Athanasius of Alexandria (died AD 373) was a larger-than-life figure living in a momentous century. During his time, Constantine came to power and legalized Christianity, rapidly changing the fortunes of the church within the Roman Empire. Constantine was also responsible for convoking the first Council of Nicaea in AD 325. If granting Christianity licit status sparked the public institutional growth of the church over the next decades, the Nicene Creed sparked a flood of theological discourse that soon engulfed the century.

Athanasius was present at the Council as secretary to the bishop of Alexandria. Three years later, he was elected bishop himself, becoming one of the most important — and controversial — ecclesiastical and theological leaders of the fourth century.

Against the World

Ecclesiastically, Athanasius was famously exiled five times from his episcopal see. Theologically, he sharpened his rhetorical swords against Arians (see especially his Orations Against the Arians, written between 339–343), who denied the full equality of the Son with the Father, and later Pneumatomachians (“Spirit fighters”; see his Letters to Serapion, written ca. 357), who denied the full equality of the Spirit with the Son and the Father. Athanasius’s thick ecclesiastical skin, as well as his unrelenting courage in opposing theology that did not properly honor the Son or the Spirit as God, earned him the moniker “Athanasius contra mundum” (Latin for “against the world”).

But before there was Athanasius contra mundum, there was the Athanasius who wrote On the Incarnation. On the Incarnation was the second part of a twofold work (the first part is titled Against the Greeks), likely penned soon after he became bishop of Alexandria (ca. 328–335). The book does not possess the polemical tone of his later works, nor the obvious theological targets (Arius is not mentioned, for example). It is, rather, a straightforward yet elegant theological meditation on the divine Word made flesh.

Toward the end of the work, Athanasius makes his purpose clear: to provide “an elementary instruction and an outline of the faith in Christ and his divine manifestation to us” (56). It is the kind of work a new pastor might pen in order to orient and encourage his people in matters of first importance.

Redemption in Four Pairs

Athanasius’s teaching in On the Incarnation contains several pairs that he often plays off one another in a fruitful dialectic. Consider four of these pairs, the first being Creator-creation.

Creator-Creation

On the Incarnation begins by reasserting the power of God in creation. This creative power is an ingredient in sanctified logic that, for Athanasius, moves inexorably to God’s work in salvation through the incarnation of the Son of God. In other words, redemption through the Word flows logically from his prior relation to the creature in the work of creation. When the Word became incarnate for the salvation of his people, he did not do so from an inherent necessity in his nature, but neither did he act arbitrarily. No, Athanasius reasoned, since the Word fashioned the world, it was not “inconsonant” for God to bring salvation to the world through the same One with whom he fashioned it (1).

Goodness-Grace

As Athanasius follows the biblical narrative out of the first two chapters of Genesis, he treats the fall. The corruption of death enters the world through humanity disobeying God’s law in the garden. As a result, death gains a legal hold over humanity, and wickedness spreads as the clarity of the image of God is lost. As Athanasius gets to this low point, however, he turns to the goodness of God and its inherent logic: God is a good God, and he has instilled goodness in his creation. While absolutely distinct from his creation, God is positively postured toward his handiwork, especially toward humanity, whom he made in his image for a blessed relationship with him. It would be unseemly, then, to let all of humanity slip into absolute corruption.

For Athanasius, God’s power and goodness compel him not to leave humanity in ruin — his power because to do nothing to rescue his good creation would show weakness, and his goodness because it would be improper to leave all humanity wallowing in ruin when he has the power to do something about it. But how will God help humanity’s plight in line with his justice? Athanasius considers mere human repentance as an option, but shows it to be insufficient since it does not “recall human beings from what is natural, but merely halts sins” (7). The gravity of the situation calls for the Creator, the Word of God, to be the “re-Creator,” who is sufficient to suffer on behalf of all since he made all. It was the goodness of God that compelled him to do so. In other words, God’s goodness stands behind his grace.

image–The Image

As Athanasius turns to the work of Christ in On the Incarnation, he brings particular attention to his reversal of the loss of the image of God. Humanity has continually rejected divine resources, leaving it bereft of the knowledge of God. It has rejected revelation in nature, and it has rejected revelation in word through the Jewish Law and Prophets. This loss is especially seen in the darkening of the prime location for human knowledge of God: the image within. Again, Athanasius asks, was God to leave humanity in this state?

