Speaker 1 0:00

By the grace of God, we are looking at the great contribution of St Athanasius the Great. We've been reading some of his work on the incarnation of the Divine Word and we want to say a little bit more about him as we go along. But I think it might be a good idea to continue reading a little bit and then say a few things about his defense of the Orthodox faith, especially against the heresy of the early Arians. So let's turn back to St Athanasius' work on the incarnation of the divine word. We left off at the end of paragraph 7, where he explains why it was fitting that the Logos himself should be the one to redeem us, to save us. He was the one who created us in the beginning, and so it seems only proper that he would be the one to recreate us. He would be the one, as the son and word of the father, to suffer for us, and he would be the one who naturally, would be the mediator, the ambassador, as this text translates it for all before God, the Father. So his part it was, he says, and his alone, uniquely. In other words, both to bring again the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain for the Father his consistency of character with all, For he alone being word of the Father and above all, was, in consequence, both able to recreate all and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be an ambassador for all with the Father. And so we read on in paragraph 8, for this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. Notice that he's incorporeal, he's incorruptible. Remember, I said that there were two kinds of corruption. There's the corruption that exists in creatures naturally by virtue of the fact that they were brought into existence out of nothing. By virtue of the fact that they were brought into existence out of nothing, because what does corruption mean? In a word, when you say corruption, it's helpful to think change. Corruption means change. What is God? Unchangeable, eternally the same. He's changeless. And now make a special note of this. There is that corruption, that change, which is in us because of the fact that we were brought into existence out of nothing. What is the biggest change? That we were nothing and we came into existence. This is the biggest change. This is characteristic of creatures, however, not of God. God is changeless, as we said, eternally the same, and so he is incorruptible. When we sing to the mother of God, he is incorruptible. When we sing to the Mother of God who, without corruption, gave birth to God the Word, what are we saying? What does that mean? Without corruption, she didn't change. What was she before she gave birth? She was a virgin. And after she gave birth she was a virgin. And after she gave birth again she was a virgin. No change. This is very, very important.

Speaker 1 4:35

And the third term that he uses here is, in Corporeal, incorporeal, asomatos, asomatos, aftartos, ailos, incor man, he as God, the word, he doesn't change, he changes without changing. He doesn't change in his divine nature, it doesn't add to his divinity, it doesn't take away from his divinity. He remains changeless. So he changes without changing. Because what is, what is the change? The change is that the Son and Word of God truly becomes man, makes our human nature his own, and so the human nature of Christ is the human nature of God, god, the Word, who truly became man. And he did not become man in appearance only, he did not become man for a time only. He became man forever, but without changing, as God, the Son, the Word of God, the wisdom of God, the power of God, and so on. So these words, you can take each one of them and you can give a sermon. Each one of these words is so rich.

Speaker 1 6:50

And let's go to the immaterial next, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial word of God O asomatos ke aftartos ke ailos tu Theou logos. He who is without body, ailos Theou logos. This means what Ili means matter, material, he's immaterial, he's bodiless. Incorporeal, he's without change, incorruptible, he is without matter, as God. God is, what does Christ say? God is a spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. The logos, logos, the, the word of God, logos of God.

Speaker 1 8:18

But you don't have to use the definite article. Is what? These three things? The definite article is what these three things? Asomatos aftartos ailos. Because God is a spirit. So he says in one sense. Indeed, he was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without him.

Speaker 1 8:50

God, the Word, the one through whom all things were made, was always with us. He never left us, he never left his creation, while ever abiding in union with the Father. So he's in creation, even though he is never out of union. There's no distance between him and the Father. He's always with the Father, and yet he is always with the Father, and yet he is always in creation, yet fills all things that are. So nothing is, nothing is empty, nothing is void. We said before we are sitting in this room, even this table, even this chair, everything that we perceive God is here. God is in everything. God is not everything, but he is in his creation. He is in all of his creation.

Speaker 1 10:09

So St Athanasius is making the point here that the Son and Word of God is always in his creation. He is always with us. But he wants to go on to say what is special about his incarnation. Because his incarnation is a different kind of presence in the world. God is present in the world, but with the incarnation his presence became special. Let's see how Saint Athanasius describes this. But now he entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in his love and self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like himself, expressed the father's and the destruction of the people and the threat of the attack and the destruction of the people, and the destruction of the people and the destruction of the people and the destruction of the people.

