to Athanasius’ description of our birthright of beauty.

That’s because Jesus is giving the birthright we sold for a lie back to us.

In fact, He is giving us more than we lost. We not only return to the Garden, but we return to a better Garden with a body not subject to sin, death, and corruption. Through the resurrection of Jesus, we too will be raised and given glorified, incorruptible bodies like His.

It is this grand Story of restoration that answers the rhetorical statement of Athanasius:

“You may be wondering why we are discussing the origin of men when we set out to talk about the Word 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.” (p. 43)

Our hopeless state, secured by our own shortcomings, beaconed to the Love of God.

He saw us—dead and dying—then entered into the valley of shadow.

The Word, through whom all things came into being, became flesh and dwelt among us.

“though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Phil. 2:6-8)

This He did in love and grace—to save us, and to restore us to our Birthright of Beauty.

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Let’s hear from you now!

If you’re new here, let me explain. This post serves as a place to share my personal reflections on the reading with you, but even more it serves as a place for you to enter into the discussion too!

In the comments section of this post, share your own insights, reflections, and questions. Engage with the ideas and questions of others too! It is amazing how God works to teach us through dialogue with other people. I’ll throw a few guiding questions below that you can take or leave; otherwise, I’m excited to hear your thoughts!

• Were there any new things you learned about Jesus in this chapter?

• What in the chapter was confusing that you might need some clarification on?

• Did you find any points of disagreement?

• What did the reading stir up in you?

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