Athanasius and the Humanity of Christ

RPC Hanson, among others, argued that Athanasius’ Christology minimizes the humanity of Jesus: “We must conclude that whatever else the Logos incarnte is in Athanasius’ account of him, he is not a human being.”

Not so, argues Khaled Anatolios in his 1998 study of the theology of Athanasius. In appropriating the human nature, the Logos took to himself all that was proper to a human nature, including features and attributes that were not proper to the Word as eternal divine Word. Yet, even while the Word did not cease to be Word by taking human nature, all that was proper to the human nature became proper to the Word-made-flesh, since the human nature was properly His human nature.

As Athanasius put it, “For if the works of the Word’s Godhead had not taken place through the ody, humanity would not have been deified. And again, if the properties of the flesh had not been attributed to the Word, humanity would not have been thoroughly delivered from them . . . . But now that the Word has become human and has appropriated what pertains to the flesh, these things no longer touch the body, because of the Word who has come in it, but they are destroyed by him . . . Similarly, he has transferred to himself the other affects of the body also . . . so that we, no longer being merely human, but as proper to the Word, may participate in eternal life . . . the flesh being no longer earthly, but being henceforth made Word through God’s Word who for our sake ‘became flesh.’”

Again, “when the flesh suffered, the Word was not external to it, and therefore the suffering is said to be his. And when he divinely accomplished his Father’s works, the flesh was not external to him, but the Lord did them in the body itself . . . . And it was fitting that the Lord, in putting on human flesh, put it on entirely with the passibilities proper to it; so that, as we say that the body was proper to him, so also we may say that the passabilities of the body were proper to him alone, though they did not touch him according to the Godhead. If then the body had been another’s, the passibility of the body would have been attributed to that other, but if the flesh is the Word’s (for ‘the Word became flesh’), necessarly then the passibilities also of the flesh are attributed to him whose flesh it is. For this reason, it is consistent and fitting that such passibilities are ascribed not to another, but to the Lord; so that the grace also may be from him.”

Athanasius frequently put things paradoxically, but the paradox was not intended to make the flesh and its “passibilities” external to the Word. Rather, Athanasius was protecting the confession that the Son remained Son, eternal God, even in the incarnation. Thus, when he says “it was He himself who suffered and did not suffer,” he should not, Anatolios argues, be understood in Nestorian fashion to say that the man Jesus suffered but that suffering remained external to the Logos; rather, He himself suffered and did not suffer; the Incarnate Logos was the subject of both the suffering and the impassible not-suffering(AUTOS EN HO PASCHON KAI ME PASCHON).