The Divinity of the Word

 

By the grace of God we also noted a few points regarding the divinity of the Word of the Father and his providence and power in all things, that through him the good Father arranges all things.

On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius

St. Athanasius here opens this book by referring to his prior treatise, Against the Gentiles.  In the opening paragraphs, he uses “Word” to describe Christ.  Nothing new or novel about this.  But the way it is used opens, for me at least, a new door. 

·         “Incarnation of the Word”;

·         “…not think that the Savior has worn a body as a consequence of nature, but that being by nature bodiless and existing as the Word…”;

·         “…its recreation was accomplished by the Word who created it in the beginning”;

·         “…from nothing God and having absolutely no existence brought the universe into being through the Word….”

At the moment of conception, God’s “Word” joined man.  It sounds different to me than referring to this baby as Jesus – the nice manger scene at Christmas.  All of the avenues that this picture paints are too much and too vague for me to contemplate at the moment, and if I speculate too much on it here I will no doubt tempt heresy.  I will just say it makes the Trinity easier for me to comprehend.

St. Athanasius continues by describing the creation of man, made in God’s image.  He describes man’s fall.  He does this because speaking of the manifestation of the Savior necessitates speaking of the origin of human beings.  It was our cause, our transgression that was the occasion of His descent. 

With man growing ever more corrupt, what should God do?  If He neglects man’s continuing fall, it would show weakness – that He could abandon His creation.  This would be unworthy of the Creator.  At the same time, He could not let the corruption pass – the Father of truth would then be a liar.

Repentance.  Wouldn’t this suffice?  Man repents from his sin?  No, this isn’t enough:

But repentance would neither have preserved the consistency of God, for he again would not have remained true if human beings were not held fast by death, nor does repentance recall human beings from what is natural, but merely halts sin. 

The consequence of the fall still has its hold on man; the sinful nature remains.

But if once the transgression had taken off, human beings were now held fast in natural corruption and were deprived of the grace of being in the image, what else needed to happen?  Or who was needed for such grace and recalling except the God Word who in the beginning made the universe from non-being?

Repentance was not sufficient to restore man to his incorruptible nature – to the creature God intended. 

Being the Word of the Father and above all, he alone consequently was both able to recreate the universe and was worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to interceded for all before the Father.

It had to be the Word, and this is why the Word became manifest – and manifest in man.  He took on the human, since it was the human that was liable to the corruption of death.  He delivered it over to death on behalf of all and offered it to the Father.

He Had to Be

 

To be in the image of God is to be logikos, a term which can only be translated into English, but very unsatisfactorily, as “rational.”

From the Introduction by C.S. Lewis to On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius

The term logikos can only be properly understood in relation to the Logos; in other words, to be in the image of God can only be understood in relation to God.  Only when in relation to the Logos can we be deemed to be logikos: rational.  If we are to live rationally, we are to pattern our life in accord with the Logos.

Man was created to live in this condition – this condition of relationship to the Logos.  It is in this condition that we are to remain or abide.  It is our nature – and this is linked completely with the presence of the Word of God.

Lewis, in this introduction, cites Athanasius, from Against the Gentiles:

In this way then, as has been said, did the Creator fashion the human race, and such did he wish it to remain.

But then the snake, the forbidden tree, the fall.  We chose what was closer – the body and its sensations.

…they fell into desire for themselves preferring their own things to the contemplation of divine things. …they imprisoned in bodily pleasures their souls…

In our time we get the year-round month of June. 

Continuing with Athanasius, he touches on the nakedness that man realized with the fall:

…not so much naked of clothing, but they had become naked of the contemplation of divine things, and that they had turned their minds in the opposite direction.

As Lewis describes it, we lost the garment of contemplation when we succumbed to our desire.  It is in this way that we were truly naked.  We remain caught in this corruption, save for the salvific work of Christ.  And this begins the hint of why Christ was not merely a perfect man, nor only a divine being, but the God-man – as He had to be.

Athanasius continues by examining the complete order of the creation; in no sense is it a clockwork universe.  Creation, not out of chaos but out of nothing, is not only the one-time handiwork of the Creator – it is held together and continues to exist only because the Creator holds it together.  As Athanasius puts it, “a relapse into non-existence, were it not protected by the Word…”

Were we not protected by the Word in our day, is it so hard to see a relapse into non-existence for humanity?  We are working very hard to destroy everything about us that is human, everything about living on this earth.  Absent the Word, we would succeed.

In the Beginning Was the Word

 

Already during his own lifetime, St. Athanasius had become a legendary figure.

