Cantos de Entrada

If revelation of the Word’s nature (and thus the Father’s nature, of which the Son is Image) is found in humanity as created after the Image’s image, then a right perception of human nature is critical to right theological vision. This is precisely why Athanasius’ early writings are so cosmologically and anthropologically orientated. It also proves to be, as we shall see, a key ingredient in his opposition to Arius.

By the time of Athanasius’ writing in the early- to mid-fourth century, many of the anthropological maxims of the earlier centuries were now standard. Themes that consumed the attention of Irenaeus or Tertullian to an almost infi nitesimal degree, which required substantial justifi cation and apology, could simply be reiterated by Athanasius. So a bi-partite anthropology is just stated, rather than argued, and the basic characteristics of each aspect given brief, if succinct, treat- ment. The human creature is a reality of body and soul, the soul sometimes called

30 Cf. the discussion of G. Dragas, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria: Original Research and New

Perspectives (New Hampshire: Orthodox Research Institute, 2005) 8–9 for a treatment of the dimen-

sion of ‘theological becoming’ related to ‘creaturely becoming’ in Athanasius. Full human personal reality is described as ‘a dynamic gift maintained by the Creator Logos’, linked specifi cally to ‘trans- mission of the power of the Logos’ through the image in man (p. 9). See also C. Kannengiesser, ‘Athanasius of Alexandria and the Foundation of Traditional Christology’, TS 34 (1973), 103–13. 31 See above, p. 155 on the Father as ‘our’ Father.

‘spirit’ and clearly perceived as the immaterial element in man. The creature is ‘embodied spirit’, much as for Tertullian it was a ‘housed soul’.32 _{The soul may be}

heavenly and immaterial, but it is still a created thing; and its creation, like that of the body, is ex nihilo, from nothing.33 _{Thus man is ‘naturally mortal’, given to the}

instability of all things that come into being and so are bound to go out of it. It is the presence of the Word, and this presence alone, that sustains the existence of what creation itself requires to be fi nite.34 _{Precisely because God knew this}

limitation of matter, he created humanity after his own image – giving a glimpse of the participatory nature of ‘after the image’ we have already discussed.35

This natural limitation of creation is visible fi rst in its material nature, for ‘all bodies are liable to the corruption of death’.36 _{And yet, it is not tied up in materi-}

ality alone. Athanasius may call the soul ‘immortal’, given that it is not bound to the same physical corruption and corruptibility as the body;37 _{but its natural}

immortality is nonetheless conditioned by its creation ex nihilo. That which has a beginning in being, which comes into being from non-being, is always effected by the impermanence of that creation (Athanasius, as we shall see in the next section, sees the primary effect of this creation on the soul as its ‘mobility’ or motion). So the soul, together with the body, fashion a person that is essentially impermanent. There is a ‘weakness of their nature; for, unable to continue in one stay, they are dissolved with time.’38

Athanasius’ preferred characterization of this weakness is corruptibility. Should the human creature depart from the presence of the Word, it will incur the ‘corrup- tion that is his by nature’.39 _{That is, apart from its union with the life-sustaining}

Word of the Father, the human moves towards corruption and death, intrinsic in its own nature as created reality. What is critical in this is the understanding of corruptibility as a natural condition in man, but the actual corruption of the human being as a process. Corruption is an end, a telos, towards which all created things will naturally move. But the human person has been created in communion with the Word, who grants incorruption. Man is made to ‘abide in incorruption’,40 _to

derive his ongoing existence ‘from God who is’.41 _{Athanasius thus speaks of the}

created human condition in distinctly participatorial terms. The human person is

32 See DI 4. Cf. Tertullian, above, pp. 65–66.

33 See DI 4.5, 5.1. 34 See DI 5. 35 See also DI 12. 36 DI 8.4. 37 So in CG 33.4. 38 DI 21.4. 39 Cf. DI 3.4, 5. 40 DI 4.4. 41 Ibid. 4.5.

fashioned to ‘remain’ (me/nein) in communion with the Word, and by so remaining, to have ongoing being.42 _{Should this communion be broken, then}

just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing in the course of time.43

The key to this notion of corruption as a process in which the human creature engages through a turning from the Word, lies in the fact of creation itself. Everything created is transient; therefore ongoing existence for a creature must involve being joined to a source of life that is not bound by created limitations. Athanasius’ insistence that the Son has not been brought into being by the Father, so much the focus of his later arguments against Arius, rests here on distinctly anthropological grounds. A created Son, a Word that has come into being, could not be the source of limitless life for the rest of creation. Because humanity, created after the image of the Word, receives eternal existence by imaging in itself the eternal existence of the Word of the Father, that Word can only be conceived in terms that disclose a fully uncreated stature.44 _{And it is worth reminding our-}

selves that this emphasis on the Son as non-created, by which we mean not brought-into-being, is made by Athanasius on wholly anthropological grounds, without reference specifi cally to Arius or an Arian argument – indeed, without reference to any dogmatic assertions whatever.45 _{Because the human creature is}

created, yet through participation in the Word does not move towards the naturally corruptible lot of all created things, the Word must be confessed as uncreated. While the human creature may be ‘after’ the image, inasmuch as it images God by participation in the Son, to be truly the Image of the Father is to be, as Athana- sius says, his very truth and very power, ‘not being so by participation, nor as if these qualities were imparted to him from without’.

Before we come to address how this anthropological grounding relates to the dogmatic disputes in which Athanasius was involved, and in particular how it involves a developed doctrine of the Spirit, it is necessary to note that Athanasius further develops this anthropological articulation of the Word’s relation to the Father with reference to the nature and function of the soul in man. The ‘mobile soul’ is a necessary ingredient in the human creature’s imaging of the Son’s rela- tionship to the Father.

42 The signifi cance of ‘remaining’ is drawn out excellently by Anatolios, Athanasius 35–37, and in several places throughout his volume. See also Behr, Nicene Faith 175–77.

43 DI 4.4.

44 See Weinandy, Athanasius 29.

45 All the more interesting an observation, given the post-Nicene dating of the text (addressed above). Arius is clearly in Athanasius’ mind as he writes, as would have been the council; yet he approaches the topic fi rst and foremost in this distinctly anthropologically orientated manner.