Celebrating Christian Centenaries
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 68, No. 1 - Fall 2025
Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
Introduction1
We are familiar with trophies in our society. Tokens of victory and effort in sports and spelling bees adorn our bedrooms and school hallways. One fourth-century church father, Athanasius of Alexandria, described another kind of trophy. This trophy was not a shiny medal or plaque, but a sweat-drenched, blood-soaked cross. What was to many the decisive sign of defeat eventually became the ultimate sign of victory. Jesus, in his life and crucifixion, obtained a triumph unlike any before, and his defeat of sin and Satan ushered in a new era of glory for humanity. Jesus Christ showed that he was victorious over death itself.
The beauty of the Word made flesh is the pivotal moment securing God’s redemption of humanity. After Mary gave birth to the incarnate Son, the world was never the same. Romans 5:6 confirms this, saying, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.”2 Salvation is displayed in the victory of Christ’s work for us, as well as the beauty of Christ’s work displayed in us. Salvation is a multi-pronged event in Scripture, and the Fathers held that it comprised the incarnation, death and burial, resurrection, and glorification of the Son. The “trophy” of Christ is beauty itself and the basis of our salvation and transformation. The death and resurrection of the Word made flesh secured for us what no one else could: complete salvation.
The Fathers who gathered at Nicaea in 325, and again in Constantinople in 380, were concerned about many things, even beyond the creedal formulation we know today as the Nicene Creed. Although one aspect of the conversation primarily focused on the Son’s nature and relationship to the Father, Christian salvation is closely tied to the discussion about the Son and salvation. What is needed for salvation? How does the person and work of the Son fit into the equation? If we misunderstand the Son, we will misunderstand salvation. The Fathers recognized and affirmed that salvation is a cosmic event, the effects of which begin to unfold now and extend into eternity. Christ’s redemption is a mystery of wonder, amazement, and beauty.
Athanasius of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus defended the theological foundations established at Nicaea and expanded upon them in the following decades of the fourth century. Specifically, Athanasius argues against Arian theology in On the Incarnation and Four Discourses Against the Arians. Gregory provides his thoughts on the subject in The Five Theological Orations. Both men emphasize that salvation is only possible through a Nicene understanding of the gospel, since deviating from the Son as “true God from true God” has eternal consequences.
Athanasius of the Beauty of Salvation
As a young deacon, Athanasius accompanied his bishop, Alexander, to the Council of Nicaea. Soon after the council, Athanasius was ordained bishop of Alexandria in 328, though his election was contested because he was too young for this position. He held his pastoral office for forty-six years, punctuated by five periods of exile due to the fluctuating popularity of the Nicene party. His seasons of exile proved providential, allowing him to cultivate relationships with like-minded leaders in the West and learn from ascetics in the Egyptian desert. The latter experience put him in contact with the famous Antony, and Athanasius later wrote his biography, The Life of Antony. Over time, the theology of Athanasius, Didymus the Blind, Basil the Great of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, became touchpoints of Nicene orthodoxy.
