On the Incarnation of Christ by Athanasius | Navigating the Classics

Hi, I'm John Snyder. I'm with Media Gratia and we are offering a new series of podcasts that we wanted to tell you about.

It's called Navigating the Classics. These will be released quarterly and not weekly.

And they are longer than our normal podcast, the whole council podcast.

And in these podcasts, we will have a group of guest speakers join me.

And we will take one of the significant books from Christian history.

Usually one that is prior to the Puritan movement. Not one that maybe everyone would feel comfortable reading.

Maybe they feel it's a bit daunting. One that is more difficult than usual to read.

And in 90 minutes, we try to walk through the book, explaining the significance that it had in Christian history and the practical application for today.

As well as giving you kind of a bird's eye view of what the author discusses. The first book we're working through is the book by the early church father,

Athanasius. And the book is entitled, On the Incarnation. And we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

I'm here today with Steve Crampton and Jamie Crampton, his son. And we're going to discuss a book by Saint Athanasius, On the

Incarnation. But before we do, in case you are not familiar with Steve from previous podcasts, I want

Steve to introduce himself again. And Jamie, if you'll tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm Steve Crampton.

I've been a member of this church for many a year. And I practice law for a living.

But have long enjoyed the old books and the classics. I'm Jamie Crampton and his son.

And this was my pastor growing up. I was both brought to Christ and then called to the ministry under his ministry here at Christ Church.

And I'm now a pastor at Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Well guys, thanks for joining us today.

We're going to look, as I said, at a really great book. One of the great classics of Christianity.

But perhaps a book that you haven't read before. And we started, this is our first try at this.

And so we picked the smallest book in the world. Athanasius, On the

Incarnation. It actually is a very, to the point, brief treatment of the

Incarnation. And yet it played a profound part in Christian history. And we want to look at that.

We're going to look at Athanasius himself. Something about the context in which he wrote. And then

Jamie, we've given him the lion's share of the work to walk us through the key aspects of this book.

What's so significant about the book? And then we'll try to kind of pull it all together at the end after our discussions.

To say, well, what are the strengths and what are the weaknesses? And who's this book suited for?

And I think that we might find it surprising what the book really is about.

So Jamie, give us an introduction to the man himself. One of my favorite facts about Athanasius is that he was a short, thin man.

That's significant. We could just end right here. Right. That's all we need to know. Yeah, he's a godly.

God used him. Yeah. And he's from Alexandria, Egypt. He was born, we're not quite sure the date of his birth, but right around 300

A .D. So we're going back 1 ,700 years. And died in 373

A .D. So lived about 73 years old, three years. And as a young man, he was a secretary of his pastor, who they called the

Bishop of Alexandria, and went to the Council of Nicaea. And do you want to talk about Nicaea?

Yeah, let's talk about Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea. When we talk about church councils, as a

Baptist, I did not grow up hearing about church councils. Probably the only time I heard about church councils, even in college, a

Baptist college, was it tended to be maybe from a bit of a negative perspective. Where Luther is arguing against his opponents, and they're pulling out their historical documents and saying, this council said this, and Luther points out, yes, but it disagreed with another council, and my authority is higher than all.

It's the Scripture. Which is certainly true. And we don't want to ever move away from that fundamental, you know, stubborn attachment to the authority of Scripture, soul of Scripture.

It is not only is it, you know, without error, it is completely sufficient for the

Christian life. And yet God does give us teachers, and that means present day teachers, but it also means past.

And we benefit from that. But a council is something more. It's more than just one great teacher, one theologian.

You know, a Luther, a Calvin, a Jonathan Edwards, writing on a topic. It is a gathering in the ecumenical councils, it is a gathering of all the churches at that time in Christendom, leaders from them all gathering together to answer a question that has been raised by an error.

Jamie, earlier on when we were discussing, you know, how to approach the podcast, you mentioned that these doctrines didn't begin when the council ended.

So, 325 we had the Council of Nicaea. So, 326 the church is told you need to believe that Jesus is fully

God, truly God and truly man. No, it was believed long before the council, but it was clarified at the council because there were those in the churches who were rising up teaching a false view of this.

And Jamie, you compared it to people starting to run off a cliff. And so, you feel that you need to build a fence which wasn't there before.

The path was there, but the fence is there to say, don't go down this road. This is a road that leads to destruction.

It's an error. Yeah, so the councils are clarifying, crystallizing what's already been there.

But if you don't have somebody coming up offering an alternative that's off the rails, over the cliff, there's no need for all the churches to come together and set it down and attack it, or address it at any rate.

And the other thing I wanted to add to what you were saying, John, is, you don't need a council on every point of doctrine.

You need a council on the really important, crucial, what's primary versus what's secondary.

We allow a lot, and I think Athanasius is an example we'll probably get into, where there's a graciousness, the

Christian charity extended to those who disagree with us on certain minor issues. But when they come to the fundamentals of the faith, we need to address those and make it clear, what do we really believe?

What does Scripture teach? And the errors are not those...this

is the other thing in my experience, prior to really diving into the councils, is, well, since we've had all those councils and over history the church has addressed various things, it's all settled, it's all done.

There's basically no more heresy today. But in fact, of course, the old serpent comes back again and again in maybe a little bit different form, a little different mask today, but those errors creep up again and again.

So it behooves us both to study Scripture, but also to know what the wisdom of the ages has taught us through those councils.

With the Council of Nicaea, there were some things that were unique. First, it was the first ecumenical or, you know, kind of church -wide.

So we don't have issues where one set of churches in one region of the

Roman Empire, or whatever, or, you know, we don't have East versus West at this point.

They're coming together, generally speaking, leaders from the various regions, to discuss a significant issue in understanding the

Trinity, particularly the relationship of the Son to the Father. And, you know, how they would answer

Arius's error, where Arius says the Son is a god.

He, at a point in time, God the Father, the God, so to speak, creates the highest of creation,

His Son. His Son is a god, but He is not quite God in the same way that the

Father is. He is certainly not of one essence with the Father. And, you know, from the Son then comes all other creation.

So when the church began to hear these things, there was alarm. And, you know, and for a while there was a, you know, you can go back to original sources and see the letters back and forth between the theologians and the pastors and the bishops.

And finally a council was called. So it's unique in the sense it's the first, you know, just church -wide council.

But it's also the first council that was called under the influence of a Roman emperor.

And so we have this strange element added here. The state power is now pro -Christian.

Constantine, we're not discussing Constantine, the quality of his Christianity, but he is as officially pro -Christian.

When Constantine grabs power from the other men, you know, there were three men left to divide up the

Roman Empire. He conquers his two rivals. When he conquers and he believes that Christ has given him this victory, he is pro -Christianity.

And he, as a shrewd politician, he sees that one way to bring the divided empire together is to have

Christianity be the glue. But if that's going to work, we can't have two factions. We can't have

Arians and then Orthodox. So we need to heal the rift in the

Christian church. And for that purpose, he calls a council. In 325 AD, 230 bishops get together in the city of Nicaea, which is in present -day

Turkey, and they discuss this whole issue. So in this council, basically, you have

Arius' view of Christ being a god but an inferior god. And then you have the other side.

And we can say Athanasius' view, but it's not just Athanasius. Athanasius certainly is at the center of forming a more biblical description of the relationship of father to son.

But let me read an example of Arius' view. And this is from a book called

Turning Points by Mark Noll. Mark Noll is a Christian historian, and this is a very interesting book.

It just talks about key points, or he calls it decisive moments, in the history of Christianity. So he talks about the council of Nicaea.

But one of the things that Arius did was he wanted to make the doctrine clear and simple, and he wanted to remove the mystery to some degree.

And we'll talk about the danger of that in a minute. But before we do, another thing he did was he popularized his theology by putting it to music.

And it reminds me of what Charles Wesley said to John Wesley when the Wesleyan Methodist movement was getting moving.

And Charles said to John, you can write the sermons and the theology books and tracts for the movement, and I'll write the hymns.

And at the end of our lives, the people will believe what they sang, not what they read. Because oftentimes we do pick up our theology from what we sing in church, and of course that's biblical to a certain degree, where Paul talks about the place that singing has in teaching each other.

Well, listen to the translated, this is in English of course, not in Greek. This is

Arius' hymn. The uncreated God has made the

Son, a beginning of things created. And by adoption has

God made the Son into an advancement of Himself. So He's adopted Him after making

Him. Yet the Son's substance is removed from the substance of the Father, not of one essence.

The Son is not equal to the Father, nor does He share the same substance. God is the all -wise

Father, and the Son is the teacher of His mysteries. The members of the

Holy Trinity share unequal glory. Interesting.

So that was a way that the common man could just kind of grab hold of, oh, what do you believe?

Oh, well, our church loves Arius. Well, what does he believe? Well, this is our favorite hymn at our church, and you could sing the hymn and teach.

