Athanasius’ time dealt with these same issues. The Apostle Paul wrote centuries earlier of the seeming “folly” of the cross and how difficult it was for people accustomed to a different view of the gods to understand the necessity, in Christian terms, of the Incarnation. Athanasius had to actively defend a robust view of the Incarnation from its detractors. This, of course, is at great odds with what Christians have come to believe about the Incarnation-but those settled views were not taken for granted in early Christianity.
The gods, many thought, would not debase themselves to involvement in human affairs. He wrote during a time in which the popular idea of religion remained one where people imagined God needed to be distant from humanity. Saint Athanasius was the bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, perhaps the most important center of Christianity, during the 4th century. It set the terms of the subsequent debates within the church on the nature of Christ and remains to this day one of the foundational texts of theology. Saint Athanasius’ On the Incarnation ( public library) is one of the most significant texts of early Christian theology.
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