# “Smitten with awe” by Athanasius of Alexandria (A.D. 293-373)

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2024/05/11/smitten-with-awe-by-athanasius-of-alexandria-a-d-293-373-2/
- Published: 2024-05-11T11:00:00-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“**53** And, to mention one proof of the divinity of the Savior, which is indeed
exceedingly wonderful: which mere human being or magician or tyrant or king was 
ever able to take so much upon himself, and to battle against all idolatry and the
whole demonical host and all magic and all the wisdom of the Greeks, while they 
were so strong and still flourishing and captivating all, and at one turn withstand
them all, as our Lord, the true Word of God who, invisibly confuting the error of
each, alone despoils all of them of all human beings, so that those who worshipped
idols now trample upon them, those who were under the spell of magic now burn their
books (cf. **Acts 19:19**), and the wise prefer the interpretation of the Gospels
above everything else?

Those whom they worshipped, them they abandon, while the crucified One whom they
mocked, Him they worship as Christ, confessing Him to be God. Those called gods 
by them are driven out by the sign of the cross, while the crucified Savior is proclaimed
in all the inhabited world as God and Son of God.

The gods worshipped by the Greeks, are reviled by them as shameful, while those 
who receive the teaching of Christ lead a more sober life than they. If, then, these
and such works are human, let anyone who wishes point out similar things from those
before, and persuade us.

But if they appear to be, and are, works not of human beings but of God, why are
the unbelievers so impious as not to recognize the Master who wrought them? They
are afflicted like one who did not know, from the works of creation, God their creator.

For if they knew His divinity from His power over the universe, they would have 
known that Christ’s works in the body also are not human but are of the Savior of
all, the Word of God. And knowing this, as Paul said, “_they would not have crucified
the Lord of glory_” (**1 Cor 2:8**).

**54** Therefore, just as if someone wishes to see God, who is invisible by nature
and not seen at all, understands and knows Him from His works, so let one who does
not see Christ with his mind learn of Him from the works of His body, and test whether
they be human or of God.

And if they be human, let him mock; but if they are known to be not human, but of
God, let him not laugh at things that should not be mocked, but let him rather marvel
that through such a paltry thing things divine have been manifested to us, and that
through death incorruptibility has come to all, and through the incarnation of the
Word the universal providence, and its giver and creator, the very Word of God, 
have been made known.

For He was incarnate that we might be made god (ie. glorified, **2 Peter 1:4**);
and He manifested Himself through a body that we might perceive the mind of the 
invisible Father; and He endured the insults of human beings, that we might inherit
incorruptibility.

He himself was harmed in no way, being impassible and incorruptible and the very
Word and God; but He held and preserved in His own impassibility the suffering human
beings, on whose account He endured these things.

And, in short, the achievements of the Savior, effected by His incarnation, are 
of such a kind and number that if anyone should wish to expound them he would be
like those who gaze at the expanse of the sea and wish to count its waves.

For as one cannot take in all the waves with one’s eyes, since those coming on elude
the perception of one who tries, so also one who would comprehend all the achievements
of Christ in the body is unable to take in the whole, even by reckoning them up,
for those that elude his thought are more than he thinks he has grasped.

Therefore it is better not to seek to speak of the whole, of which one cannot even
speak of a part, but rather to recall one thing, and leave the whole for you to 
marvel at.

For all are equally marvelous, and wherever one looks, seeing there the divinity
of the Word, one is smitten with awe.”

–Athanasius the Great of Alexandria, [_On the Incarnation_](https://amzn.to/3K21F4o),
ed. John Behr, trans. John Behr, vol. 44a, [_Popular Patristics Series_](https://amzn.to/3K21F4o)(
Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 373/2011), 165–167. (53-54)

More on [Incarnation](https://tollelege.net/category/incarnation/)