“Seeing that humans lowered their eyes from the divine and wallowed in their senses, the divine took on flesh.”

By sending to his creation the actual Image in which humans were created, God renewed the part of humans by which we can know God. Seeing that humans lowered their eyes from the divine and wallowed in their senses, the divine took on flesh, according to Athanasius, in order to “return their sense perception to himself” (16). By this the Word brings the knowledge of God, making it accessible through the renewed image, which perceives the invisible God by means of the visible works of the incarnate God.

Corruptibility-Incorruptibility

The final and culminating pair from On the Incarnation is corruptibility-incorruptibility, which Athanasius considers from the moment of Christ’s incarnation to his resurrection. The basic structure of this pair is given a directional cast: the incorruptible Word came down and entered the corruptibility of creation in order to turn humanity from its corruption back up to God. Through taking on a body with the incorruptible Word, corruption can be reversed in humanity. But a debt must also be repaid, and this can be done only by the death of Jesus Christ and the “grace of the resurrection” (9).

“Through taking on a body with the incorruptible Word, corruption can be reversed in humanity.”

Death and resurrection reveal the real power of the corruptibility-incorruptibility pair. The death of Jesus Christ paid the debt for the ultimate end of corruptibility — death — and finally released humanity from its curse. The resurrection of Jesus Christ shows victory over death and is a witness to the incorruptibility available to all.

Athanasius puts this directionality memorably in a famous line: “He was incarnate that we might become god” (54). He does not mean that human beings lose their nature and transgress the Creator-creature divide. He has invested too much in the Creator-creature distinction for that to be true! Rather, he means that if we have faith in the one who conquered death, we gain his incorruptibility, delivered in eternal life. We gain by grace what the Son has by nature, which releases resurrection power into the believer’s life. Indeed, as Athanasius closes On the Incarnation, he points to changed lives and a changed world as blessed evidence of the truth of the incarnation.

What the Son Must Be

Thousands of writers in the history of the church have touched on the incarnation. That subject matter alone is not what has made On the Incarnation a Christian classic. Its enduring quality stems from the lucid logic Athanasius applies to one of the central mysteries of our faith. Athanasius simultaneously upholds the utter mysteriousness of God and his ways with the world and their inescapable reasonableness. The coherence of Athanasius’s thought is owing to this reasonableness, which shines through from creation to re-creation, from God’s goodness to his grace, from the loss of the image of God to its restoration in the Image, and from the corruptible made incorruptible. The whole work possesses a bracing unity, leading C.S. Lewis to call it a “masterpiece.”

While modern theology often breaks apart the doctrines of God and salvation, Athanasius treats them as a unified whole. In later works, he gives direct attention to the divine status of the Son, but in On the Incarnation the status of the Son is often entailed in what he is able to do. If the Word creates, and the Word re-creates, then the Word does what only God can do. A Son who can take what is corruptible and unite it to the incorruptible is a Son who is himself incorruptibly divine.

While On the Incarnation is edifying devotional reading, it is also a wonderful introduction to classical Trinitarian theology that developed and took shape in the fourth century. For the believing church, Trinitarian theology has never been concerned with merely the status of the Son or the Holy Spirit. It has been concerned with what must be true if Christian worship is to have integrity, and what must be true if our salvation is to be anchored in heaven. By tethering our salvation to the incarnate Son who has risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father, Athanasius firmly anchors our greatest hopes in God himself.

As Americans celebrate our nation’s founding on July 4, we remember the group of disparate leaders who came together in Philadelphia in the middle of the 1770s to forge enough unity to set thirteen individual colonies on the road to nationhood. What we have in the Declaration of Independence (itself primarily a document listing disagreements with the English government) came together with much contention and political wrangling. These founding leaders had much in common, but that commonality was put to the test over differences in regional interests, economic concerns, and political philosophy.

Different religious convictions also came into play. While most of the members of the Continental Congress were required to hold to basic Christian truths in order to serve in public office, their denominational commitments and doctrinal distinctives played in the background of the formal debates leading up to the ratification of the Declaration, and those tensions carried on into the founding era of the nation.

It is not hard for us to see in our rancorous times how political and religious differences intertwine as they did in our founding era. What was often in short supply then, as it seems to be now, is a model for holding differences in principles and convictions that do not undermine “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace,” which sets the people of God apart in a fractured world (Ephesians 4:3).