Now, guys, I mentioned that Arius was desiring to make, according to Mark Knoll, make the doctrine of the

Trinity less mysterious, maybe more simple, easier to get a handle on. What is the danger we find throughout

Christian history when that's a man's approach? I would say we wrestle as created, rational beings.

I think made after the image of God certainly includes that rational faculty.

And Scripture, again and again, I marvel as I reread even from the first pages of Genesis how

God goes out of His way to stoop down to us and explain, here is, for instance, the law for obeying your parents.

Well, why should I do that? And He gives you a reason. I destroyed the Amalekites. Why? Because, and He explains to us.

So He wants us to understand. And then we, in our hubris, I would say, take our rationality and try to superimpose it on Scripture in parts where the

Trinity is very difficult to really understand. And so, Arius, I think you could say, and I think historians agree,

His motivation was good. He wants to make it understandable. We are creatures of reason, and so let's dumb it down, as it were.

So what we end up doing is doing violence to those things that God has set forth that are incomprehensible in many ways for us.

And that's why the council has to come together and defend what is a truly critical part of understanding and worshiping the true

God. Who God is must be faithful to Scripture more than it's faithful to reason itself.

Right? Yeah, I think that one thing we see through history is, so let's say we have two things expressed in Scripture that seem to be a paradox.

They're a paradox. There's an apparent contradiction. And the contradiction is solved in the infinite wisdom of God, but it rises above our intellects.

As Steve said, it's not anti -rational. So an example we were talking about, and I remember reading

Sproul's small pamphlet on this, on the Trinity. He mentions the fact that Christianity is not irrational.

It's not against the brain. You don't have to leave your brain at the door in order to exercise faith. It does not go against what we understand as, you know, logical or rational, sensible, you know.

And here's the example he gave. Sproul said, if we said that there are three persons in the Trinity, but also we have to say there is only one person in the

Trinity, that's irrational. It doesn't make sense. It contradicts. So that would be irrational and we reject it.

But if it says, if the Scripture says there are three persons, but one substance, one being, one

God expressed in his three persons, that is not irrational. But that is something that is above reason in the sense that we did not come to that understanding through studying nature and creation and, you know, the creation, the way we're made and say, now there must be one

God, but I believe he has expressed himself in the existence of three persons.

So, yeah, so that's not an irrational statement, but it is something that had to be revealed. It's actually quite simple when you look at the

Bible. How do you develop this doctrine? There are accusations of, this is philosophy.

These guys are saying one substance, three. Where are they getting this language from Scripture? It's not there. It's actually quite simple.

All throughout the Bible we're told how many gods are there? There is one God. Very simple,

Deuteronomy chapter 6. But then we learn the Father is God and the Son is God and the

Spirit is God. And the Father is not the same as the Son and the Son is not the same as the Spirit. And so they're left quite simply just looking at Scripture and saying, for us to hold these two truths that we learned from God revealing himself, we're left with this doctrine of there is one

God, but there's relationship within the Godhead. And it's not wrong to want to understand that as best we can, right?

And hence the doctrine of the Trinity. Yeah, and I think that there's a couple of things we could say that throughout history have helped men in these areas.

One is just the issue of knowing the God behind the mystery. So we are like little children that don't fully understand our

Father because He's an adult and we are an infant. You know, we often use the illustration at church here like being of the...

We are like infants who have not yet learned to crawl. In fact, we're like the little baby that if you put him on his stomach, he can lift his head up and Dad comes home from work.

Maybe the child's brain starts to recognize the certain sounds that come when...

There's Mom. Hi, honey. Hey, how are things? Great. Dad walks past and you see as an infant his shoes and the bottom two inches of his pants.

Now, if the infants when they get together in nursery say, Yeah, I figured Dad's out.

I know everything there is to know about Dad's. Well, they might think they have, but they have not. There's so much more.

So there is a sense in which knowing the God behind the mystery, we trust

Him because of the work of grace in our soul. I know Him personally.

I have tasted of His kindness. I have experienced His faithfulness. And so when I come to those great mysteries, it doesn't shake me.

I humbly embrace the fact that I have a limited understanding, but I know the person behind the mystery.

And so I don't feel the pressure to make Christianity more reasonable for the guy next to me.

Another thing is an example that I read from a man that comes much later in the late 18th, early 19th century, a man named

Charles Simeon, a wonderfully used minister in the Church of England, in England. And Simeon said when he came to the paradoxes of Scripture, he said what most people do is let's say we have one truth stated over here, 100 % true, and then another truth stated over here, 100 % true.

So three persons, one God. He said what people tend to do is try to bring those in closer and to reconcile them by reducing what the

Scripture says on both sides. So if we think of it kind of simplistically, let's take 50 % and 50%, and we'll reduce those great statements and we'll make them where we can kind of pull them together.

And he said that's absolutely the wrong approach. What we do is we fully embrace the boldest, strongest statements that Scripture gives at each end of the spectrum.

And then by grace we stretch, you know, in a sense beyond our brain's ability.

And we hold both at the same time and we say I cannot bring them closer.

And yet they are both true and I refuse to reduce the Scriptural statements on either side.

And in that, you know, the Christian finds, you know, a path of safety. And that's exactly what

Arius did. It was I grasp this one truth, God is one. Jesus is God, it says that too.

Well, I'm going to slide that one further away. He's not really God in the same sense that the

Father is. He's not eternal, He's not omniscient. The Father is and He brings

Jesus into some sort of relationship as God. Yeah, so the big statement about one God is held and the affirmation that Jesus is true

God is reduced, you know. And then, oh, well, that's not such a hard thing to imagine now, you know.

And I would add there is in our, as I say, kind of a hubris. Well, reason is in some sense my

God. And reason says you can't have one God, three gods. Ergo, I will take

God the Father and reduce Christ in order to make it fit in my little understanding of rationality.

Well, we haven't even gotten to the book yet. So let me read the Nicene Creed, the parts that deal particularly with Athanasius' statements about the sun and that reject

Arius' statements. The Nicene Creed was actually finalized a number of years later in 381.

They tweaked a few elements, but for the most part what was said was left unaltered.

And these are the significant parts for our talk. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, and in one

Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten, so very different from Arius, not created, the only begotten

Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very

God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the

Father by whom all things were made, who for us men, for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the

Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered and was buried, and the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of the

Father. And He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the

Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified.

So that's kind of the key parts for our discussion. So, Jamie, why don't you take us back to our author?

Well, Athanasius was there probably in his early to mid -twenties at this council, and he wasn't one of the pastors or the bishops that was gathered from the

Roman Empire. He was just a secretary. So he's there, he witnesses everything taking part, and when he comes back to his hometown, his pastor dies a couple years later, so he's in his early to mid -twenties, and he becomes the pastor or the bishop of Alexandria, Egypt.

Constantine, shortly after this, softened on Arius, and Arius made some sort of statement of faith, and he brought him back in.

But Arius came back to Athanasius' hometown, Alexandria. And Athanasius said,

You are not welcome back in this church, into the communion of this body. And so now Athanasius is at odds with his emperor

Constantine, and he was exiled. And this was one of five different times that he was exiled in his ministry, and he was living away from his hometown for 18 years of his 45 years in ministry.

So for Athanasius, these things weren't just, I'm a theologian,

I like heady academic things, I like writing. For him, this was something that is life and death, and he's willing to suffer for it.

So he really drinks the riches of these doctrines. I think that we see that quality in his book as well, that like Spurgeon said,

I prefer the books that smell like prison, meaning the authors suffered.

They may have been in prison like John Bunyan, or who suffered persecution in other ways like Luther or Calvin.

But I think that when we read men who were writing, and their lives were at stake.

As you mentioned before our podcast, Calvin writing to men who would be taking these truths back to France, and his summary of the biblical teaching, the

Institutes, really these men were carrying truths that were, humanly speaking, a death sentence.

So what do you do? Well, you don't waste a lot of pages. You get right to the point, and you give them things that men can risk everything on.

And so the directness and the simplicity is really helpful. And that is something that another author calls attention to,

C .S. Lewis. Yes, if I can kind of set up the actual substance of the book, with a tremendous, one of the best introductions in all of literature, it seems to me, that C .S.

Lewis wrote to this book. And Lewis takes us back to the first question, why in the world should we read old books at all?

You know, there's plenty of modern books, and we moderns obviously are so much smarter than the guys of the past.

Why waste our time? And so Lewis takes us to task, in the one sense, with kind of a false sense of humility to say, well, we can't understand the old books, we'll just read the commentators and those that summarize them for us, because who are we to leave it to the experts kind of thing.

And Lewis points out, for one, let me quote one part of his intro, the simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what

Plato said. But hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. You know, sometimes the commentators are much more confusing than the original source.

And the other thing is what we have loosely referred to as the test of time.

