Stephen Barkley
I wholeheartedly agree with C. S. Lewis.
For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand (13).
If devotional books leave you feeling dry, why not change it up—try some early church theology! Athanasius’ On the Incarnation is the best place to start.
Athanasius (c. 297–373) was the long-term bishop of Alexandria, a major theological centre of the early church. He is most famous for his refutation of Arius who argued that Jesus was a creation of the Father. If Jesus assumed human flesh, then how could he be God? Enter Athanasius.
On The Incarnation faces the scandal of Jesus’ human nature head on. Jesus did what was humanly impossible: ”[B]y the love for humankind and goodness of his own Father he appeared to us in a human body for our salvation” (50).
This quote brings up an important point: Christology (who Jesus is) is inextricably related to Soteriology (how Jesus saves). Athanasius underscores the significance of Jesus’ incarnation for our salvation in his famous maxim, “[Jesus] was incarnate that we might be made god” (35). This doctrine, alternately called deification or theosis, is cherished in the Orthodox tradition.
So do yourself a favour. When you’re making your New Year’s resolution to ‘do devotions’ faithfully again next year, try slipping some Athanasius into the mix. You might find your heart along with your head singing unbidden.
Advent 2025 Reread
The crucicentrism in modern evangelicalism makes it popular to downplay the incarnation and emphasize the Christ’s passion, even at Christmas. I think of the song, “It’s About the Cross”:
It’s not just about the manger
where the baby lay
It’s not all about the angels
who sing for him that day
…
It’s about the cross
It’s about my sin
This sort of thinking always irritated me. It sounds spiritual but ends up minimizing the miracle of the Word-made-flesh.
In rereading On the Incarnation this past Advent season, I noticed that Athanasius connected the cradle and the cross (and the resurrection), but in a way that avoids the individualistic overtones of “my sin.” For Athanasius, the incarnation was the beginning of God’s attack on idolatry, corruption, and death, which was completed on the cross and proven by the resurrection.
[T]he Life of all, our Lord and Savior Christ, did not contrive death for his own body, lest he should appear fearful of some other death, but he accepted and endured on the cross that inflicted by others, especially by enemies, which they reckoned fearful and ignominious and shameful, in order that this being destroyed, he might be believed to be Life, and the power of death might be completely annihilated. (§ 24)
In the incarnation, God united himself with fallen human nature, flesh, in order to heal it and by healing it, destroy the works of the enemy.
So the incarnation is “about the cross,” just not in the modern individualistic way we often think.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation. Popular Patristics Series 44b. Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011.