Among that group of eighteenth-century disparate leaders, however, I did find an unusual founder — in my estimation, a model still worth considering. His name is Elias Boudinot.

Uncommonly Christian

Boudinot (1740–1821) is an important but little-known member of America’s founding generation. He grew up a child of the Great Awakening, sitting under the preaching of George Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent, and, for a brief time, Jonathan Edwards in Princeton. He rose to prominence in New Jersey politics and was a man of national influence in the lead up to the American Revolution. During the war, Boudinot served on George Washington’s staff and later in the Continental Congress; he was also president of the Congress at the signing of the Treaty of Paris to end the war. Boudinot was a major player in the first three federal congresses and then served in the administrations of Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

After retiring from public service in 1805, he spent the last decade and a half of his life supporting gospel mission in the states and abroad. His lasting legacy was his formative role in establishing the American Bible Society.

“Boudinot endeavored to lead an honorable life of consistent and ardent Christian faith.”

Throughout all of his public engagements, Boudinot endeavored to lead an honorable life of consistent and ardent Christian faith. Historian James Hutson, who has spent years studying the religious thoughts and lives of the founders, writes, “Boudinot is of particular importance, because he was a born-again Presbyterian, whose evangelical views were probably closer to those of the majority of his countrymen than were those of most of his fellow Founders.”1

Man of Gracious Convictions

Boudinot caught his view of God and the world in the great evangelical revival of the mid-eighteenth century, and he never deviated from the path of his early convictions. At the age of 18, he wrote to his friend William Tennent III,

May the Lord grant that we may make a proper use of the short time we have yet remaining. I can’t but record the great goodness of my gracious Protector as well as Preserver, in granting me restraining grace in my youth, and discovering the inestimable worth of an offered Savior unto me. I bless my God for the great hope that is wrought in us, by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, without which this life would be an intolerable burden, an inconceivable load of anxiety and despair, for vain are the days of man.2

Then, sixty years later, he would testify in his will to his

firm, unfeigned, and prevailing belief in one sovereign, omnipotent, and eternal Jehovah, a God of infinite love and mercy . . . [who] has been and is still reconciling a guilty world unto himself by his righteousness and atonement, his death and his resurrection, through whom, alone, life and immortality have been brought to light in his gospel, and, by all the powerful influences of his Holy Spirit, is daily sanctifying, enlightening, and leading his faithful people into all necessary truth.3

Boudinot did not cloister himself away from conflict and disagreement, however. An attorney by vocation, he made arguments for a living. He was a patriot, an identified member of the colonial elites who chose to rebel against the most powerful nation in his world. During the war, it fell to him to wrangle with the British over the treatment of captured American soldiers, who were treated not like prisoners of war but as traitors. In government, Boudinot was closely tied to Alexander Hamilton, the most polarizing politician of his era. He was also a committed abolitionist, which put him in unresolvable opposition with half of his country.

How might Elias Boudinot teach us, more than two centuries later, to stand on our own convictions with a firm but gracious disposition?

‘One Lord and Master’

First, Boudinot tended to major on what unites and not what divides.

Boudinot never wavered in his own doctrinal convictions, which were thoroughly Calvinistic. Yet the effect of the Bible’s good news on his life played out in both strong personal convictions and a gracious spirit that looked first for commonalities, not division. His interactions with those with whom he differed on issues of faith consistently displayed the biblical call to “pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14:19). It was a lifelong impulse.

When he was 18, he wrote to a friend, “What a glorious Prospect (said I to myself) would it afford, if mankind in general would unite together, in living harmony and concord, and endeavor to make every circumstance of life tend to the common advantage.”4 Nearly sixty years later, he expressed his enduring desire to “pare off the rough points of party and conciliate minds of those who ought to consider themselves of one family, acknowledging one Lord and Master.”5

“Boudinot tended to look for what unites and not what divides.”

This Christian impulse toward unity when possible would serve him well in the public positions he held during the Revolution and beyond. It would also be a driving motivation late in life, leading him to gather support from across the Christian landscape to form the American Bible Society.

‘Truly Reviving to His People’

Second, Boudinot welcomed evidence of God’s activity even when he differed with those in whom he observed it.

Boudinot was a lifelong friend of the Anabaptist Quakers, seeing in them a piety that he aspired to emulate, though he disagreed deeply on important doctrinal points. Later in life, when the Second Great Awakening broke out in the early 1800s, though leaders in his denomination reacted with concern over its crowd-gathering practices and populist theology, Boudinot watched with fascination. While he shared their cautions, Boudinot had learned firsthand from his father and the leaders of the First Great Awakening to look for authentic spiritual fruit wherever it might be found.

