A few years ago, my colleague Dr. Glenn Sunshine wrote an introduction to one of the greatest works of Christian antiquity, Athanasius’ On the Incarnation of the Word. Athanasius (born in Alexandria in the 290s) is best known for defending the divinity of Christ against the heresy of Arius, who taught that Jesus was not equal with God the Father but a lesser, created being. Arianism had gained significant ground in the Church, but Athanasius fought to preserve the biblical view that Jesus is “in very nature God.” In the process, he became known as Athanasius Contra Mundum: “Athanasius Against the World.”
In his introduction, Dr. Sunshine describes Athanasius’ teaching:
[T]he Image of God made it possible for us to know the Word of God; with sin, the Image was defaced, and we lost the knowledge of God. But since the Word is the…