Speaker 1 11:44

Πρώτου, πληρωθήνε τόν νόμον. Λυθύνε ορών δε και το απρεπές εν τό συμβεβικότη ότι ον αυτός είν δημιουργός ταύτα παρηφανίζεται. Ορών δε και τίν των ανθρώπων υπερβάλλουσαν κακίαν.

Speaker 1 12:06

The Apostles of the Book of Revelation and death, your birth and your illness and your harm and your death do not hold on to the birth of the absolute and eternal, the Father, the one who is, because basically it's one sentence here. For the sake of clarity, our translator has broken it up into several sentences, because it's a very long sentence. But let's look at this, let's look at it carefully and, with the help of the Greek original, we'll see if we can understand it a little better. He saw the reasonable race of men, the race of men that, like himself, expressed the Father's mind wasting out of existence. This reminds us of the fact that we were created in his image to be joint heirs with Christ, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. And so the race of men expresses the mind of the Father, because this is the purpose that God had when he created us to make us like his Son, to make us like his Son by adoption. We keep saying this because only the Son and Word of God is the Son of the Father by nature and word of God is the son of the father. By nature we become sons and children of the father also, but by grace, by adoption. It's a gift, it's a pure gift from God. It's an amazing purpose that Christ reveals to us why we were brought into existence out of nothing. And so when he beheld us wasting out of existence and death reigning over all in corruption, he saw that corruption held us all the closer because it was the penalty for the transgression.

Speaker 1 15:13

So remember we said that perfection is a dynamic state. There is continuous growth in God because the perfection of God, the perfection of Christ, is unending. But there is a stability in God. When we are perfectly and wholly given over to the will of God and there is no more self-love in us, only love of God, then we belong to Him entirely, and that it is a state of constant, continuous abiding in union with God. We are in God and God is in us, and then there is no more fear of falling. Remember, adam and Eve did not reach this stage, which is why they could fall. They fell because they were not created perfect. They were created in the image of God in order to to the perfection, and that growth was interrupted when they disobeyed because of the transgression. So he saw that corruption held us all the closer because it was the penalty for the transgression.

Speaker 1 17:07

Corruption, we said, which is change, is characteristic. This is one of those paradoxes. There is the change, there's the dynamic character of perfection in Christ, and then there is that change which we suffer because of separation from the source of life. Instead of moving towards ever-increasing likeness of God, our movement is away from him, and that movement away from him is demonic. It's what the fallen angels experience Moving away from life. They are changing. Instead of ever-incre increasing in the perfection of God, they are ever diminishing. As beings, we descend below, worse than the level of the animals. We move towards the evil of the enemy.

Speaker 1 18:29

He also saw. It says how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealedly. It was that the very things of which he himself was the artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them. He saw also the universal liability to death.

Speaker 1 18:56

Yes, because at the root of all of this is the fear of death, because we die. Death is what Death is the result of separation from God, who is life. Death is the result of separation from God, who is life. And because we die, because we're separated from God, which is a sin we die. And because we die, we sin, we sin more. If there were no fear of death, we wouldn't sin of death, we wouldn't sin. Because we exist now.

Speaker 1 19:46

With the fear of death, we seek to preserve ourselves. We are afraid in case we die or our loved ones die. And because we are afraid, our love is not a selfless love, it's a selfish love. In other words, our love is turned towards ourselves and self-preservation. We love ourselves. It is a self-preservation. We love ourselves. It is a self-centered love. And we know, the more we love God, the less we love ourselves.

Speaker 1 20:27

And when we look at the martyrs who followed the way of Christ, the way of the cross, we see in them that their love for Christ was greater than their fear of the death that was threatening them. This is Christian love self-sacrificial, selfless love, preferring the other, loving even our enemies, so that there are no enemies for us. God loves everyone and he does not regard them as enemies because he loves them. And the saints who follow the way of Christ are the same. They love their enemies because who is my neighbor? Everyone, no exceptions. So this is the cross, when we crucify our love for ourselves and follow the way of Christ, which is love for God and for everyone. So there is no fear of death, there is remembrance of death. But all this he saw and, pitying our race, having mercy on our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that his creatures should perish and the work of his father for us men, come to naught, come to nothing. He took to himself a body, a human body, even as our own body, a human body even as our own. Nor did he will merely to become embodied or merely to appear. Had that been so, he could have revealed his divine majesty in some other and better way. He could have revealed his divine majesty in some other and better way.