In a letter written in the middle of the War of 1812, we get a glimpse of Boudinot’s mature view of the Christian revival experience.

Blessed be God, who in the midst of judgement remembereth mercy. Although our country is involved in a ruinous offensive war, yet is he proving to his church that he has not altogether forsaken us. The pouring out of his Spirit in various parts of the United States, is truly reviving to his people who stand between the porch and the altar, crying, Lord save thy people. In the eastern parts of New York, in Vermont and Connecticut, the revivals are more interesting than has ever been known. In Philadelphia, the appearances are very promising, and generally speaking in these parts, although there are no appearances of remarkable revivals, yet there is a growing attention to the ordinances of the gospel. Bless the Lord, O our souls, and let all that is within us bless his holy name.6

‘Hearts May Agree, Though Heads Differ’

Third, Boudinot valued denominational fidelity without succumbing to denominational sectarianism.

Boudinot was a man of national prominence for nearly five decades. By the end of his life, he was a revered statesman and a driving influence in Christian mission. But he was at heart a churchman who expressed his religious convictions throughout his life. He was a founding trustee of the Presbyterian General Assembly and was moderator of the assembly at the time of his death. He was also a trustee of the Presbyterian College of New Jersey for nearly half a century, and played a significant role in the formation of Princeton Seminary.

In retiring to Burlington, New Jersey, where there was no Presbyterian church, he could have simply enjoyed his wide range of Presbyterian associations. Instead, he joined the church across the street, St. Mary’s Episcopal, where his participation was lively and committed until the end of his life. A prominent Presbyterian joining an Episcopal church was eyebrow-raising in his day, but Boudinot’s actions demonstrated his large heart and vision for the church of Christ beyond its various and often competing expressions. He wrote to the pastor of his former Presbyterian church about his view of denominational differences,

Hearts may agree, though heads differ. There may be unity of Spirit, if not of opinion, and it is always an advantage to entertain a favorable opinion of those who differ from us in our religious sentiments. It tends to nourish Christian charity. I welcome with cordial and entire satisfaction everything that tends to approximate one denomination of Christians to another, being persuaded that he who is a conscientious believer in Christ cannot be a bad man.7

In a day where the church is wrestling with how to engage the society (and often internal differences) with Christian conviction and conduct, the example of Elias Boudinot can provide a much-needed perspective. Even in times of contention, we can stand with conviction without forfeiting a gracious and peace-loving spirit, and the very conduct commended by Christ and his apostles.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday, and thanks for listening. Tomorrow we read Isaiah 62–64 together in our Bible reading plan. And that leads to today’s question from a listener named Mattie: “Pastor John, hello to you! I’m a doer. I’m always doing the next thing. I have a lot of energy. If I see something I need, or that others need, I get to work. And then I read a verse like this one in Isaiah: ‘No eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him’ (Isaiah 64:4). I’m not a wait-er. I don’t wait for anything. My groceries, my coffee — everything — I preorder on an app so I can just drive up to the store and get my stuff and drive off. What does an active person like me need to learn about waiting on God to act? What does waiting look like for an active person like me?”

Tony, one of the things that you and I both hope for in doing these podcasts is that, over time, people will not only get answers from the Bible to their questions but will learn how to go to the Bible and get answers for themselves. And it may be helpful with this particular question to give a simple glimpse into how I prepare to answer a question like this, or how she might answer her own question.

Searching the Scriptures for Ourselves

I do this with most episodes. I take the key word or idea that someone asks — in this case, “waiting for the Lord.” I use a concordance or the word-search feature of my Bible software to look up how that word or idea is used in the Bible. So, if you look up in the ESV, for example, the word “wait,” with all of its forms (like “waited” and “waiting”), you get 135 uses in the Bible. If you look up the phrase “wait for,” you get 75 uses, and if you look up the phrase “wait for the Lord,” you get 12 uses with that precise wording. So, that’s what I did.

The point of reading all of these uses of the word “wait” in the Bible is to see what we can find out about how God intends for us to understand and practice this reality of waiting in all kinds of circumstances, including living a very busy, active life, which Mattie lives and most of us live today. I take then a piece of 8.5-by-11 paper — I do this for sermon preparation; I do this for APJ preparation — and I fold it in half. I fold the 8.5-by-11 paper in half. I use a lot of scrap paper, so that I can just fold it and use the back side, and as I read all those uses in the Bible, I make notes on the paper how it’s being used.