From the Introduction by C.S. Lewis to On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius

Bishop of Alexandria for forty-six years, until his death at approximately seventy-four years of age in 373.  During his life, he was exiled five times for a total of seventeen years – a regular victim of the battles regarding Arianism, battles that continued despite the declaration at the Council of Nicaea.

Nicene Christianity exists by virtue of his constancy and vision.

This work, On the Incarnation, is seen by Lewis as perhaps the defining exposition of Nicene theology – the central mystery of Christian theology.  It is the second part of two works, the first being Against the Gentiles.  Lewis will offer an overview of this earlier work:

[Atanasius affirms that] … while [the knowledge of religion and of the truth] can be discovered from the words of the Holy Scripture, “for the sacred and divinely inspired Scriptures are sufficient for the exposition of truth,” there are also many treatises of blessed teachers, which, “if one happens upon them he will gain some notion of the interpretation of the Scriptures and will be able to attain the knowledge he desires.”

And, as Lewis notes, this present work is perhaps the exemplary work in aiding the interpretation of the Scriptures in understanding the Incarnation.  To understand the Incarnation, it all begins with the one who ascended the cross:

… “he who ascended the cross is the Word of God” …

Which leads to something that has been on my mind.  Let’s start with John 1:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

The word “Word” in Greek is logos.  Logos is a tough word to translate; it does not mean “word” in a grammatical sense.  Like many Greek words, it takes several words in English to grasp something of its meaning: discourse, reason, law, put in order, arrange, gather, choose, count, reckon, discern, say, speak, a principle of order and knowledge.

Logos (word) is everything that makes humans human – everything that differentiates man from other living beings on earth.  Sure, other animals put in order – all beings are, after all, made with a purpose, and end, a telos.  But discourse and reason (in any sophisticated sense), are found only in human beings.

The source of this discourse and reason (logos) is what we know as God.  It was through discourse and reason that all things that were made were made.  In Genesis, we are told that God spoke creation into existence.  It was through His Word (discourse and reason) that creation came to be.

Genesis 1: 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Genesis 2: 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

There is no other creature on earth for which these two things are true – two things, but really one thing.  We are made in God’s image – not that God has a nose and arms, but through His breathe.  Through His breathe we have a soul – reason and discourse.  We were given the logos, albeit, of course, we are not perfect nor perfected.  These are what make us image-bearers.

The Value of the Ancients

 

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century – the blindness about which posterity will ask: “But how could they have thought that?” – lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H.G. Wells and Karl Barth.

From the Preface by C.S. Lewis to On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius

I will eventually get to the main book, but will spend some time with Lewis’s preface – beginning with this striking quote.  Striking not because it is inflammatory to anyone who recognizes deeper, objective truths, but striking because Lewis was not concerned about making this comparison of Hitler and Roosevelt (I won’t speak to the other comparison, not knowing enough about either person to comment). 

Without God, without understanding true good and true evil, our society has replaced Satan with Hitler.  Every bogeyman is compared to Hitler: Saddam, Ghaddafi, Putin, Assad, etc.  Lewis had the audacity to suggest one day we will look back on Roosevelt as Hitler.  Of course, for some of us, the idea is not really far-fetched at all.

There were some who saw the “untroubled agreement” between Hitler and Roosevelt at the time; more have come to see it since.  But “more,” of course, does not yet constitute a majority – still, my guess, just a small, single-digit, percentage.

Funny money, command and control of the economy, regulation of every movement, treating men as means instead of ends.  The list is endless, with much more in common than what might divide the two.  On one side there is liberty within natural law, and on the other there is everything else.  Both Roosevelt and Hitler fell toward an extreme side of “everything else,” far closer to each other than either is to liberty within natural law.

But why does Lewis point this out, in the preface to a book about the God-man?  He notes that we ignore the ancient books at our peril, that the ancient books should not be left merely to the professionals.  He sees this tendency as especially rampant in the field of theology.

Now this seems to me topsy-turvy. …A new book is still on its trial and the amateur is not in a position to judge it.

The ancient books have withstood the test of time.  I will add, when it comes to theology, the ancient books and ancient writers are closer in time, space, and culture to the source – giving the authors an insight not readily available to a modern writer.

If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight, you will often not see the real bearing of what is said.

I think about this often, in many ways when it comes to theology.  I think about it when it comes to Christian or tangentially Christian sects that came to be in the nineteenth and twentieth century.  I think about it regarding Protestantism.  I think about it regarding the early Church councils.  I think about it when trying to understand if something is an accretion or a good and necessary consequence.

Ultimately it is why I land on sola Scriptura – not in the sense of written Scripture as the sole authority, but as the sole infallible authority.