Part 2 — The Divine Dilemma, and the Coming of the Word
God could neither let His own work be destroyed nor let His word about death prove false, so the Word took a body able to die and spent the law's whole claim in it.
Before you listen
Part two is the dilemma, and it is built as a real one. Two things both have to hold: God is good, so He cannot watch what He made be destroyed; and God had said that transgression would be met with death, so He cannot quietly drop it. Listen for how each candidate answer is raised and then found wanting before the last one is reached.
Listen for The questions. Athanasius asks what God was to do more than once, and each asking narrows what an answer would have to satisfy — until only one kind of answer is left standing.
Open the reading · 13:27The text in hand
The passage, in full
But just as this had to be, so from the other side there stands against it the just claim of God: that God should be shown true in the law He had laid down concerning death. For it would be absurd that God, the Father of truth, should appear a liar for the sake of our profit and our continuance. What then had to happen? What was God to do? Was He to demand of men repentance for the transgression? One might call this worthy of God, saying that as by the transgression they came into corruption, so by repentance they might come again into incorruption. But repentance did not guard the just claim of God. He would still remain not true, if men were not held fast in death. Nor does repentance call men back from what belongs to their nature. It only puts a stop to their sins.
The passage, in full
For the Word saw that the corruption of men could be undone in no other way, except by death, and by dying for all. Yet the Word could not die, being immortal, and the Son of the Father. For this reason He takes to Himself a body that was able to die. He took it so that this body, sharing in the Word who is over all, might be sufficient for death in the place of all; that it might remain incorruptible, because of the Word who dwelt within it; and that from then on corruption might cease from all men by the grace of the Resurrection. And so, offering to death the body He had taken for Himself, as a victim and a sacrifice free from every stain, He at once made death vanish from all who share His nature, by the offering of what was equal to them all.
A line to keep
For it would have been better never to have been made, than, once made, to be neglected and destroyed.
A line to keep
It is as when a great king enters some great city, and takes up his dwelling in one of its houses.
What this part is doing
Two claims that both have to hold
The goodness of God rules out letting the work perish; the truthfulness of God rules out setting the sentence aside. Athanasius states both sides as pressing equally, and the whole part is the search for something that satisfies them together rather than trading one away.
Why repentance is not the answer
This is the passage most people are surprised by. Repentance is not dismissed; it is measured against the problem and found too small for it, on two counts — it would still leave God shown untrue, and it stops sins without touching what has happened to our nature.
A body taken in order to be given
The Word takes a body not to appear in but to hand over. Athanasius is explicit that appearing alone could have been done some greater way; the body is taken because it is capable of death, and it is offered in the place of all so that the law's claim is spent in it.
Words it keeps using
Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or counted. They exist so you can notice what did not land.
Why is repentance not enough?
Two reasons, both in section 7. It does not guard God's just claim, since men would not be held in death and God would still not be shown true; and it does not call men back from what belongs to their nature — it only puts a stop to their sins.
What are the two things that both had to hold?
That God's goodness not permit His own work to be destroyed before its Maker's eyes (section 6), and that God be shown true in the law He had laid down concerning death (section 7).
Why take a body at all, rather than simply appear?
Because the corruption could be undone in no other way than by death, and the Word Himself could not die. So He takes a body able to die, gives it over to death in the place of all, and the law's power is spent in it (sections 8 and 9).
Terms
the just claim
God's own stake in the sentence He pronounced — that He be shown true in the law He laid down concerning death. Any proposed remedy has to guard it, which is where repentance fails.
repentance
Turning from sin. Athanasius grants it would have sufficed had there been only a fault and no corruption following; as it is, it stops the sinning without recalling men from what has become of their nature.
ransom
What is paid to discharge a debt. The Word offers His own body — His temple, the bodily instrument — as a ransom for all, and so pays in His death what was owed.
the Resurrection
The rising of the body the Word had made His own, by whose grace corruption ceases from those who share His nature, and in whose promise incorruption is held out to all.