Th e deifi cation of humanity
Why does the Word become incarnate? Athanasius sees human beings at their creation as being given the special grace of participating in the Word, and so being made according to the Image, and thus made sharers in eternal life. But humans wilfully sinned and lost the gift of eternal life. God ’ s response was unthinkably generous: the Word in whom all are created would come in the fl esh to bring about forgiveness of sin and to enter into death and overcome it in the power of resurrection. Th e overcoming of death, Athanasius tells us, ‘ is the primary cause of the incarnation of the Saviour ’ . 41 Th e second major reason
38 Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea , p. 153.
39 Ibid., pp. 118, 153 – 54, 288.
40 Ibid., p. 288.
41 Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation , 10 (Th omson, Athanasius , p. 159).
is that we might now come to know ‘ the Word of God who was in the body, and through him the Father ’ . 42 Th e Word had long been teaching humanity about the Father through the Word ’ s providence and regulation of the universe of creatures. Because humanity had neglected to hear this message spoken by the creation, the Word of creation is now made fl esh.
Th e Word who is the Image of the Father comes to humanity to renew this image in us, to seek out the lost and to fi nd them again through the forgiveness of sins. Christ ’ s death abolishes our debt to death. Athanasius sees the cross in terms of a liturgical off ering: he ‘ surrendered his body to death in place of all and off ered it to the Father ’ . 43 In so doing, he liberates us from the evil one and, as Athanasius highlights, from the fear of death (Heb. 2.14 – 15).
Athanasius makes use of a range of biblical images for the death of Christ, images which he fi nds in Paul and in the liturgical language of Hebrews. But he also off ers a large overarching vision of what God does for us in Christ ’ s life, death and resurrection with his theology of deifi cation. He fi rst speaks of deifi cation in the well-known passage in his On the Incarnation : ‘ For he became human that we might become divine; and he revealed himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father; and he endured insults from human beings that we might inherit in corruption. ’ 44
In his later anti-Arian writings, Athanasius frequently uses deifi cation language (the verb theopoi é ō , and the noun he coins, theopo ί ē sis ) to defend the real divinity of the Word, who is made fl esh that we might be made divine:
‘ So he was not a human being and later became God. But, being God, he later became a human being in order that we may be divinized. ’ 45 Athanasius builds on Irenaeus and others in his theology of deifi cation. He uses this language more oft en than his predecessors, and helps to clarify its meaning, very oft en pairing it with words that function as synonyms, including adoption, renewal, salvation, sanctifi cation, grace, transcendence, illumination and vivifi cation. 46
Athanasius insists, against his opponents, that the Word of God is not deifi ed, but is the eternal divine source of our deifi cation. However, it is central to his thought that the bodily humanity of Jesus is deifi ed by its union with
42 On the Incarnation , 14 (Th omson, Athanasius , p. 169).
43 On the Incarnation , 8 (Th omson, Athanasius , p. 153).
44 On the Incarnation , 54 (Th omson, Athanasius , p. 153, modifi ed).
45 Orations against the Arians , 21.39 (Anatolios, Athanasius , p. 96).
46 See N. Russell, Th e Doctrine of Deifi cation in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), pp. 177 – 78.
the Word. It is precisely this union that enables the deifi cation of humanity:
‘ For the Word was not lessened by his taking a body, so that he would seek to receive grace, but rather he divinized what he put on, and, what ’ s more, he gave this to the human race. ’ 47
For Athanasius, deifi cation is an ontological transformation in creaturely reality that occurs through the incarnation understood as the whole Christ-event, the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit. Because of the incarnation there is a divine transformation already at work in humanity and in the world. But this divine gift of grace, given in principle, has to be accepted by the human recipient and embraced in a life of fi delity. For the Christian community, this divine life is transmitted in practice through baptism and growing in the life of the Spirit according to the Image that is Christ.
Athanasius ’ s theology of salvation is fully Trinitarian. Th e Word, the true Image of God, repairs and renews the image of God in humanity. In the loving self-humbling of the Word in the incarnation, Christ becomes the receiver of the Spirit in his humanity, enabling us to become co-receivers of the Spirit through him:
Th e Saviour, on the contrary, being God, and forever ruling the kingdom of the Father and being himself the supplier of the Spirit, is nevertheless now said to be anointed by the Spirit, so that, being said to be anointed as a human being by the Spirit, he may provide us human beings with the indwelling and intimacy of the Holy Spirit, just as he provides us with exaltation and resurrection. 48
As Anatolios points out, this amounts to a Spirit Christology in that the Word of God who is the divine giver of the Spirit, in the kenotic self-humbling of his humanity becomes the receiver of the Spirit, that we too might become receivers of the Spirit. And this means that we too can become God ’ s beloved daughters and sons. Born again of the grace of the Spirit, we are ‘ enfolded in the inner life of the Trinity ’ , taken up in the position of the Word in relation to the Father, and are ourselves enabled to call God ‘ Father ’ and not simply our ‘ Maker ’ . 49
47 Orations against the Arians , 1.42 (Anatolios, Athanasius , p. 99).
48 Orations against the Arians , 1.46 (Anatolios, Athanasius , p. 103).
49 Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea , p. 125. See Orations against the Arians , 2.59 (Anatolios, Athanasius ,
pp. 152 – 53).
Th e participation of the natural world in deifi cation
How does this theology of deifi cation relate to the rest of creation? Although his focus is not primarily the natural world, Athanasius clearly sees it as participating with humanity in its own proper way in transformation in Christ.