The old books have stood the test of time. What does that mean? Well, it means in a context of Christian books in particular, that they have undergone the scrutiny of the ages, of different generations that have read these books, criticized them, as we will do here toward the end of this podcast, and yet found them worthy of rereading, of reprinting, of consideration for us as moderns.

And the other thing that Lewis points out that I think is so pertinent for us today is every age has its own set of prejudices, biases, and frankly blind spots.

And the problem with a blind spot is you can't see it. So we don't know what our own blind spot might be.

And yes, the ancients were not perfect either. They made many mistakes. But the significance,

Lewis points out, is they're not our mistakes. So we have the privilege of looking back at what they lived through, wrote, considered, and put forth for our consideration that have a different set of mistakes than ours and help us, as Jamie put in some of his introductory notes here, rub off the hard edges of our own time and our own thinking.

And we benefit so greatly from considering it from that different perspective.

And the other thing that Lewis kind of glories in, and I think rightly so, is when we read somebody like an

Athanasius, in spite of the differences, in spite of the prejudices, and even constrictions of his own day and age, and even the way he writes, what comes through is the beauty of the unity of the faith.

His perspective is different, his words and so on are different, but it is the same glorious God that we serve, and we can really identify with that faith, and I think grow in our own faith as a result of reading his take on, and as you all point out, the fact that he lived and was willing to die for that faith brings a richness to bear that we really would do well to benefit from.

And one last point in his intro. He points out that there is sometimes a hesitation to say, well,

I only read devotional books. And this, after all, is kind of a doctrinal thing, and we tend to think of it as dry and musty and academic and scholarly.

Lewis says, I believe that many who find that nothing happens when they sit down or kneel down to a book of devotion would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

So the takeaway is, sometimes the doctrinal book can have a wonderful devotional effect on us that a devotional book might not really offer us.

So, all kinds of good reasons to read the ancients. I find that the rubbing off our rough edges,

I got the best picture of that in 2020. We were in Michigan, shut down in our home for a couple months, not seeing anyone else for about four weeks solid where it's just our family.

And I talked to one of my pastors later, and he said, when we get together at church just on a weekly basis and have conversations, our own problems and tendencies and errors, we bump into each other and rub them off.

And if we're by ourselves for four weeks, whatever your tendency is, whatever your wart is, you just grow and grow and grow and there's no one to check you.

And at the end of 2020, I saw all of my own problems kind of under a magnifying glass.

And when we finally got to get together in church again and see each other, those start, you know, they start disappearing.

We're sanctifying, God uses each other to sanctify us. And I find the same thing reading old books.

It's our generation has sharp edges and we're bumping into other generations and you have the iron sharpening iron.

May I play off of that to one other point? I mean, there's several, but one other that I'll mention here that Lewis makes is a wonderful illustration.

It's like when we just start reading the moderns today, we're starting at 11 a .m.

in a conversation that actually began at 8 a .m. As we record this, we're the day after Thanksgiving and we've had the privilege of having our family home with us, most of them anyway.

And one of the things that we love to do is just get around the kitchen table and enter into discussions about all kinds of things.

And invariably, I find myself being the one that's joining late. And I'm going, OK, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense.

But all you guys are laughing and carrying on like that's the funniest thing ever. What did I miss? Well, we're missing something when we come in and read the moderns only and don't hear from the folks like Athanasius that started this conversation about Christ so many hundreds of years ago.

Well, Jamie, why don't you lead us through this book and just help us to understand what are the key arguments and the really important things that are essential for us.

I'll start with a quick outline. Here's kind of a map if you're just to look at the book. It is very short.

This copy looks longer. It's about 90 pages, but it's big words and small pages. But it's only about 90 pages.

It's a quick read, only a few hours. But I'll give you a roadmap of his argument. And he's a very good writer, which is one of the benefits of reading the great books.

It's not just he's really smart, so there's no way I'm going to understand him. Well, because he's so brilliant, he's easy to understand.

But his argument, he essentially goes from creation to recreation and says,

God created all things by his word. And this translation capitalizes the word.

God created all things through his son. And so he spends the first three sections dealing with God created all things through the word, and especially he creates man in his image.

And he talks about the fact that we have words. It's a reflection of Jesus, the word. And so he says this is how

God works. He reveals himself. He creates. He does his work through the son. And having laid that groundwork, he goes into the incarnation and says, how is

God going to recreate or redeem this creation? The same way that he's always done it, through his word, who acts and reveals

God to us. So then he goes into, well, why the incarnation? And he later deals with accusations from the

Greeks saying, why didn't God just give us a book? We have Plato. We're intelligent. We can just reason our way out of our problems.

And Athanasius said, well, our problem isn't that we haven't had

God revealed to us. It's everywhere. If you look up, God's being revealed. If you look at creation and the animals that we're living with,

God's being revealed. If you look at the seasons, God's being revealed. If you look at yourself, God is being revealed. But we're not just saved by knowing the right things.

And so Athanasius said we have this dilemma that comes from this, we're in corruption and death, and we cannot get ourselves out.

But the dilemma is not in us. The dilemma is in God, who spoke the truth and said, if you eat this fruit, if you sin against me, you will die.

And then Athanasius said, but God is also good. He goes through all this work to create these creatures in the image of his son.

And would a good God simply create us? We fall, and he destroys us, and that's the end.

He said, well, what kind of creator would do that, knowing that's all that's going to happen? So he said

God resolves this dilemma by bringing the incarnate word to banish death, the penalty of our sin, and create us anew.

And the second reason that he gives for the incarnation is that we have lost the knowledge of God, and he said by refusing to look up.

I love that description of sin. God is revealing himself everywhere, but we refuse to simply turn our chins and look up, stiff -necked, the language of Scripture.

And in this section, Athanasius sounds just like J .I. Packer in Knowing God. And he just says, what's the point of our existence?

What's the purpose of being alive and reasoning if we cannot know God? So there's nothing.

So the other dilemma that comes in is God created us in his image so that we could worship him, and now we have all these images of God, images of the word of God, that are despising

God and not knowing him and losing the reason of their existence and the joy that they can have. And so what does he do?

He sends the incarnate image of the father so that we can know God. So those are the two reasons he gives for the incarnation.

That's sections 4 to 19, and then he moves on to the death of Christ and said, well, why is this reasonable?

So Athanasius is writing to a new convert and saying, well, why did Jesus have to die? And he said, well, the first is we owed the debt of death, and God the word offers his body in our place to settle the debt.

And then he goes through all these objections to the specifics about the death of Christ. Well, why on a cross?

That's a shameful thing. Why couldn't he have died some other peaceful, maybe a sickness that he dies instantly of a heart attack?

Why does he do the shame? Yeah, something honorable. And it says he could not die of natural weakness.

Athanasius said he becomes man, he has this temple of a body, but it's inhabited by capital

L, life. So Athanasius said he couldn't have died unless someone else inflicts this death on him.

And so why does he allow the Jews to kill him? Well, he died for others. And he gives this analogy of a wrestler.

He said, if you have a strong wrestler that says, I am life, I am strength, I challenge any of you.

And they say, well, we pick this man. No, not him. Anyone but him.

I'll wrestle this scrawny, short, thin man over here, and I'll show you how strong I am. And he said, well, you have no confidence in the strength of that wrestler.

And he said, Jesus came to this earth, to his enemies, and said, you pick.

You name the worst death you can think of. I will take that death and destroy it.

And he dealt with other examples. Why not die in private, in honor?

And Athanasius said the whole point was the resurrection and conquering sin and death and the wrath of God. And if Jesus had died in private, and then the house comes out and said, he died.

But he's raised from the dead. Everybody would have said, that's a great story. None of us will believe you.

There's no evidence that this man actually died. So Athanasius said, Jesus chose a public death so that everybody, the whole world was ringing with the sound of the death of Jesus.

And then three days, on the third day, he comes again, showing that he's conquered death. So these objections he deals with, and Athanasius finished with a

Christian statement of Jesus had to take our curse. How do you take a curse? Well, the Old Testament tells us, you take the curse of God by hanging on the tree.

Cursed is everyone that hangs on the tree. And so Athanasius said he took that curse and broke down this wall that separated us from our maker, from God.

So those are the reasons for the death of Christ. And Athanasius, it's very helpful, just deals with simple questions that I often haven't thought to ask.

But here's some objections to it. And also the question, well, why does he raise the third day?

Why not the first day, the second day, the 21st day, or whatever? What does he say about that? Yeah, he said, well, it couldn't have been the second day because then he said, he just swooned.

I mean, that's actually still going today, the swoon theory. Well, he wasn't gone that long.

So Athanasius said it had to be a substantial period of time, but not too long because then they would have said, do you remember that guy,

Jesus, that died? Was that last week? Yeah, what happened to him? Well, he's raised from the dead.

I don't know. Was that really the same? That's just a different guy that they brought in to say he raised from the dead.

