http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15046209/on-the-incarnation
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.
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Set Free from Cosmic Powers of Darkness: Ephesians 6:10–13, Part 6
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
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How a Head Loves a Body: Watching Husbands and Wives Dance Well
The Scriptures regularly use the metaphor of a body to speak about human social life. The church is the body of Christ, with many members (1 Corinthians 12). Marriage is a “one flesh” union — that is, one whole body that is made up of a head and a body (Ephesians 5:22–30). Indeed, we can consider the whole household in bodily terms, with the husband as the head and the wife and children as the various distinct members.
At times, discussions of headship and bodyship are reduced to the question of authority and submission. And while authority and submission do flow from and fit within the metaphor of the body, deeper reflection on the relationship between the head and the body enables us to see more acutely how authority and submission are practically lived out. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll focus largely on a household, though the principles are relevant for any type of social body: church, school, business, or political body.
Begin with the obvious. The head and body are profoundly interdependent. You can’t have one without the other. No one wants a bodiless head or a headless body. As God himself said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Thus, from the outset, our goal is to recognize how deeply woven together our understanding of headship and bodyship must be. Head and body are complementary; they fit each other.
Additionally, the whole body has a purpose, a mission. In Genesis 1, the mission of the initial household is to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28). The body as a whole does not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of God’s mission in the world.
Headship
With these two truths in mind, let us reflect on the function of the head in relation to the body. We can summarize the head’s role under two headings, one largely internal and the other largely external. First, the head (the husband in this case) orders or structures the whole body for its purpose through presence, words, and actions, and empowers the members of the body to fulfill their calling. Second, the head maintains the body’s boundaries, represents the body to other bodies, and is responsible for the well-being of the body as a whole.
The head is thus responsible for organizing and structuring the body for its purpose. The head orients the body and directs the body. The head must therefore know what the body’s purpose is, and keep that purpose in mind as he seeks to empower the rest of the members for their particular purposes.
More Than Words
Crucially, the head doesn’t do this organizing work merely by words (as important as words are). We mustn’t think of the head as someone who barks orders. Instead, the head’s words and actions emerge from the head’s presence with the body. The head orients and orders the body the way that the earth orients and orders the moon. Here then is an image: like a planet with its moon, a husband guides his home through his gravity. If he does so faithfully, the moon orbits properly. If he is unfaithful, the moon wanders into disorder.
“Like a planet with its moon, a husband guides his home through his gravity.”
Or we might use a musical image. The head sets the tone; he lays down the beat. He establishes the rhythm. It may be a steady beat that makes beautiful music; it may be a melody line that enables glorious harmony. Or it may be off-beat and out of tune and result in nothing but noise. But one way or the other, the head establishes the rhythm and melody.
Or a final image. The head works like the body’s immune system. An immune system doesn’t merely fight off infection; it regulates the body’s functions, maintains the body’s boundaries, and defends the body from attack by recognizing and deploying appropriate measures.
Faithful Presence
A faithful head’s influence is present even when he’s absent. When Dad is at work, and Mom is disciplining the kids, his presence stands behind hers and empowers her action.
On the other hand, an unfaithful head can be present in body and absent in spirit. He may be in the room, but his passivity makes him light and weightless, and thus his wife and kids do what is right in their own eyes. His abdication and lack of initiative leave a gap that causes much misery. Or, conversely, perhaps his domestic tyranny oppresses and drowns out all other music.
Such images help us to contextualize the head’s authority in his household. While it may include issuing commands when appropriate (as when a father tells his child to do something), the bigger picture involves skillfully and competently taking initiative to marshal the body’s resources for its purpose and gladly sacrificing for the sake of the body and its mission. Such is faithful headship.
Bodyship
Turn then to the notion of bodyship. Like headship, the body’s role can be summarized in terms of internal and external dimensions. First, the body receives the initiating presence, words, and actions of the head and makes them fruitful by providing feedback, input, and counsel to the head. Second, the body glorifies and fructifies the head’s efforts by keeping in step with the head, carrying out the head’s will, and extending and amplifying the whole body’s influence in the world.
Receiver and Glorifier
This is a fundamental truth: the body receives in order to give more. It does not just receive and return. It receives and glorifies. It receives and beautifies. It receives and amplifies. And, in considering marriage as a one-flesh union, the most obvious way that the body (the wife) does this glorification is in procreation itself. A husband is the gardener, and his wife is the garden. He sows his seed; she receives it and bears fruit (in the form of children).
We can consider a number of images to help express her role in relation to his. He is the breadwinner; she is the breadmaker. He is the sun; she is the moon, who reflects and extends the sun’s light where the sun is not. He forms; she fills. He sets the melody; she brings the harmony. He empowers her; and she uses that power to enlarge the domain of their household.
