Classroom · Orientation · lesson 2 of 5
What kind of book this is
The second half of a pair, and an argument rather than a devotional.
On the Incarnation does not begin at the beginning. It opens by summarising something already written — an earlier work, Against the Heathen, which cleared the ground by taking apart the worship of idols and arguing for the divinity of the Word. This book builds on that cleared ground.
So the two are one project in two movements: the first says what is wrong with the alternatives, the second says what Christians actually claim and why it is not absurd. You can read the second without the first, and the opening passage is written so that you can — it tells you what you missed.
It is also, plainly, an argument. Athanasius names his opponents in the first minute of the recording: the Jews slander the claim, the Greeks mock it. He expects to be disbelieved, and he writes for a reader who is not yet persuaded. Nothing in it is addressed to the already-convinced.
From the book itself
The passage, in full
In what came before, we treated sufficiently, choosing a few points from many, the error of the nations concerning idols: their superstition, and how idolatry was first invented, how out of wickedness men devised for themselves the worship of idols. And by the grace of God we said something also of the divinity of the Word of the Father: of His providence and power over all things; that the good Father orders all things through Him; that all things are moved by Him, and in Him are given life.
A line to keep
The Jews slander it, the Greeks mock it, but we worship it.