So Athanasius said, to show he was truly dead, it was the third day, so it wasn't too long and that there was no corruption.

Athanasius talks a lot about the corruption of death. There was no corruption and that was a promise of Christ.

So after this section on the death of Christ, section 25, he goes to arguments for the resurrection and he dealt with these objections, why the third day, which we just talked about, and then he gave these arguments, the resurrection is made known by its works.

He said, how does God make himself known? He creates, he speaks, he reveals himself in what he does and he said it's the same thing with the resurrection.

This resurrection is active and living and reveals the risen Christ by its actions.

And he began with these arguments that I would not think of today. Look at the martyrs.

And he's writing early in the 300s after many Christians had died publicly. And he said, look at these disciples of Christ who trampled death like something already dead.

He said, there are men that were fearful, they come to Christ, they're told, just abandon

Christ, say this one thing to Caesar, put a little bit of incense, say Caesar is Lord and we're not gonna kill you.

He said, these men that were once fearful of death boldly go to their own graves rather than deny

Christ. He said, well, how do they do that? Death is trampled. And then Athanasius brought something up and he said, not only men, women do it.

He said, these women that were slaves, they're brought in and they're told the same thing and the women embrace that.

And he said, even children willingly go to their death for the name of Christ. And he said, well, how can that be?

Death is a dead trampled tyrant. And to the worldly man, confronting someone who doesn't fear death is a fearful thing.

Who are these people? That's a testimony. I think that was one of the more gripping aspects of the book.

For one, the way he approaches things where he's such a good speaker or he lays his arguments before the people in a way that draws your conscience to his side.

So even if you're not a Christian, I feel like there are times where your inner self runs over to Athanasius' side and points back at you and says, yeah, answer that.

Why are you so sluggish to believe these things? But you know, so how he argues is just so gripping.

Very simple, as you mentioned. Simple illustrations, but things that are in so many ways undeniable.

He talks about that death issue. He says if you see a child go over to a snake and the child's touching and kicking the snake, you don't think that snakes no longer are dangerous.

You think that that snake is dead. Someone's killed the snake. And the proof of that is the way the child treats it.

If a child goes to a lion and comes and pushes the carcass of the lion, the lion's dead.

And he points out the fact that when Christ died and was raised, no one would say, well, that's a weak argument for His deity because death has just gotten weak.

Well, you know, Athanasius just calls their own conscience to the witness stand.

Has death gotten weak? I mean, have we found that to be true? Have we not laid in the ground loved ones over and over and they continue to be laid low by death?

So it is the strength of the Almighty God that we see in the deity of the

Son that we see in His resurrection and His crushing death. But as you mentioned, the evidences of death being crushed are given in the way that the

Christian is treating death. And he goes on and he's going to use that argument, that basic approach over and over, whether it's with Jews or Gentiles.

Look at the believer and look at the ongoing work. So not at the nobility of a believer, but look at the evidence of the ongoing work of the

Son of God through His imperfect people and you will see that the claims of Christ are true.

Yeah, I love... I remember one time you had told us when I was young, watch this believer die.

Yes. And you will get to see the glory of the faith, the glory of Christ, the glory of Christianity.

And as a young man that made a very strong impression, I'm literally watching this man who knows he has six months to live and seeing what is it that this man has that even death is no longer fearful to him.

And Athanasius uses that and presses it home and says, it's not because that man was so strong. This is because the risen

Jesus still works actively and powerfully in His people as an argument of the resurrection.

Yeah, he just argues so simply. Dead people don't keep working, okay?

I mean, do we know any dead person that's still impacting his family, still guiding, still accomplishing, still doing anything, good or bad?

Like, well, no, dead people are done doing. Christ is not done doing.

Here are our evidences. And I love when he makes those arguments where he says, you know, false gods are not worshipped in multiple lands.

They're worshipped by their little people and then the people next to you in the other country, he has his little false god and he has his little false god.

And Christ is alive, ruling and spreading and everywhere Christ goes through His people, the idols are freely dropped, magic is dropped, you know, and he just gives evidence after evidence of a living, active

Christ. And that is rooted in His activity and not our piety.

But it does make us aware that our actions are what one old writer said, your actions are presently forming the arguments in the mind of others.

What argument is it forming? That Christ isn't all He was claiming to be?

Or this very normal person, through their imperfect but really changed life,

I see the evidence of a living King, of a Christ. And even in Athanasius' own life, as we've touched on already, the fact that he was willing to undergo exile after exile after exile, you know, the famous moniker

Athanasius contramundum against the world. He was, at some times it appeared at least, the only one who would stand for the truths of Scripture.

Of course we know that's not ultimately, literally true, yet his example by his life and his actions, the willingness to simply submit to the worst punishments, wasn't crucifixion, but it's pretty bad, just is itself a testimony of his faith and the liveliness of Christ in him.

Yeah, and as a side, but two stories that came out of his life. He was always being accused of, he's murdered this man, or one account said he chopped off his hand, he's an evil, violent man, and he was being brought before another council that was local in a church, and they're trying him, and did you murder?

No, I did not murder, no, I did not cut off his hand. Well, his friends had went and found the man whose name he was being accused of murdering or chopping off his hand.

They grabbed him, they dragged him into the court, and they said, you murdered him. Oh, you mean this man?

Well, apparently, all right, fine, he didn't murder him. As a lawyer doing some criminal work, that would be the

Perry Mason moment for me. Bring the body in. He's still alive. He made a mistake.

And one other example, when one of the emperors sent soldiers, and I believe this was

Julian, called the apostate, raised as a Christian, became an emperor, and said, I'm done with Christianity, I'm gonna revive all the gods of Zeus, and I'm gonna bring back the old

Roman paganism. Well, he wouldn't have called him Zeus, Jupiter. And he sent soldiers to arrest Athanasius.

Everybody who's the top of the list, if you're an emperor, and you want things to stop, well, we need to start by silencing

Athanasius. He sent soldiers to come, and Athanasius heard about it, started rowing away from the city, middle of the night, and the boat of the soldiers actually passed him.

And they yelled down, have you seen Athanasius? He said, well, you're not very far. And he just kept sailing.

They're like, okay, we're close. And he ended up escaping. So there's also some exciting stories that came with just living as a

Christian in very dangerous times, and the way that God protected him, and he lived to be an old man. I can't help but add as a footnote, you see in the history and biography of Athanasius some of the dangers of uniting the church with the state.

It's all great when Constantine says, we want Orthodox Christianity. But when Julian comes in and says, we want only pagans, that's not so good.

So there's some wisdom in. Yeah, the irony actually came is Athanasius was divided.

So after the Council of Nicaea, the church was split for the next 60 years over one word, homoousius.

So same substance had been used by a heretic a hundred years before who said the father is the same as the son.

And then eventually he comes to us again as the Holy Spirit, but it's really the same. So people were upset and said, we brought a heretical word into our creed, and Athanasius said, we all agreed, why are you disagreeing?

The church was split at one point, and the emperor was an Arian, started by persecuting

Athanasius and all these people saying same substance. But then eventually he started persecuting the other people in the church and said we shouldn't have used that word.

And he actually united the church because they were all in exile saying, wait a second, we're all fighting for the same battle that Jesus is fully

God, equal with the father, eternal, equal in glory. And so the persecution also ended up uniting the church that was starting to split.

And Athanasius, wasn't it at that point, reached out and in, again,

Christian charity says, look, let's be reasonable here and charitable to one another.

Maybe they don't all embrace this one word, but we do share the common faith and we have to be gracious in that context.

And let me just throw out to you all, when do we know when that line is crossed?

And yes, we can still be brothers in the faith, even though we disagree about X or Y.

At what point is it across the line to say, no, you are no longer really practicing

Orthodox Christianity and we must part company. I think there are actually two situations where that happens.

One is a denial of the father or the son or the Holy Spirit in some way that's, you are now outside the boundaries of Christianity.

You have denied the worship of Christ who saves us or you've denied some aspect of his work, the virgin birth or the resurrection.

So that would be one, you are out of the bounds of even being called Christian. You cannot be saved by holding this.

But then we can also do it by our practice. We can be fully Orthodox in what we say, but when some sort of grievous sin comes in and then we need to begin to break fellowship over that as well.

Yeah, I think with Steve's question, there are, we would say there are essential or maybe some people would use the description primary truths and secondary.

That gets a lot of people angry because they say there are no secondary truths in scripture. They're all primary and it just depends on which situation you're in, which truth comes to apply to that.

So I can understand that argument. It's not as if there are important and unimportant. But there are things that, as you guys have both mentioned, that if a person rejects this truth, it is impossible biblically to understand how they could be a

Christian. They are denying the cardinal, the heart of Christianity. So those aspects, we cannot, it is not following the law of love to tell a person who says,

I actually don't believe that Jesus is deity, that it is the union of the second person of the

Godhead with humanity. I think he was just a great teacher, but I still admire him and I still want to go to church with you and I want you to still accept me.