Excellent Influence
Crucially, the body provides input and influence on the head, for good or for ill. Adam listened to the voice of his wife, and they fell into grave evil. Nabal did not listen to the voice of his wife, and he fell into grave evil. A husband is the head, and he can lead his family into ruin (like Adam) or into glory (like Jesus). A wife is the body, and she can influence the head for misery (like Eve) or for good (like the woman in Proverbs 31).
The book of Proverbs provides a fruitful way to consider what it means to faithfully live as men and women. The book itself is counsel from a father to a son, a king to a prince. The prince has two quests: he is to seek wisdom, and he is to seek an excellent wife. And throughout the book, the choice is before him: listen to Lady Wisdom or to Lady Folly. Hearken to the Excellent Wife or to the Adulterous Woman.
“She is no doormat. She is the glory and the glorifier. She takes what is good and makes it better.”
The prince is the head; he will order and structure and guide and direct his kingdom. But he is not autonomous; he will be influenced for good or ill. So in his quest, after hearkening to the voice of Lady Wisdom for 30 chapters, the Excellent Wife walks down the aisle in Proverbs 31.
She is no doormat. She is the glory and the glorifier. She takes what is good and makes it better. While she is called to follow the direction and leadership of her husband, her wisdom and action are essential to the fruitful household. Her glad-hearted submission, eager help, and wise counsel are all employed for the sake of the household and God’s mission.
Beautiful Design
Thus, we end where we began. In his wisdom, God has designed us to fit together, to complement one another, in order to accomplish his purposes. Husbands, as faithful heads, guide, order, and direct the household. Wives, as faithful bodies, amplify, glorify, and extend the household in the world. And both do so eagerly, sacrificially, and with great joy for the glory of God.
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Fathering Future Men: Twelve Lessons from Four Decades
We live in an era when it can be fashionable to be unsure what a man or woman is. It depends, the theory goes, on how you identify.
But theologians talk about something called common grace. Because God created humans in his image, we possess some innate knowledge of who we are. The Bible says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
Throughout history and across cultures, great similarities exist in the characteristics of men (no less than in women). Certainly in cultures influenced by Christianity, like North America, good men are recognized by qualities like bravery, self-control, kindness, ambition, responsibility, honesty, selflessness, industriousness, humility, generosity, and skillfulness. Traditionally, women sought such men for husbands. Boys looked up to such men as models.
In today’s climate of male-and-female confusion, how can we raise sons into men who escape becoming fragile or soft or lazy or endlessly distracted? While parents cannot guarantee the character of their children, there are some ways to encourage positive outcomes and discourage negative ones.
My wife and I raised two sons (now 40 and 34). The following contains a dozen considerations from my experience raising boys to men.
1. Get right with God.
“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Psalm 127:3). A son is a gift you can nurture effectively only with divine aid. Do you know this Lord yourself? Are you trusting and growing in Christ? The best fathers know the guidance and discipline of the heavenly Father in their own lives (Hebrews 12:5–11). They learn to transfer those same dynamics in gracious ways toward their sons.
2. Look in the mirror.
What kind of man are you? Sometimes sterling men arise from perverse home settings, but it is folly to sin while hoping for grace to abound (Romans 6:1–2). If you are bitter, critical, and angry, do not be surprised if a son mimics your bad habits. Fathers need to be humble enough to accept correction (from Scripture, from their wife, from a friend or pastor or even a child) and dedicate themselves to self-improvement. Many a son has learned self-righteousness from a hard-hearted, self-important dad. Teachable dads often cultivate teachable kids.
3. Love your wife.
She is your helper and sometimes mentor in the childrearing process. God says to love her as Christ loved the church and as you love yourself (Ephesians 5:25, 32). Sons (and daughters!) need to see and deeply sense a strong and steady affection from their dad for their mom. The security of marital ardor creates a forcefield that fortifies (and in the long run can help purify) the souls of sons. They rest in the joyful overflow. They observe how to express the love and respect they feel, but that their sinful souls can tempt them to neglect or withhold (boys can be real pills toward mom).
“Sons (and daughters!) need to see and deeply sense a strong and steady affection from their dad for their mom.”
I remember hugging my wife one evening, a rug rat at our feet. He tugged on my jeans at the knee to be picked up. I did so and the hug became three-way. Then my son announced, “Kiss fight!” and began pecking left and right. How could we not join in? Boys can turn anything into a war. It still makes me laugh to think about.
4. Check your loves.
The pastor who baptized both my sons joined with us at a church retreat one summer. He bought me a bait bucket to encourage me to fish with my sons. Then he said to me, “Bob, your sons will grow up to love what you love.” It was friendly counsel from a man with a bit more experience with his own sons. It was priceless guidance. If I love myself more than God, my wife, and my children, if I neglect my sons as I chase career glory or disappear on weekends playing golf and drinking beers with buddies, I shouldn’t be surprised if my sons end up chasing the twisted and unenviable life.