On the Incarnation provides Athanasius’s pastoral argument for the necessity of Christ’s incarnation: adding full humanity to his full divinity. Athanasius called this explanation of the incarnation and its centrality to the Christian faith “an elementary instruction and an outline of the faith in Christ and his divine manifestation to us.”3 The incarnation of Christ is fundamental to gospel belief, and nothing is more vital and transformative than that God made flesh. The eternal Word made flesh, through whom God created all things and in whom all things hold together, is the center of our faith (John 1:1–3). Christ’s work of salvation had to occur through the incarnation, for our decaying humanity needed redemption through both his humanity and divinity.4 David Gwynn notes, “For Athanasius . . . the full significance of the Incarnation lay in bridging the gulf that separated God and creation and enabling humanity to ‘become divine.’”5 Our salvation by Christ’s incarnation is not merely pragmatic; instead, it reshapes the vision of our life in the flesh and our future life in glory. Having received the redemption of our souls, we will also see the redemption of our bodies in eternity. Christ in his full humanity and divinity is the only one capable of accomplishing this feat. Jesus died knowing the greater good he achieved by being the true life himself. Athanasius explains, “So something wonderful and marvelous happened: that ignominious death which they thought to inflict, this was the trophy of his victory over death.”6 The ignominy of the crucifixion, indeed the worst form of death conjured by man, was entirely overturned and reconstituted. Once a seat of shame, the cross is now a symbol of victory. Once only torture for the subjugated, the cross is now the token of the liberated. It defines salvation and fuels discipleship. As the writer of Hebrews instructs, “Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:1b–2). In similar words, Athanasius asserted, “For we were the purpose of his embodiment, and for our salvation he so loved human beings as to come to be and appear in a human body.”7
The Creed contends, and Athanasius affirmed, that salvation requires Christ’s full humanity and full divinity. Though the language of this two-nature Christology was not fully articulated until the Council of Chalcedon in 451, we ought to consider this mystery as necessary for our salvation. The Creed affirms that “for us humans and for our salvation, he descended . . . and [he] became incarnate.” Let that sink in: “For us humans and for our salvation.” Salvation begins with the incarnation. Evangelicals typically equate salvation with atonement, which is undoubtedly a significant and crucial element, but redemption includes salvation and a transformed life. Often, our Reformation reflexes began to fire at the notion including our own work and virtuous acts in salvation. If we say that our works add to the salvation of God, then we are in trouble. Yet, early Christian thinkers found it impossible to talk about a salvation lacking the fruit of salvation also present in the believer’s life. What we distinguish as a doctrine of sanctification, the early church rolled into the entire conversation about salvation. This explains what Athanasius says near the end of On the Incarnation: “But in addition to the study and true knowledge of the scriptures, there is needed a good life and a pure soul and the virtue which is according to Christ, so that the mind, guided by it, may be able to attain and comprehend what it desires, as far as it is possible for human nature to learn about the God Word.”8 The beauty of salvation is based on the object of our faith and the fruit of our faith.
Athanasius reflected on the glorious nature of our salvation through the Son in his work Against the Arians. This work, composed of four discourses, sought to dismantle Arians and Arian-like ideas. According to Athanasius, the Arians are to be scorned as “neither having studied Scripture, nor understanding Christianity at all, and the faith which it contains.”9 He understood that the scriptural language required an interpretation based on the regula fidei, or rule of faith. This rule, used by Christians from the earliest generations, simply affirms the Trinity and the biblical story of redemption. By recognizing the basic biblical narrative of God, Christ, the Spirit, and salvation, we can better interpret individual Scripture passages within this scope. Consider two critical biblical texts in Athanasius’s discourse and learn how he maintains an orthodox framework.
The first important text Athanasius interprets is Proverbs 8:22–23: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the current age, in the beginning, before he made the world, he established me.”10 The Septuagint rendering in English is necessary to grasp the weight of the issue. While modern English translations avoid this issue by using the Masoretic (Hebrew) text, the fourth-century Fathers wrestled over these words as read in the Greek OT. The Greek verb ktizō (“to create”) did not bother Athanasius. He was careful to maintain that the personification of Wisdom in Proverbs was not equivalent to Christ being called the “wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24). Athanasius contended that “this mere term ‘He created’ does not necessarily signify the essence or the generation but indicates something else as coming to pass in Him of whom it speaks, and not simply that He who is said to be created, is at once in His Nature and Essence a creature.”11 Solomon recognized, in some incipient way, the Wisdom of God, which was finally revealed in Christ; he certainly did not make an ontological statement.12 Athanasius affirms that Christ “says not, ‘Before the world He founded me as Word or Son,’ but simply, ‘He founded me,’ to show again, as I have said, that not for His own sake but for those who are built upon Him does He here also speak, after the way of proverbs.”13 The terms “created,” “formed,” and “founded” correspond to language used to describe eternal generation and the incarnation, both of which are distinct from God’s creative activity of the world. We can look to Proverbs and other OT texts, Athanasius believed, to find ways of talking about Christ, but we should never make illegitimate assertions about his nature.14
Next, Athanasius considered Philippians 2:9–10: “For this reason God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow—in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” On the surface of this text, Arians may seem to have a point. The Son appears to be subordinate to the Father, and though Jesus will be the object of devotion “in heaven and on earth and under the earth,” the Father is still at the top, and Christ is his created agent. Thus, the Father gave the Son an exalted name, so the Arians argue, as a grace. Athanasius, on the other hand, had none of that: “For if He was not, or was indeed, but afterwards was promoted, how were all things made by Him, or how in Him, were He not perfect, did the Father delight?”15 Athanasius identified here a major interpretive issue with Arius’s thought. Perfection requires full divinity, and the acts attributed to Christ are impossible if he did not possess a perfect and unalterable divinity in his nature.