It would be an unloving thing. But if a man says, I have a different view of some aspects of the book of Revelation or we think about different views of baptism, different views of church polity, we say, well, we feel that as we've studied the

Scripture, we've come to different opinions. And that bothers us. Why have we?

But we understand our limitations. Yet these are secondary issues and they do not touch the essential elements of a person knowing the true

God and to being in the church of the true

God. So we are gracious there. I think, you know, one thing we would have to avoid is we don't want to use the measure of, well, pragmatism.

I think if we would just be a bit soft on this certain truth, that I can see practical benefit here.

You know, usually it's church growth. I remember speaking to a Welshman who, when

I was studying in Wales and preaching at his church, he was in a church that no longer really believed the great doctrines of the

Bible, though it was created in the Great Awakening there. And he was a very kind, older man, and he said to me, my generation has failed.

The churches, the Welsh churches are empty. Your generation, you young people, you'll do better than us.

He said, you know, you're wiser. You're reaching out to Hindus and Muslims and all together we worship the same

God. And I was about to preach in his church that he was the elder of, and I thought, it was a famous church in history, it was

Daniel Rowland's chapel. And I thought, oh, please don't ask me what I think of what you just said, because I do want to preach in this famous chapel.

And so I tried to keep my face calm, and I thought, I'll tell him after the sermon.

Just please let me preach in the church. And he said to me, oh, I'm sorry, have I bothered you? So I guess my face showed it.

And he said, what do you think about that? And I said, well, you know, actually I explained why I felt he was fundamentally wrong.

I met another Welsh lady in a totally different situation, in an evangelical church, but she was saying, oh,

I love American evangelical churches. And I was thinking, I love Welsh evangelical churches, you know.

And they were a little, they were more careful, you know, under Lloyd -Jones guidance and influence. She said, what

I love about American churches is they're not so divided over theology. I don't think we should make that a big thing, do you?

And my answer to her was, well, if these truths were our truths, we are free to adjust them according to what we feel would be wise and practical.

But if they are the king's truths, we are not free to adjust them at all. And so these are the king's truths, you know.

So I think the Welsh at that time, I said, I think your Welsh church here has made a better choice, you know.

So that can't be the sliding scale of where are we gracious to each other and where are we hard -lined with each other.

And don't you think one of the great temptations of the modern church is to seek unity above all else and overlook some really serious doctrinal issues?

Yeah, it can be. But then in the circles that we run in with Reformed Baptist groups, it's the exact opposite.

It's the exact opposite, true. Explain God's passions to me. And as soon as you use the wrong word, it's like, die, heretic, and you throw him from the bridge.

And you say, next, you know. And you're left with just, Presbyterians can do it too, but you're left with the pure group.

Well, there's only four churches left. And the more faithful we are, the smaller we are. Yeah, make us more and more despised for Jesus' sake.

Well, Athanasius deals with the common objections to the faith in his day. And there's a lot more similarity.

I thought I'll just skip this section. It won't be as helpful. We don't have the same objections, but you find a great similarity with what the objections were then.

And first, he deals with objections from the Jews. And these are essentially, I could run through them, but it's the

Old Testament promises this. And he just runs through the

Bible. And it's amazing how he uses the Old Testament and sees, well, Christ is promised here, and Christ is promised here, and haven't you read

Genesis? Haven't you read Exodus? Haven't you read Deuteronomy? Haven't you read the Psalms? Haven't you read Isaiah? Haven't you read

Jeremiah? And he just brings quotes from all throughout the Old Testament and said, listen, if you are a

Jew and you've been handed this book, it speaks everywhere of the Word of God and His Son, being born of a virgin, that He will become a great king and all nations will be brought under His authority.

It promises He will die, but not die for His own sake. He'll die for the benefit of sinners,

Isaiah 53. He quotes all of Isaiah 53. He said it promises even a death on a cross.

And he quotes Psalm 22 with, they pierced my hands and my side. And he said, well, where else did that happen in the

Old Testament? It's nowhere. But it even promises His death on a cross. And only

Jesus Christ, the Word of God, fulfills these promises. Yeah, he goes through and he calls to mind the great patriarchs of the

Old Testament. And he just explains how you do see that Abraham or Isaac or Jacob or David or the prophets, none of them fulfill these as a whole.

And one argument he gives is, well, that some Jews will say, well, we're still waiting. How irrational is it to say we're still waiting when you have to close your eyes to the fact that there was or is a person who walked among us two centuries prior who with all these eyewitnesses and many of them, well, most of them,

Jewish eyewitnesses, your own people said they saw him do these things which

Scripture said the Messiah would do. But you close your eyes to the fulfillment and say, well, we're still waiting.

And it's just disingenuous. There's no blindness like spiritual blindness, is there? And I'm reminded in hearing

Athanasius' arguments, doesn't he sound like Christ? Have you not read? Here it is.

Yeah, and earlier with the works. If you don't believe me, that's fine. Believe the works that I'm doing. Yes. He points to those.

Yes. Yeah, there's one of my favorite quotes from this section. He says, you know, this is the king of creation according to the

Jewish Scriptures. God creates all things through his word and by his spirit. And we have this king of creation coming and seen in the flesh.

And he says, well, how would you know it's the king of creation? Well, let's see if all creation begins to respond. And Athanasius said, he it is who won victory from his demon foes and trophies from the idolaters, namely all the heathen who from every region have abjured the tradition of their fathers and the false worship of idols and are now placing their hope in Christ, transferring their allegiance to him.

The thing is happening before our eyes here in Egypt. So reading this man who's a pastor in Egypt and saying, listen, if you're a

Jew, you've been told there's a king coming that all nations are going to bow to him. And he said, just look around.

It's happening in front of your eyes in our country where we're throwing off what we've worshipped for centuries with our fathers and we bow and give our allegiance to Jesus Christ.

What would you say if someone presented this argument today? Well, that's fine for Athanasius to say in the early part of the fourth century, but Islam also has spread and perhaps is spreading in certain parts of Europe, spreading much more quickly than Christianity.

So what is our answer for that? Does that mean that Muhammad is still alive, that Allah is the one true

God and Muhammad is his prophet? How do we answer that question? Well, for one, this is a little talked about fact, but the borders of Islam, they call it

Dar al -Islam, the house of Islam. There's usually a bloody border. It goes forth with warfare, primarily.

There are converts that go to Islam, but I think what you have to look at is, say, here are people that have found, again, a rationalistic religion.

It makes sense. If you talk to a Muslim, there is one God. He has all these prophets, and we're going to name the same prophets.

We have Adam, we have Noah, we have David, we have Moses, we have Jesus. We even recognize Jesus. And Muhammad.

And, well, what's the religion? Well, you need to do better, do the best that you can, and God is very merciful, and no one else will take your sins for you.

And so there's actually a very real appeal if you look at Islam and say, you know, if I were making up a religion this morning and woke up and said, what is truth?

How can I be saved? What is it? Well, I need to do better. I need to read my

Bible. I need to pray to God and do as many good works as I can do. And if I just have enough good and it outweighs the bad, well, then

I'll be okay with God. And so, ultimately, I think if you look at things like, well,

Islam spreads, you have a person that is fundamentally living for themself, and he finds something like Islam and says, you know, you should also do good and not only care about yourself today, but there's an eternity coming.

There is a judgment. You will face God. Okay, so I just need to do better. Instead of saying,

I am so helpless. I cannot save myself. I will never turn from loving myself to love

God. And I need another Savior who is God to take my sins on His head and conquer death for me and transform all the rottenness within.

It's much easier to be told, you can do this. Do it. You don't need Christ. Give me something to do to earn myself.

So as a summary answer, we can change outside of Christ, but not the fundamental,

I go from living for myself to utterly worshiping and loving God another. Yeah, so there can be ulterior motives.

And we want to be wise about that. And that certainly is true with the spread of what we have called in our nation,

Christianity. It is not necessarily the Christianity of the Bible. And there are many other motives for becoming religious and saying,

I will take the label of Christian on me and my family. I find a lot of benefits here.

So there's business practices depending on where you live in the country. If you're down South and you want to prosper in a small

Southern town, you probably should attend one of the larger, more popular churches.

If you're up in New England and you run around with a giant Bible, you might lose a little business.

So you don't approach it that way. So there are ulterior motives.

As you mentioned, there is coercion. We can have coercion in a different way. We can say, I remember being at a, when

I was in college, I was working with a traveling evangelist who came into our town. So he volunteered me and some other guys to work with this traveling evangelist.

And we were supposed to be counselors at the end of the altar call. And the man gave his altar call at the end of this stirring kind of evangelistic, not kind of a normal evangelistic sermon where there wasn't heavy on content, but heavy on emotions.

Nobody moved. And so we're all sitting in the football stands in our little town and one or two people came down.