So he writes late in his life, in his Letter to Adelphius , of Christ as ‘ the Liberator of all fl esh and of all creation (cf. Rom. 8.21) ’ , and as ‘ the Creator and Maker coming to be in a creature so that, by granting freedom to all in himself, he may present the world to the Father and give peace to all, in heaven and on earth. ’ 50 Athanasius refers oft en to classic texts that include the creation in Christ, particularly Rom. 8.19 – 23, and to Col. 1.15 – 20. In his second Oration against the Arians , Athanasius refers explicitly to Rom. 8.19 – 23 and Col. 1.15 – 20, to include the whole creation in the liberation that comes through Christ ’ s resurrection:
Th e truth that refutes them is that he is called “ fi rstborn among many brothers ” (Rom 8:29) because of the kinship of the fl esh, and “ fi rstborn from the dead ” (Col 1:18) because the resurrection of the dead comes from him and aft er him, and “ fi rstborn of all creation ” (Col 1:15) because of the Father ’ s love for humanity, on account of which he not only gave consistence to all things in his Word but brought it about that the creation itself, of which the apostle says that it “ awaits the revelation of the children of God ” , will at a certain point be delivered “ from the bondage of corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God ” (Rom 8:19, 21). 51
In the following example, from Athanasius ’ s defence of the divinity of the Spirit in his Letter to Serapion , he insists that the Word and the Spirit are inseparable, and that both are at work in the incarnation for the sake of the reconciliation of the whole creation:
Th us it was that when the Word came to the holy Virgin Mary, the Spirit also entered with him (cf. Lk 1:35), and the Word, in the Spirit, fashioned and joined a body to himself, wishing to unite creation to his Father, and to off er it to the Father through himself and to reconcile all things in his body, ‘ making peace among the things of heaven and the things of earth ’ (cf. Col 1:20). 52
50 Athanasius of Alexandria, Letter 40: To Adelphius , 4 (Anatolios, Athanasius , p. 103).
51 Orations against the Arians , 2.63 (Anatolios, Athanasius , p. 157).
52 Letters to Serapion , 1.31 (Anatolios, Athanasius , pp. 231 – 32).
In these texts, Athanasius is fully explicit about his inclusion of the rest of the natural world with human beings in salvation. In other places, he speaks more generally of creation being deifi ed, oft en in the context of the divine adoption of human beings. In defending the divinity of the Holy Spirit, for example, he refl ects on the way we human beings are saved and sealed with the Holy Spirit:
‘ When we are sealed in this way, we become sharers in the divine nature, as Peter says (2 Pet. 1.4), and so the whole creation participates of the Word, in the Spirit. ’ 53 While it would be possible to interpret such a text as referring mainly to humanity, in the light of the texts referred to above that speak of the liberation of all fl esh and, with Romans 8 of the deliverance of creation itself from its bondage, I think it is safe to conclude that, for Athanasius, salvation and deifi cation involve not only human beings but with them the whole creation.
In another instance, he insists that the Spirit in whom the Word adopts human beings and deifi es creation cannot be a creature:
Th erefore, it is in the Spirit that the Word glorifi es creation and presents it to the Father by divinizing it and granting it adoption. But the one who binds creation to the Word could not be among the creatures and the one who bestows sonship upon creation could not be foreign to the Son. . . . Th erefore, the Spirit is not among the things that have come into being but belongs ( idion ) to the divinity of the Father, and is the one in whom the Word divinizes the things that have come into being. But the one in whom creation is divinized cannot be extrinsic to the divinity of the Father. 54
Th rough the incarnation of the Word, the Spirit binds creation to the Word made fl esh that human beings might be forgiven, deifi ed and adopted as beloved sons and daughters and to the rest of creation that it might be transformed in Christ in its own proper way. Th is transformation involves the unimaginable fulfi lment of the rest of creation, its fi nal liberation from pain and death, its full creaturely realization in God. We ‘ hope for what we do not see ’ (Rom. 8.25), both for ourselves and for other creatures. As the later Greek
53 Letters to Serapion , 1.23 (Anatolios, Athanasius , p. 223). Shapland, in his translation of these letters,
interprets ‘ creation ’ here as referring to the whole natural world rather than just to humanity.
He notes that this reference to creation partaking of the Word in salvation seems to be a natural extension of the statement made earlier by Athanasius in his Against the Greeks (which I have quoted above) that all creation partakes of the Word for its very existence. C. R. B. Shapland, Th e Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit (London: Epworth Press, 1951), pp. 124 – 25, footnote 15.
54 Letters to Serapion , 1.25 (Anatolios, Athanasius , p. 225).
theological tradition makes clear, there are distinctions between creatures in their way of participation in Trinitarian life – they participate in the divine Communion according to their own proper capacity and their own proper nature. But in ways proper to each creature, the whole creation is to participate through the Word, in the Spirit, in the divine life of Trinity.
I will conclude this section by focusing on a member of a threatened species, a small Australian marsupial, the bilby. It can be said that this bilby exists because it partakes of the Word of God through the indwelling Spirit.
God is present to this bilby not through any mediation but directly. In boundless generosity, condescension and benevolence, the transcendent God reaches out directly to the creature, is immanently present to it, and directly confers existence upon it. Th rough the Word and in the Spirit it is immediately united to the Father in the relationship of creation. It lives from the divine Communion. It is the fruit of the fecundity of divine life – existing from the bounty and generosity of divine life. It represents in Australia in its own unique way the endless generativity of the Word. It is a creature in which God takes delight, existing within the mutual delight of the divine persons. Because of the Word becoming fl esh, and entering into death to transform it from within, this bilby is part of the whole creation that will participate with human beings in the deifying transformation of the whole of reality. It will reach its proper fulfi lment in a way that remains beyond our imagination or conception in the divine communion.