Speaker 1 22:57

St Gregory Palamas, in his 16th homily on Holy Saturday, he says because God is free, god could save us any way he wanted. God is God. Some people say no, he had to save us this way, any way he wanted. God is God. Some people say no, he had to save us this way. Yes and no. Yes and no. No, because God is free and he could save us any way he wanted. But we would agree.

Speaker 1 23:33

As St Gregory Palamas says and you see, he's taking from St Athanasius as well this way, the way that God saved us was the best way. Why was it the? The way that revealed most perfectly God's humility and his self-sacrificial love for us, which is unto the end, even unto death, the death of the cross, even unto death, the death of the cross. So, of course, god saved us the best way, but God is free. We can't say that God had to do this. God, you must do that. No, god is free. So he could have revealed his divine majesty in some other and better way.

Speaker 1 24:38

No, adds St Athanasius, he took our body, and not only so, but he took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of a human father, a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. So there we see that he is incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. No seed without seed. Mother of God, gave birth to God. The Word. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of All the Miurgos, himself prepared this body in the Virgin as a temple for himself and took it for his very own, as the instrument through which he was known and in which he dwelt, thus taking a body like our own, thus taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death. He surrendered his body to death instead of all and offered it to the Father. So he took a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death. So the body of Christ, was it corruptible? He surrendered his body to death. He died for all of us and offered it to the Father. This he did out of sheer love for us, so that in his death, all might die and the law of death thereby be abolished. Because, having fulfilled his body, that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This he did, that he might turn again to incorruption, men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death, by the appropriation of his body and by the grace of his resurrection. Thus he would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

Speaker 1 27:27

Every sentence of Athanasius is so rich, full of meaning. So the body that the human nature that Christ received from the Virgin Mary, the most holy mother of God, was it fallen or was it sinless? Was it corruptible or was it incorruptible? Was it fallen or was it sinless? We have to go back to the Mother of God because he received his body from the Virgin, the Holy Virgin, as St Athanasius says, because he wanted to take our body. So he doesn't create us a new body somewhere, he takes it from us, he takes it from the Most Holy Mother of God. When he is conceived, it is of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary. And he became man, the Most Holy Mother of God. Was she sinless? Did she have the consequences of the fall in her? She was a normal human being. She was descendant of Abraham. She was descendant of Abraham, isaac, jacob, everyone since Adam was subject to the consequences of the fall. What does that mean? What were the consequences of the fall?

Speaker 1 29:23

When we say original sin, or when we say, more correctly, the ancestral sin, in other words, the sin of our forefathers, which we, the successive generations, we also commit the same sin, the sin of our forefathers, adam and Eve. Here there is a huge, huge difference between the Orthodox and the Western Christians. The Western Christians regard the sin that everyone sinned in Adam Before they were born. Everyone is actually guilty of sinning because Adam fell and Adam contained in his loins the whole human race. This is not the understanding of the Orthodox Church.

Speaker 1 30:35

The Fathers teach us that the sin of Adam and Eve is their sin. The consequence of their sin is not that we are each one of us, all those of subsequent generations equally sinful and guilty of sinning and guilty of sinning. The consequence of their sin is that each one of us, after their sin, because we are from them, each one of us has the inclination towards evil. In other words, it became easier for the descendants of Adam and Eve to sin and because of that we sin and we repeat the sin of Adam and Eve in each one of us. But we are responsible. Each of us is responsible for sinning. Adam and Eve are responsible for passing down to us that inclination towards evil, that inclination towards sin. Remember, we said before that Adam and Eve were created in a state in which it was very difficult to sin. It was not impossible because they were not yet perfect, but it was very, very difficult to sin.

