On the Incarnation - Athanasius of Alexandria (A. D. 297 - 373)

The Contra Gentes leaves the reader face to face with this necessity of restoration by the Divine Word as the remedy for corrupt human nature. How this necessity is met in the Incarnation is shown in the pages which follow.

He begins by a review of the doctrine of creation and of man's place therein. The abuse by man of his special privilege had resulted in its loss. By foregoing the Divine Life, man had entered upon a course of endless undoing, of progressive decay, from which none could rescue him but the original Bestower of his life. Then follows a description in glowing words of the Incarnation of the Divine Word and of its efficacy against the plague of corruption. With the Divine Life, men had also received, in the knowledge of God, the conscious reflex of the Divine Likeness, the faculty of reason in its highest exercise. This knowledge their moral fall dimmed and perverted. Heeding not even the means by which God sought to remind them of himself, they fell deeper and deeper into materialism and superstition. To restore the effaced Likeness the presence of the Original was requisite. Accordingly, condescending to man's sense-bound intelligence lest men should have been created in vain in the Image of God the Word took Flesh and became an object of Sense, that through the Seen he might reveal the Invisible. Having dwelt upon the meaning and purpose of the Incarnation, he proceeds to speak of the death and resurrection of the Incarnate Word. He, who alone could renew the handiwork and restore the likeness and give