Athanasius (296-373), a theologian, writer, and bishop of the church at Alexandria (in North Africa), is considered one of the leading “church fathers.”  And so vigorous and astute was he as a defender of the Christian faith that he was described as “Athanasius Contra Mundum” (Athanasius against the world)!  

In one of his best-known works, On the Incarnation, he depicts the divine Son, the Word of God, on mission to the human sphere to rescue those made in God’s image from the ruin they had brought on themselves through sin. 

“This great work was, indeed, supremely worthy of the goodness of God.  A king who has founded a city, so far from neglecting it when through the carelessness of the inhabitants it is attacked by robbers, avenges it and saves it from destruction, having regard rather to his own honor than to the people’s neglect.  Much more, then, the Word of the All-good Father was not unmindful of the human race that He had called to be; but rather, by the offering of His own body, He abolished the death which they had incurred, and corrected their neglect by His own teaching” (p. 53). 

Athanasius ponders:  “Of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? … Why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know him?” (p. 57).  But God was determined to restore humans who had fallen into sin.  

“What, then, was God to do?  What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His Image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him?  And how could this be done, save by the coming of the very Image Himself, our Savior Jesus Christ?  Men could not have done it, for they are only made after the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God.  The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image” (p. 62).