During the Christmas season, believers reflect anew on the wonder of God the Son coming to earth as a baby, a miracle which Christians have pondered over the centuries. Two books by early Christian theologians—On the Incarnation by Athanasius and Why God Became Man by Anselm of Canterbury—can give believers a strong theological understanding of the Incarnation and a deeper appreciation for God becoming man.
A Three-Fold Blessing
On the Incarnation, written around 318 AD, eloquently describes how the Son “has been manifested in a body… out of the love and goodness of his Father, for the salvation of us men.”
Athanasius repeatedly emphasizes the Son’s great love for humanity, which drove him to put on flesh, saying, “It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out his love for us, so that he made haste to help us and to appear among us.” Rather than abandon humanity to the curse of sin and death, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).
“He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in his love and self-revealing to us,” Athanasius continues. “Moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery… he took to himself a body, a human body, even as our own.”
Athanasius’ words spark deep awe and gratitude for Christ’s compassion. He invites believers to consider the incarnation as a threefold blessing: God revealed himself to man in the flesh, walked among humanity in love, and ultimately defeated death in his bodily resurrection.
Able to Atone for Us
Anselm’s book, written in the late 1090s, outlines why God the Son took on flesh and draws the reader to meditate on the significance of the Incarnation.
Anselm explains that Adam’s disobedience brought death to humanity, but the God-Man’s obedience restored life to his creation. He describes the Incarnation as being “made in wisdom,” a miracle by which the Son, with the “power, the firmness and the wisdom of God” paid humanity’s debt of sin.
“It is necessary that the same being should be perfect God and perfect man, in order to make this atonement,” Anselm emphasizes. As man, Christ descended from sinful Adam; as God, he is sinless and had the power to redeem fallen humanity.
Anselm inspires readers to reflect on the wonder of the God-Man paying man’s debt and praise him for his goodness.
Our Response to the Incarnation
Anselm cautions Christians against erroneously thinking they can fully understand the miraculous incarnation, saying,
How great a thing it is for God and man to unite in one person that, while the perfection of each nature is preserved, the same being may be both God and man! Who, then, will dare to think that the human mind can discover how wisely, how wonderfully, so incomprehensible a work has been accomplished?
We cannot grasp the intricacies of such a miracle, but we have faith that the God-Man has come for our salvation and respond with praise.
As the Christmas season approaches, we consider the truth that the Son, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6–7).
Reading Athanasius’s and Anselm’s books encourages believers to meditate on the humility of Christ, the One in whom “all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9).
Footnotes
Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, trans. Sister Penelope Lawson, 319 (1944; reis., Oregon:, Pantianos Classics, 2016).
Athanasius, On the Incarnation.
Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man, 1094-1098 (1998; reis., New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man.
Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man.
