The Athanasian Creed, following the teaching of Scripture, calls Christ “perfect God and perfect man.” It beautifully affirms that in the incarnation there was a “taking on” of a human nature rather than the divine nature somehow mutating into a human one.

Athanasius was one of the early church’s most significant theologians.
He was born at the end of the third century in the city of Alexandria, which was a cultural hot spot in the Roman Empire.
Not much is known about Athanasius’ upbringing or education, but he started working for the bishop of Alexandria (who was called Alexander, confusingly) and eventually became bishop of Alexandria himself.
When Athanasius was about twenty years old, a dangerous heresy arose. And it was a heresy he would famously oppose for the rest of his life—at great cost to himself, given how popular the teaching became. It wasn’t until the very end of his life that the false teaching was finally put to death. In fact, Athanasius is often depicted in paintings as standing over a defeated heretic.
The heretic in question was an Alexandrian deacon called Arius, forty years the senior of Athanasius, whose teaching became known as Arianism. Arianism taught that although Christ was without doubt an exalted creature, He was nevertheless only a creature. According to Arius, the Son of God was made by God the Father, and therefore was less than God. That is, the Son of God did not exist as a coeternal member of the Godhead from all eternity.
The popularity of this teaching compelled early church leaders to assemble in Nicaea (in modern-day Turkey) in 325 AD. There they formulated the Nicene Creed, which clearly set out a biblical answer to Arianism: Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, has the same substance or essence as the Father (the key word they used was homoousios, a Greek word meaning “of one substance”). The Son of God is (quote) “begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.” In other words, the Bible teaches that all three persons of the Trinity—Father, Son and Spirit—are equal in being and eternality.
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We were created to live in dependency upon God. This was not added because of man’s fall. It was how we were designed so that we would forever live in union with our Creator. Our sin explains why we are separated from God, and our separation from God explains our continuing, increasing sin. Without Him in our lives, we are “dead in our trespasses and sin” and have no capacity for godliness.

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  (Genesis 6:5)
How sinful are we? The answer is: totally. Apart from God and His intervention in our lives, we are completely and totally spiritually depraved.
Noah’s Day
… proved it in bold relief. Mankind had been separated from God’s presence because of their sin for ten generations, and the result was decades of ever-increasing evil. Finally, we come to Noah’s day, and we have recorded the assessment of mankind written above: “Every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
Lest we think this is just an Old Testament phenomenon, listen to Paul’s description of every man in Romans, Chapter 3.
10 “There is none righteous, not even one;
11 There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
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Though the mountains may depart and the hills; be removed, the covenant of his love shall never depart from us. “For,” saith Jehovah, “I will never forget thee, O Zion;” “I have graven thee, upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.” O Christian, that is a firm foundation, cemented with blood, on which thou mayest build for eternity!

Many Christians are happy to affirm Scripture’s teaching of eternal assurance, sometimes summarized as “once saved, always saved.” However, many are more hesitant when it comes to affirming the Reformed doctrine of effectual atonement or definite atonement, namely that by his death on the cross, Jesus not only made salvation possible, but He accomplished salvation for His elect, he actually saved them and purchased them by His blood. And yet, as Spurgeon points out in the sermon “The Death of Christ for His People,” on 1 John 3:16 (“He laid down his life for us.”), the logic of eternal security rests on a belief in the finished work of Christ. It is only because of our hope in an effectual atonement that we can have confidence in our eternal assurance. Listen, as Spurgeon explains the source of our security:
We, who know the gospel, see, in the fact of the death of Christ, a reason that no strength of logic can ever shake, and no power of unbelief can remove, why we should be saved.
There may be men, with minds so distorted that they can conceive it possible that Christ should die for a man who afterwards is lost; I say, there may be such. I am sorry to say that there are still to be found some such persons, whose brains have been so addled, in their childhood, that they cannot see that what they hold is both a preposterous falsehood and a blasphemous libel. Christ dies for a man, and then God punishes that man again; Christ suffers in a sinner’s stead, and then God condemns that sinner after all! Why, my friends, I feel quite shocked in only mentioning such an awful error; and were it not so current as it is, I should certainly pass it over with the contempt that it deserves. The doctrine of Holy Scripture is this, that God is just, that Christ died in the stead of his people, and that, as God is just, he will never punish one solitary soul of Adam’s race for whom the Savior did thus shed his blood. The Savior did, indeed, in a certain sense, die for all, all men receive many a mercy through his blood, but that he was the Substitute and Surety for all men, is so inconsistent, both with reason and Scripture, that we are obliged to reject the doctrine with abhorrence. No, my soul, how shalt thou be punished if thy Lord endured thy punishment for thee? Did he die for thee?
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