Well, that wasn't acceptable. So the man kind of shifted gears and chose a different approach.

And he said, some of you young ladies. And so it went immediately to the girls.

Some of you girls, you're lonely because your boyfriend broke up with you. And if you want a friend that will never leave you, come.

And then boom, this movement of dumped girls came down. And then some of you, that wasn't enough.

Some of you, you know your friends are sad and lonely. Grab them and bring them to Jesus. Boom, another wave.

And so we had wave after wave. And even I remember that evangelist when he was visiting the church where I was a youth pastor of, the pastor and myself, during the invitation, the evangelist was just preaching at that church that day.

And he had you bow your heads and come forward if you want to come to Christ. And nobody wanted to be embarrassed and come forward.

So he kind of dropped the bar a little, made it easier. He said, if you want to be a

Christian, everybody close your eyes now, nobody looking. If you want to be a Christian, you can raise your hand. Just raise your hand. You don't have to come forward.

Just raise your hand. And he said, I see that hand. Thank you. I see that hand. I see that hand. Now the church was fairly small, under 200.

So I could see everyone. So I'm a youth minister, so I thought I need to look to see if any of the youth.

And I could see the pastor was looking. Not one hand went up. And the man said, I see that hand. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And my jaw just dropped. And I looked at the preacher. You know, everybody's praying.

And his jaw dropped. And I thought, what is that? And after about the fourth time, he said, oh, thank you, sir.

Thank you, ma 'am. Then people started raising their hands because they were coaxed into it. So that's coercion.

So we're not pretending that a type of religion can't spread without a living

God. But that's a good question. Does the change that you're saying, you're seeing, whether it's the increase in numbers, the spread geographically, or the changes within an individual, does it require this explanation?

There must be a living God because other ulterior motives do not answer this. And so that's one way

I think we can ask ourselves, you know, how is that different from the spread of other ideas?

I want to add as well, look, the enemy of our souls is the great deceiver.

He doesn't have any original ideas, but he knows how to imitate very well.

So when you've got, don't we see it in the great movements, the revivals over the ages, right?

You always have the false throwing in with the true and loves, delights in mixing in those fakes.

You know, we talk these days about fake news. Well, you've got the fake churches and fake revivals kind of stuff.

Well, here's a fake religion that mimics in so many ways the true.

And that is one of the ways that he can deceive many. And of course, as you pointed out, Jamie, appeal to the worldly self that wants, give me something to do to earn my salvation.

I'd much rather do that than really lay myself out, die as it were, for this

God who himself is unknowable in so many ways. And it's a scary thing to give yourself over totally into the hands of another being.

Yeah, I think that, you know, when Jamie mentioned that, that is another that we could say that also is under this kind of category of ulterior motives.

You can become a religious person in other religions other than Christianity without the jar against your fundamental beliefs.

Now, I'm not talking about beliefs that, okay, there's a God or there's, I mean, about yourself. You are rooted deeply in the fundamental perspective that you are what's most significant and you can fix you if you put your mind to it.

And so if a person comes and says, I have a deity that agrees with that and you have to be this good, okay?

But what if another religion comes and says, no, my deity says you have to be this good.

It doesn't matter how high the standard is. As long as it's a standard that they say, you got to do it.

That still fits with my fundamental, my conception of life, my conception of myself.

But Christianity comes and says, Christianity is not hard, it is impossible.

You must be rescued from outside of yourself. The problem is within you, the cure is outside of you, not the opposite.

And that requires not a certain degree of sacrifice. That requires that I, at my deepest level, my self -identity,

I lay everything down and say, I am nothing and you are everything.

And that goes against us in such a way that makes Christianity impossible, apart from the work of God.

And I think that's actually Athanasius' point in a modern context where he said, the worship of idols is dying.

And we don't look around and say, oh, I see this guy. He used to have this idol in his house. Now he doesn't anymore. But historically, this was actually happening.

The temples are being emptied. Everybody's saying, these aren't gods. This is a statue.

What are we doing here? And he said, when Christ came, he's actually ending the worship of idols. But that still looks like something in our context as you just described of, instead of living for and worshiping myself,

I'm able to lay down this idol, the dearest idol, which is me, and then put aside the worship of idols and with the coming of Christ, I'm able to say,

I will worship and live for Christ instead of myself today. So a couple other things he says to the

Jews. One is, he said, if you're a Jew and you're saying, well, we have this

Old Testament, we have these prophecies, and Athanasius points out they've stopped because everything they were writing about has come.

And he says, yes, it's natural that these prophets should cease because when he who was signified came, what need was there any longer to signify him?

And when the truth had come, what further need was there of the shadow? On his account only they prophesied continually until such time as essential righteousness has come who has made the ransom of the sins of all.

So just beautiful saying, well, how do we read the Old Testament? What are we looking for? And Athanasius said, all of it, it's about Christ.

And it stops being written when all of it's being fulfilled when he who is righteousness comes and actually pays for our sins.

Yeah, quite an argument. No more Jewish king. No more Jewish throne. No more Jewish temple. No more

Jewish books added to the Old Testament. How do you explain that? For three centuries you haven't had

God speak to you, new prophetic words, and the answer is because the

Messiah came. Yeah, and to put the cherry on top of that, look at all these things that have stopped. He even quotes the book of Daniel and said,

Daniel said, these things will cease when the expectation of nations comes.

So he said, this is even prophesied in your scripture. All these things are going to be brought to an end and destroyed, and it's happened.

So your Messiah has come. So some great arguments. And then he brings this conclusion.

And he said, what more is there for the expected one?

I love that description. What's the Messiah? Well, the Messiah is the expected one. He said, what more is there to do when the expected one comes?

Call the heathen. They're called already. Put an end to prophet, king, vision.

This too has already happened. Expose the God -denyingness of idols. It's a great phrase.

It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death. It is already destroyed.

And here's his conclusion. What then has come to pass that Christ must do?

What has not come to pass? It's all done. Everything the Old Testament is writing about has been accomplished.

So why would you still reject this incarnate God is what he's driving home. And I would add to that what a delight it is for us as believers to go back through some of those and reemphasize and sort of strengthen our own conviction of how every jot and tittle of God's promises were brought to a resounding conclusion and fulfillment in Christ.

It really pumps you up, as Arnold would say. And he's just driving home, do you believe it?

Yes. You have the Scriptures. Do you believe it? Do you believe this one? Do you believe this? Because we're living in the reality of it.

That's right. So the last section of his book, he deals with objections of the

Gentiles, and he takes on the Greeks especially. And they have this question, why would

God, if he becomes incarnate, this is a strange thing anyway, why would he become man, first of all, and why would he have a body?

And he argues and says, well, the Greeks argue that creation itself is a body, and where is

God? And he quotes some of the Greek poets, just like Paul, in him we live and move and have our beings.

He said God fills this body of the universe with his presence, and what does he do with it?

He's revealing himself through this body called the universe. And so if you can do it in the whole universe, why can't he take a part of it and also dwell in that part and reveal himself through that?

And so he argues against the Greeks who were very concerned. Body, matter, stuff, this physical world, this is wrong.

And God can't take part of this. And he just argues, well, you say he fills all, why can't he fill a part?

The second question they had is, why didn't God take a nobler part of creation? Why did he just become a man?

And this is one of my favorite sections. He said, the Lord didn't come just to make a display. And Athanasius pointed out, he could come and just dazzle everyone, and we see this sometimes in the

Old Testament. This is fearful, the mountains are shaking, there's thunder, there's lightning, there's fire, there's smoke.

And Athanasius said, if God wanted to make a display, it would be quite simple. But why did he come?

To heal and to teach suffering men. So Athanasius said, well, the great mystery of the incarnation is quite simple in its explanation.

He does it to save us. So he deals with that objection. And there is something, there's an appeal,

I would say, to that Greek argument. We are saturated today with superhero movies, right?

You, you know, when you have a Superman, and this is the super Superman we're talking about, he doesn't come,

I mean, in his Clark Kent identity he does, but this is a meager carpenter in an obscure part of the country, and the

Old Testament describes, you know, he wasn't a magnificent figure physically to behold, right?

It's like, wait, wait, wait. You know, if this is the king of creation coming in bodily form, surely he's going to be a magnificent,

Saul -looking creature. But no, he's just this humble, unassuming, obscure figure.

And so there's a lot that, again, to the flesh, it's counterintuitive at a minimum, right?

This is your God? Yeah. This guy that died? Are you kidding me? Right. That kind of thing. Yeah, and he said, there's just one other phrase he said there, and Paul says he took the form of a servant, but Athanasius kind of paraphrased that and said, for him who came to heal and to teach, the way was not merely to dwell here, so God shows up in some superhuman way, but to put himself at the disposal of those who needed him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it.

But that phrase of, what does it mean that, why did Jesus become one of us? And he says, he put himself at our disposal.