5. Learn from your via negativa.
A via negativa is a wrong path, a negative example. Experts know that bad parenting patterns often get handed down and replicated. If your dad beat you, you will be inclined to beat your kids. A man who is right with God and his wife (see the first and third points above) can break this cycle. Be alert to the danger of replicating nasty patterns under which you suffered. Pray and strategize so you can turn the dark paths you knew into sunlit trails for sons.
6. Set aside more time as boys get older.
I expected that babies and toddlers would take a lot of time, and I was right. In our case, my wife quit her job as a nurse to be with the kids at home; she bore the brunt of childcare. But over the years, she went back to work, and I tried to spend as much time as I could with our sons.
I was not prepared to discover that the older kids get, the more they need you around. And you may be surprised to find they want you there! This trend may slack off some during the teen years, but not necessarily. Creative parents may find ways to make common cause with sons so they are in proximity without smothering them. One of my sons had baseball talents. This drew me into ten years of coaching, including some time-intensive seasons. He took far less time as a toddler! But the rewards for our relationship — his character development and enduring family memories — were simply incalculable.
7. Read to and worship with your kids.
Remember, kids will love what you love. If you love Scripture and times of prayer and singing hymns, your kids will learn and feel that. If your “Bible time” (or “Bible tible,” as it came to be called in our home) is daily, not sporadic and haphazard, you can cover a lot in just ten or fifteen minutes each morning or evening over the course of weeks and months.
We ended up combining this with reading (out loud) classics like C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia or Ralph Moody’s epic Little Britches. I also dug up old poems like “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” “Casey at the Bat,” and many others. Combine this with discussion that runs where kids lead it, along with time for prayer, and you have ingredients for some soul-searching exchanges.
8. Teach them to work by working alongside.
Households survive on chores getting done, whether inside or outside. You can always do them faster without the “help” of young kids. But slow down and make them part of the crew. Teach them how to crack an egg if you are baking or turn a screwdriver if you are putting up a board fence. Get sweaty splitting and stacking firewood. Rake the fall leaves and ambush each other in the leaf piles. (We had a German shepherd who would bury himself in the leaves and wait for someone to jump on him. That’s the spirit!)
“One of the most valuable gifts a father can give a son is a robust work ethic.”
One of the most valuable gifts a father can give a son is a robust work ethic. Figure out what you can do together, and then create space for it to happen. Sons who know how to work with confidence, skill, and maximum effort are not apt to fail when they are out on their own.
9. Model Christian consumption of culture.
Mass and social media can dominate our consciousness. Christian husbands and wives should not be cyber-junkies or television addicts. Following Jesus calls for other emphases and pursuits. As they limit themselves, they have moral authority to help their children set their own limits — like no devices after a certain time in the evening, or time limits for online gaming. The easiest way to address bad habits is to prevent their onset. Help sons find richer, more productive horizons than excess Internet use. (Internet employment or online research for academic assignments, of course, is something different.)
10. Keep it physical.
Fathers, talk to your sons even while they are in the womb. They will know your voice when they emerge. Then hug and snuggle them. Hold them when you read to them and pray for them and sit with them in church. Carry them on your shoulders, roughhouse on the living-room carpet (“rassling,” I called it). Let them carry the feel of one last hug into their night’s sleep. Dads and sons alike need this expression and reinforcement of the love God has granted.
11. Teach them successful risk-taking.
We want our kids to be safe, but not at the cost of cowardice. You want sons to be risk-savvy, not risk-averse. Help them learn to swim as they overcome their (well-advised) fear of drowning. At appropriate ages, teach them to climb rocks, walk across a log spanning a ditch, befriend the neighbor’s barking dog, scale a fire tower, carry a box heavier than they thought they could, and sustain some scratches as they help clear land, prune trees, or repair the deck.
Boys that don’t learn bravery descend to knavery. Life is full of danger, and it can’t all be avoided. Figure out risks you can manage and surmount them as father and son. This parallels working side by side with them. Some tasks, like cleaning out gutters, can be two-men operations. Let your 12-year-old son shoulder the responsibility of steadying the ladder — or even climbing aloft if he’s ready (monitor closely, of course).
12. Show them how to care for others.
All the attention to sons prescribed above could leave the impression that to raise boys, you need to dote on and spoil them. Nope. If your home and marriage are trending Christ-centered (we never fully arrive in this life), sons will learn that God is the center of our lives, not us, and our daily prayer is for his kingdom to come and his will to be done. This also means we love and care for neighbors near and far. It means that part of our family income goes to the church, our family table is open to those God brings into our lives to be cared for, and we plan our futures with God’s call and will at the forefront of our thinking.
The list above is representative, not comprehensive. But with prayer, a lot of effort, perceived self-sacrifice (it’s actually a privilege), and God’s grace, parents and especially dads can increase the odds that the boys they rear will rise above the indolence, insecurity, and fear that studies say bedevil too many younger males at present.
