“Hundreds” of Subscribers
I am reliably informed by Substack that I now have over 100 paid subscribers to this blog. This is greatly encouraging, and I very grateful to those who pay to read this and to support me. You are making a real difference by doing this as this blog now gives me a big chunk of my income and therefore gives me the capacity to continue my public ministry beyond my parish work.
At the moment that ministry really consists of producing this blog, the Irreverend podcast, and writing my new book The Great Return, the manuscript for which is due at the end of May 2024 and should be published around Spring 2025 by Hodder and Stoughton all being well and Lord-willing. I also do occasional appearances elsewhere such as my recent chat with Nick Dixon on Noah’s Ark and the last episode of Justin Brierley’s The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.
So, thank you! And, if you are reading this and you are not a subscriber, now you know what you are contributing towards if you become one!
On The Incarnation: Creation and Recreation
I am rereading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation for the Advent season. This is a slim book, written over a millennium and a half ago which is so fresh, relevant, deep, and accessible. Think you don’t know anything about the Christian tradition and can’t access it? Think again. Read On the Incarnation and you will understand immediately what I am talking about. I guarantee it.
Anyway, just a brief reflection. There are so many beautiful insights in this book but to begin at the beginning: Athanasius links Christ’s work in creating the universe, and specifically humanity within the universe, and his saving work in the incarnation. Since Christ made the universe in the first place and placed man at its apex, it was only right that Christ should redeem the fallen world from sin and save mankind from his descent into non-being.
That concept of non-being is important. For, human beings do not naturally exist. It is only of the nature of God to exist within himself. Human being are called out of nothing by God and are therefore given existence from somewhere outside of themselves. We are therefore dependent upon God for our existence and if we are severed from God then we begin to regress back into corruption and eventually non-being.
There is a lot more to it than that but this ontological connection with God is Athanasius’ key to understanding what Christ was doing in the incarnation: he was reconnecting human beings to their source of life and existence by reforging the connection between man and God. For, it is only if we are forever joined to God that we can live forever.
That’s somewhat of a mind-blowing thought: I don’t exist naturally, but it is my nature to not exist. I am called out of non-existence, and recalled from non-existence again, sheerly by the love of God: once in his creation, and once again in his re-creation through the incarnation.
A couple of theological things here: one is that Athanasius believed that the cause of the incarnation was human sin and clearly believed that it would not have happened had there been no sin, as he says here in this beautiful passage:
…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. It is we who were the cause of His taking human form, and for our salvation, that in His great love He was both born and manifested in a human body.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation, p. 12
The other thing I thought about was what Athanasius says about the consequences of sin essentially being a regression into non-being, which seems to imply non-existence: death, then nothingness. Did Athanasius believe in the concept of punishment in hell for human sin? If he did, how does that fit with the notion that consequence of sin is essentially to die and not exist anymore? I don’t know what the answers to those questions are.
One final thing is around the concept of fittingness. In Latin this word is convenientia and it is a frequently used word in the Patristic and Medieval period to explain why something should be the case: that it fits, that it is congruent, like two or more pieces of a jigsaw that go together. In this case, Athanasius uses it to tie together the notion of Christ as creator of man and Christ as saviour and therefore recreator of man: it is fitting that it should be thus. And he goes on to give several more reasons like this which open up other interesting theological avenues.
But that is for another time. Enough Athanasius for one entry.
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