Wow. That's a marvelous truth that he's teaching. Extraordinary.

The last objection that he's dealing with, with the Greeks, is why didn't

God just save us by teaching us his word? We have

Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, why didn't you just give us, you know, the improved version of Plato, or Aristotle Part Two with all the corrections brought in from God?

Why couldn't he have just saved us by speaking? And Athanasius dealt with this and said, well, it's because we've sinned.

There's no way, he said he's already given us, if we look up at the sun and moon, God's revealing himself.

If we look down at this world, he's revealing himself. If we look at each other, he's revealing himself. But he said, but we've turned away from God.

We're going towards nothingness. And for him to be able to save us, he took on man, and it said for him to recognize, for us to be able to recognize

God, he took a form that looked like us. And he said, we can start comparing our works with Jesus's, which

I've never done before. I don't walk on water. How did he heal this man by speaking?

How did he, and as you begin to go through the stories of Jesus Christ, he says we begin to see and recognize through a flesh that we recognize, there's

God in this man. And he came to save us from sin in a way that we couldn't do to save ourselves.

And he points out the author of the universe, he took a story from Plato, and Plato said, well, creation was going all wonky, and the author had to step in and kind of set things right.

And Athanasius said, well, God sees this whole world falling to pieces, and he steps in at the helm of creation as a man, and as a glorious steersman, he sets all creation aright through the incarnation.

So some beautiful pictures there. Well, Jamie, thanks for walking us through the key points of the book.

I think that if those who are listening have not read the book before, they might be surprised.

I was actually quite surprised. I told the guys before the podcast, but I'll go ahead and confess.

Yeah, I have to fess up. I had read a lot about the book through seminary or whatever.

The patristics, the early church fathers, were not my main area of reading. But I had read about this book and about this man, but I never actually stopped and read the book itself, which is always a danger.

And so in preparation for this, I was reading it, and I was quite shocked.

I thought it was going to be kind of a dry theological answer to Arius, that it was all going to be about the

Nicene Creed kind of thing. Really, it was something very different, and it was something...

You mentioned to me how thrilling the book was, and I thought, well, that's Jamie. His description of a thrilling may not be the same as mine.

But when I read it, I thought he was right. It was just so engaging.

And for the Christian, it really is thrilling because of the truths he brings in such simple ways.

As Steve mentioned, he just kind of marches them in front of your eyes. And worship and happiness seemed...

I would say that was my number one response to the book. Just so happy to see this God of mine is true.

And here is a very intellectual man, 1 ,700 years ago, risking his life to say things that I believe.

But in hearing him say them again, I am helped again. But that brings us to the very conclusion of the book, and there are just a few things that he hits.

So why don't you kind of walk us through that, and then we can talk about some other points.

The conclusion helps understand that whole... I'm not just writing this theological work to answer objections.

He's writing to a young man named Macarius, which means happy or blessed. And he said,

I've just offered you who love Christ a brief statement of the faith of Christ and the way that he shows his

Godhead to us. So this book wasn't written, I'm here to answer areas,

I'm here to solve every theological objection. He said, you're a new Christian, and I wanted to just show you the love of Christ in a simple way and deal with objections that are raised and questions that come up.

So it's very helpful to give the picture of what is he doing and why. And he says at the end of his book,

I've just given you a little introduction, now go read the scriptures for yourselves. He said, I'm writing this book,

I'm giving you my summary of the faith, but how about you go listen to God? So this is just kind of an introduction.

Hey, if you want a big picture of what's going on in Christianity, here you go, here's a handbook.

But now you go and spend your lifetime searching the scriptures and listening to that God speaking to you himself.

So he gives some advice there of saying, he has come, go to the scriptures, and he concludes by saying, the

God who came in the flesh will come again in the flesh to judge the living and the dead.

And he who is seated on the right hand of power, you will see, coming on the clouds of heaven in the glory of his

Father. And so he finishes his book by saying, get ready and watch. Christ is coming again.

The one who came is coming back. Live in that way. And his final little section just says, listen, if you really want to understand scriptures, you need to be walking with Christ.

And he gave the picture of, if you want to learn, what is it like to live in this king's kingdom? Go live there.

And he will teach you all kinds of things. But if you really want to grasp the truth that God gives about himself, it's a person.

You're not just studying a book or a theology or a doctrine or a philosophy. You're walking with a person.

And so follow him. And the more you obey him, the more you will understand because he will open up the wonders of his word to you.

Yeah, it reminds me of Psalm 111. After Psalm 110, that wonderful display of Christ, Psalm 111, verse 10 says that those who do his will, those are the ones that are given understanding.

I paraphrased it. So many good things we can say about the book. Let's ask this question.

What weaknesses do you feel there are with this book? I think one of the weaknesses is his main point of what

Jesus came to do is primarily to deliver us from death. And he doesn't deal as much with sin underneath it.

So he shows, look, we're all under this tyrant of death. And it's a beautiful picture that I don't often think about.

So he really gives a new window into, like I would almost recommend this book. If you are facing death, read this book, this account of the faith.

But it's not as clear in his statements about Jesus came to save us from sin and the wrath of God.

It's there. It's there at the beginning. But essentially his argument is Jesus comes to save us from death as the primary metaphor.

So I think sin might be one of the weaknesses of this work. I think that's a good point.

And you can't hit every point in every book, right? And there is that implicit connection.

Sin, death, you know, you can't get to death without the sin. And I wonder if just as a creature of his own day and time, the death kind of enemy wasn't a greater concern perhaps because it was still a new thing relatively speaking only 300 years after Christ, less than that really.

Whereas we have the luxury in the year 2022 as we record this to look back and go, well, you know, that death thing isn't quite as big for us now as maybe the sin thing.

But I think it is a fair criticism to say sin still remains and we have to deal with that as we go forward.

And we have other books we can look at for that perhaps. What would you say, John, as a serious criticism here?

Well, you know, I feel like criticizing... Criticizing a book you benefited from, you always feel like you're a bit of a cruel friend.

Like, what kind of friend are you? I just helped him greet. Yeah, so I would say the brevity of the book is a strength, but usually things that are strengths also can be weaknesses.

But the brevity of the book could be a weakness. It would be a weakness with a person who is antagonistic toward Christ's claims perhaps.

Like, you make these statements, but you don't take the time. You give your statement and your proof, but not on a level that would satisfy someone who is attacking every single statement and every single proof.

So if you're handing this to a person who's kind of a violently antagonistic person, they may say, well, he says this.

Where is it? But I say this. And so obviously he is writing to a young believer. And so he is really just, like you said, he's summing up Christ.

It is a wonderful apologetic. It's a wonderful defense of Christ for those whose hearts have already been supernaturally inclined to believe

Scripture. But if you hate Scripture, if you mock the Bible as a book that God gave and the only book that God gave, then

Athanasius' book will not really be for you in that sense. Of course,

I still think there's great benefit in a person who's atheistic or antagonistic to Christ's claims to reading it.

I think that his arguments are solid. But if you expect him to have the completeness of argument that you might expect on a modern level of academia, then you're going to be disappointed.

He's not writing for you. I think another thing is, as Jamie mentioned, he deals with the great objective realities.

Death has been put to death. And he even mentions sin has been dealt with. But the subjective realities of the

Christian life, he doesn't really explain how those are also accomplished through Christ. So, you know, at the end of the book, he does talk a lot about your approach to these truths affect how you're going to see them.

So he talks about a man who wants to get a clear sight like of a sunset. Before he looks at the sun, he wipes his eyes and then he looks.

So he kind of compares that to getting yourself spiritually ready. You need to be in the right spiritual frame of mind to understand things that God says.

That affects how you're going to approach them, what you're going to take away from them. And that's true.

But he doesn't stop and explain things like regeneration. Well, how does the blindness of man, when presented with the facts, which he's been presented with before, and he's cared nothing for them, how does that alter suddenly?

How do these facts suddenly matter to him? How does he go from closing his eyes to the facts about God and his son to opening his eyes and risking his life on it?

And those aspects of what God does within, so not the objective things out here, but the subjectivity, the interiority of the changes that occur, which are also essential, are just not dealt with.

So it's not a strong criticism because he doesn't say, I'm going to talk to you about the

Christian life. And I think the brevity, again, the brevity is a real strength.

He takes you right to these things. There's no clutter. There's no clutter on the person of Jesus. I don't read this and think, oh,

I don't even know who he's really talking about, or I don't know what his main points were. I mean, they're clear as day.

The chapters are so clear. I'm going to talk to you about why he had to die now. So like the

Puritans would be the opposite. The Puritan says, I'm going to talk about regeneration.

And then it's a 900 -page book. He leaves nothing undealt with.

So he's answered every question that could be asked. But you don't necessarily walk away with a crystal -clear grasp of what you just looked at.