“The Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure.”

Then, as I collect all these notes, I mark similarities and differences. I’ll circle, “Oh, there in that psalm it had this meaning. Down here in Proverbs, it has a very similar meaning.” I’ll circle those and draw a line between those two so I can connect those and see if there’s a pattern emerging. When I’m done, I step back and look at that big messy piece of paper and try to fit it all together to see whether or not there’s some pattern that’s emerging or some unifying theme that’s growing out of it. So, that’s what I did with “wait for the Lord.”

When We Wait for God

So, here’s a glimpse into what I saw concerning the meaning of “waiting for the Lord.” I’ll just give my running glimpses and then draw some inferences for Mattie at the end.

1. Psalm 106:13: “They did not wait for his counsel.” So, the first meaning of waiting that I saw was this: when you have a decision in front of you, don’t run ahead, consulting your own intelligence, your own preparation, consulting your own expert, your own doctor first. All that’s fine, of course, but first, consult the Lord. There are a lot of texts in the Bible that criticize God’s people for running ahead to Egypt or running ahead to some helper rather than running to the Lord. So, turn to the Lord first and wait for his direction rather than just blundering ahead.

2. Psalm 33:20–21: “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only that we pause to consult his will, searching his word, but that, once we know God’s direction, we trust him. We trust him. There’s a heart disposition to expect and wait for him to act in a trustworthy way.

3. Psalm 39:7–8: “Now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you. Deliver me from all my transgressions.” Psalm 130:6: “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.” So, waiting for the Lord means not only taking time to consult him, then trusting him, but also eagerly expecting and hoping that he will act. We are looking for his action in our lives. That’s the text she quoted: the Lord “acts [works] for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4).

4. Proverbs 20:22: “Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.” In other words, since God says that he will settle accounts for you and that you should not return evil for evil, then don’t take matters into your own hands. Go about your business and wait for the Lord to bring justice. Wait for the Lord to vindicate your cause.

5. Isaiah 8:17: “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.” There are times in the Christian life when God hides his face from us and puts us to the test. Will we forget him? Will we start to build our lives on another foundation when his visage has grown dim? Or will we wait for him with patience in seasons of darkness until God returns and gives us light?

6. Romans 8:23: “We . . . who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,” and “we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:25). The whole posture of the Christian life is one of eagerly waiting for the coming of Christ and the redemption of our bodies. The absence of the one we love, Jesus Christ, from this earth — his absence physically from our presence and this earth — implies that the Christian life is essentially a waiting, longing, expecting, hoping life, because Christ is our supreme treasure, nothing on the earth.

7. Finally, there is a cluster of texts that make clear that this life of waiting is a life full of Spirit-dependent action. Now Mattie’s ears should perk up. For example, Titus 2:11–14: “The grace of God . . . [is] training us to . . . live self-controlled, upright, godly lives” — it sounds like Mattie is very self-controlled — “in this present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself . . . [to make us] zealous for good works.” So, this is a very active, zealous, working waiting. We are “waiting for our blessed hope,” and he makes us in that waiting zealous for good work.

Busy but Waiting

So, we step back from our very brief survey of some of those 135 instances of waiting. We step back from our collection of biblical revelation concerning the meaning of waiting and ask, Are there any common denominators running through all of these uses of the word “waiting”? And I would sum it up like this:

1. The person who waits for the Lord is first continually conscious of God — his will, his promises, his grace to help. It’s a God-conscious person, not a person who forgets God all day long. You’re not waiting for God all day long if you’re forgetting God all day long.

2. The person who waits for the Lord is desiring God to show up and reveal himself and act in whatever way is needed.

3. The person who waits for the Lord has a spirit of moment-by-moment dependence on the ever-arriving future grace of God — like a river coming toward you moment by moment. We’re depending on that.

So, for Mattie, this would mean that, in all her busyness, she doesn’t lose her consciousness of God, she doesn’t lose her continual desire for him to act, and even in her most busy moments, she realizes that, unless the Lord acts for her, in her, through her, all her busyness is in vain. So, she’s ever expecting, ever waiting for the moment-by-moment arrival of the sustaining, guiding, helping grace of God.