Speaker 1 32:17

I want to draw your attention to the spiritual life so that you can understand this point a little better. You know, the canons of the church show us that when somebody sins because of lack of experience, it's relatively, relatively easier to reconcile that person again with God. But when someone who is much more experienced sins, the penance is greater because the wound is greater, so the therapy that is needed is greater. Greater so the therapy that is needed is greater. So when someone who is experienced falls, it's more serious and it's harder to reconcile that person. If that person is a priest or a bishop or someone who is in a position of spiritual leadership, it's harder. And you see the shape of the spiritual life there. You see why, when we are in the grace of God and we reject the grace of God and we prefer to sin the grace of God and we prefer to sin, we prefer to follow our own way, it's a much more serious consequence.

Speaker 1 33:53

So Adam fell. It was very difficult for him to fall, but after he fell and the grace of God left him, it was easier to sin. And we see it immediately with Cain and Abel that very, very soon the sin of fratricide, killing one's brother, you see, you see all the terrible sin entered in very easily, very quickly, into the race of men. And by the time of Noah already the human race was so bad. So it was easier for men to sin and they sinned. The amazing thing is, with the patriarchs and the prophets, the righteous of the old testament, we see that there were great people who resisted the inclination towards evil and they received God's help and they were able to teach the people and guide them and give them a word of God.

Speaker 1 35:16

But the greatest of all, the greatest of all, is the mother of God who, from the tender age of three, entered into the Holy of Holies, and she never activated the potential to sin. She inherited our fallen nature, the fallen nature of Adam and Eve. She was a normal human being. In that regard, what was exceptional about her was because of the way she was born, because of the way she lived from the very first moment that she was conceived and born. The saints say because her birth was the result of obedience to God, because Joachim and Anna were already so advanced in age that there was no physical attraction, but only obedience to the will of God, but only obedience to the will of God that he would give them a child and that that child would be his servant, his handmaid. And so, as St Gregory Palamas explains, when the old sources talk about her as entering the Holy of Holies, the first meaning is that she attained to perfection at an incredibly early age and never actually sinned, even though, as St Basil says, st John Chrysostom and others say, even though there are signs of imperfection in her.

Speaker 1 37:10

There are signs of imperfection in the sense of ignorance. For example, she didn't know where Christ was when he was 12 years old and they took him to Jerusalem and they lost him for three days. They were looking for him. She didn't know. Well, that's a sign of ignorance, but it's not a sin. It's not a sin. One of the natural, blameless consequences of the fall is that we don't know. If we were united with God, god would illumine our minds and we would have the wisdom to know everything that we need to know. But we don't. We lost the wisdom, we lost grace, we became ignorant. That's the consequence of the fall. But you're not a sinner because you don't know. You don't know because you are a descendant of Adam and Eve who fell. But you see, in the lives of the saints we have holy men and women. They know things about your life that you've forgotten. Men and women. They know things about your life that you've forgotten.

Speaker 1 38:28

There was a man he's a bishop now who went to see Saint Iagovos. He died in 1991. He went to see him. He said, father, I would like to go to confession, please. So he went and he said to him what's your name? He said my name is homer. He said I don't see homer. I don't see the name homer. He said my name is homer. He said really, are you sure? And he said, father, I'm coming to you in confession, I'm not going to lie to you. Are you sure your name is not Mirianthi, something like that. And he said no. And then he stopped and he thought oh, my goodness me.

Speaker 1 39:15

He remembered the story that his parents told him that before he was born, his grandmother was hoping for a girl because they had boys, boys, boys, boys. And she wanted a girl to name her after someone in the family. And this was the name. This was the name that she wanted to give to the child. And when the child was born and they saw that it was a boy child, they had to change the name. They said well, what are you going to call the child? Well, mirianthi, omeros sounds a bit the same. Let's give him Omer, let's make him Omer. Then Father Iakovos said this is the name in front of me. But he said don't worry anyway. He says you're going to change your name again. And he said what do you mean? He said well, you're going to become a monk and you won't be a monk for long. You'll become a bishop. Your name will be Neofitos.

Speaker 1 40:20

The neophytos, the saints. They see as God sees through the eyes of God. They see us through the eyes of God. God allows them to know what he knows about the person, about the person's history, about the person's future. God knows everything right and we with God. Man is great. Without God, man is nothing. This is the amazing thing. So we were created to be with God and in God and for him to be in us, and we see how much God loves us. Click on the support the show button in the description box and become a supporter of the Mount Tabor Academy podcasts, which aim to introduce the theology and spiritual life of the Orthodox Church to the wider community.