And I think that really, if we can swing into the strengths of the book, one of the strengths of the book is for a person living in the

Western world in particular where evangelicalism has, or a type of Christianity, one school of Christianity, has held sway for centuries.

But in those centuries, layers of kind of shellac have been added to the Christ of Scripture. So that the

Jesus that I naturally envision is a Jesus that looks a lot like John, without John's fault.

Or maybe it's a Jesus that looks like a Republican. Or he's an American. I mean,

I don't really, I hope I don't let those things stay there. But there's a drift in our hearts that has to be constantly combated with Scripture.

But when I read Athanasius, I read a Jesus that was being described by a man who was only less than three centuries, two centuries probably from the

Apostle John. And it's like there's no extra layers.

It's just the Christ and the basic facts of Christ. But not in a simplistic manner.

I mean, a very deep, as Louis mentioned, the simplicity of the book shows the depth of his mind.

He understands these things. That's why he can explain them in a way that a kid could get them. So I found that to be thrilling.

Yeah, and his heart is just full of Scripture. Like if you start looking, oh, that's

Hebrews 2. Oh, he's pulling from Psalm 22. Oh, now he's in Isaiah 53. Oh, now he's over here and he's using

Paul. He's just constantly, when he's talking about Christ, even phrases will come from a passage that he doesn't even cite.

But he's just full of Scripture. And he's plowed the Old Testament and the New Testament and said, who is this divine

Savior who's come to rescue me? I'm often embarrassed reading these old guys who don't have, you know, at the press of a button, a commentary or, you know,

I can pull up any Scripture and do a word search. They've got it right there. And they're just weaving it into everything they do in such a wonderful fashion.

Really a grasp of the big picture of things and to be able to go to the particular passage and pull it right in there.

So, yeah, and also that clarity that you mentioned, John. I find the simplicity, the clarity, the brevity.

He has such a gift at expressing precisely what he means in a beautiful way that that little 90 -page whatever you end up with book is just a treasure,

I would suggest. Yeah, I come away just full of hope. I think the strength of this book is why should

I fear death? Look at what Christ has done. The risen Savior still rules. I don't just have a historical doctrine.

Jesus was raised from the dead. But you look at him and you say, Jesus lives and he's still acting and he's still saving across the world and he's still conquering death.

And that's my hope. You bring yourself into this bigger picture. The story is here's who

Christ is and the invitation is you can be filled with hope by just putting yourself as a tiny little part in this bigger picture.

Well, two final questions. First, what are some good places where they can get this book?

It's obviously been translated from Greek. So are there some translations that are considered better? Are there some editions that are better?

Where can people find this book? And then second, who would you give this to in the new year if you think this would be a nice gift to say to somebody, hey, new year, you know, kind of fresh start.

Have you ever considered reading a classic from 17 centuries ago? But one that you can understand?

Well, here it is. So where would you look for this book, Jamie? Yeah, I would certainly look for where is

C .S. Lewis' introduction? And any reprint of this, especially a paperback, it will have

C .S. Lewis' introduction. But that's essentially become part of the book at this point. And I would look for the most recent translation.

So this is one that was translated in the 50s and 60s, and it's very helpful and very clear, but even it's a little bit obscure.

There's a more recent one. So look for the most recent translation of the book. It'll be very clear. And I would give it to the same as it was written to, a new believer and someone saying,

I don't fully understand. So I am hoping in Christ, who is he?

What has he done? Here's a very quick, exciting read on it. And the second person I would look for is actually, if you've been diagnosed, if you know

I'm facing death myself, I'm walking through the valley of the shadow of death,

I know my time is limited, and I'm thinking about death. Well, this is essentially a treatise of what has

Christ done to destroy that last enemy of death. And it is filled with hope of the life of Christ and the resurrection.

Yeah, I would add, I like that, obviously the new believer, because that is kind of what he was doing there. But I would also argue for older believers who may have kind of drifted sometimes, we're reminded by lots of folks how central the cross is to the faith, and it ought to be in every day.

Well, sometimes it's easy to say that and hard to remember why is that. I find this book really helpful in that way, too, bringing back into focus how beautiful and essential the cross is to the

Christian faith, and that death of death in the death of Christ, as later writers put it, is to our faith.

It's a wonderful read, maybe for anybody, but I'd say in particular those that kind of forget how important the cross is.

Yeah, because he shows also Christ is God, and that crashes into every part of what he's done.

And that is our hope, is that God himself became man. And just the deity of Christ, not in the abstract way, but saying

Jesus became a man, which means he's a temple. And it's a temple of capital -L

Life itself. So we see life coming. We see power. We see goodness. We see hope. We see deliverance from sin.

So he just packs everything and says, every time you think of Christ, think of him as God himself,

God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, coming to save you and becoming one of you, to be put at your disposal, as he said.

Yeah, I agree with the groups you just mentioned. I think one other group, well, when he gives the refutations to the

Jews, so Jews doubt, and he basically points out, your doubting is a moral problem.

There's plenty of evidence. You of all people should have been prepared for this. So it is not an intellectual issue with you.

It's not that there needs to be just a little more evidence, and then we'll consider what you say. It is that your heart is opposed to these things, and therefore you are willfully closing your eyes.

Well, you know, in Mississippi, we're not surrounded by Jews who reject Christ. We don't have a large

Jewish community where I live. So I think that one application for that could be the nominal

Christian, who, because of our religious culture, is officially a part of some church somewhere in town, and they will show up on Christmas, in the

Christmas period with family. Maybe it's just to keep grandparents happy or parents happy.

You show up once at church, and I think, you know, this kind of book, if they would be willing to read it, because of its size being brief, it calls upon them to do something more than tip their hat to this

Jesus. You have the Scriptures. You heard the Scriptures growing up, maybe. You heard some of the

Scriptures. You have a Bible in your house, and yet, like the ancient Jew, you are unmoved by the facts.

It is because the heart. So read this book. Be reintroduced to the

Christ of the Bible, and let those kind of piercing criticisms of Jewish unbelief, let those fall on you as a person who says they believe, but in reality, you have been indifferent to every description of Christ that you've heard.

Nothing's changed you. I also think of young people headed off to university in a church setting, or maybe your own young people headed to university.

So let's say those that would say, no, we are believers, and so we're not trying to figure out, is that legitimate?

Is there any evidence to that? But okay, so you say you're believers, and you're about to go to university, and you will find people who will mock the claims of Christ, and they may do it in a more brainy way than your friends at school did.

Your friends at school just said, you don't get to have any fun if you're a Christian, so don't be a Christian. But the professor, he's

Dr. So -and -so, and my mom and dad aren't Dr. So -and -so, and so when he says that Scripture can't be trusted, or Jesus isn't who he says he was, or this was made up later, what are my answers to that?

And I think that reading Athanasius, who was a man whose life was at risk to tell the truth about this person, who he knew by faith through the

Word of God, like we do, how does he explain that to a young person?

How does he say that in a way that carries great weight? And so I think, before you head to college, reading through this and thinking, that's an astonishing display of the veracity of Jesus Christ in such clear ways, in such really undeniable arguments, that I'm glad I read that.

Before I go to a place where there is the appearance of intellectualism and greater understanding, but I've read the original sources.

And again, with C .S. Lewis's plea for that, that is so much more helpful in the long run than reading the cliff notes, and saying,

I read somebody who said Jesus was this, or my preacher said, so what Tozer called knowledge by hearsay, well, my preacher says this is true.

Go back to the early writings after Scripture and see the benefit of their directness, especially with Athanasius, just so much helpful.

Yeah, and he cuts through the fog that would come at a university. Well, we're smart, and now we understand different manuscripts have some different, essentially it's different spellings.

But we know all these things, and now we can't trust the Bible or any of the stories about Jesus. And Athanasius says, are you afraid to die?

And what about this Christ who in, we now have a lot longer of history than Athanasius did.

I mean, so many Christians that have died for the faith, and he says, Jesus conquered death, and he destroys the fear of death.

So he cuts through all the kind of silly questions that we'll ask and says, here's the question that we all have to ask.

What about death, and what has Christ done, and is it real enough for me to face death itself, and Christ is my hope with the greatest problem that I have.

So thanks for joining us. We hope you can pick up your own copy of this in the new year. It'd be a great thing just to set aside a few evenings in a week to walk through and to be reintroduced to the

Christ of Scripture. You can find it, as Jamie said, with C .S. Lewis' introduction. That's a real help. Also, it's a book that's on Google Books, and you can get it online and read it there for free.

Anything else, guys, before we... No, I don't think so. Don't get an old translation. They're not nearly as interesting.

It sounds like Latin that's been called English, but it's still

Latin. Read the modern ones. There you go. We hope you found that beneficial.

We certainly found it helpful for our own souls in preparing. If you want a copy of the book, and Jamie mentioned getting a modern translation and one that has

C .S. Lewis' introduction, you can find a link to one of those in the description in the notes below.