Thus, the truth of the Son’s divinity is the opposite of what Arius claimed. Athanasius makes the case:
Therefore, if, even before the world was made, the Son had that glory, and was Lord of glory and the Highest, and descended from heaven, and is ever to be worshipped, it follows that He had not promotion from His descent, but rather Himself promoted the things which needed promotion; and if He descended to effect their promotion, therefore He did not receive in reward the name of the Son and God, but rather He Himself has made us sons of the Father, and deified men by becoming Himself man.16
Athanasius read the text with the priority of Christ’s full divinity and humanity in mind. This is not “eisegesis” but a theological reading that corresponds to the economy of God’s salvation while actively engaging with the text of Scripture. We ought to bring basic orthodox presuppositions to the text to read it correctly. This does not bend the text to an external agenda but confirms and makes sense of what the text already declares: The eternal Son is Christ the Lord.
Becoming Divine
The incarnation, for Athanasius, has the effect of divinizing humanity—yes, you read that correctly. A necessary component of salvation is that humankind is divinized. Athanasius declared, “For he was incarnate that we might be made god.”17 The doctrine that has come to be called theosis, or deification, derives from this related idea of the Fathers.18 While this manner of speaking about salvation does not seem typical to Protestants, the basic notion pertains much more to our doctrine of sanctification.
Because of Christ’s work on our behalf, we are more than saved from punishment (as amazing as that is); we are now mysteriously dwelling in the life of God. This is what the apostle Peter was aiming at when he said, “His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” (2 Pet 1:3). Peter highlights all the ways Christians ought to grow in holiness and virtue by nature of being in the life of God through Christ. Whatever might be meant by theosis in Athanasius’s thought, the mystery of sharing in the divine nature is best captured in our understanding of sanctification. We grow in holiness and virtue because of God’s work of bringing us into his life through Jesus Christ. We indeed are made god-like, divinized, not equal to God as he is in his nature, but connected to his life through Christ. Athanasius also aligns with this understanding: “[Christ] manifested himself through a body that we might receive an idea of the invisible Father; and he endured the insults of human beings, that we might inherit incorruptibility.”19
Gregory of Nazianzus on the Beauty of Salvation
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329–390) possessed a well-educated, academic mind and studied in Athens, where he met Basil of Caesarea. Along with his studies, he desired monastic spiritual reflection, though his father prompted him to instead pursue pastoral ministry. Having finally accepted the pastoral call, he famously left the pastoral office, only to reluctantly return. He took his subsequent ministry post at the request of his friend Basil and became the bishop of the small provincial town of Sasima (near modern-day Hasanköy, Turkey) before eventually taking on Constantinople’s bishopric for a short time.
We consider Gregory’s orations because they provide a thoroughly biblical, profoundly logical, and refreshingly spiritual reflection on God, salvation, and the hope of humanity. When reading Gregory’s sermons, one must consider the Eunomian heresy coloring the background: Eunomians were generally sympathetic to “Arian” ideas, eventually rejecting the full divinity of Christ.20 In the first of these five orations (Oration 27), Gregory addressed those who “have undermined every approach to true religion by their complete obsession with setting and solving conundrums.”21 Gregory addresses the problematic overindulgence in speculation that suppresses the mystery of God. While we can know God through his Word and work, the Eunomians and others divided the godhead, thereby overlooking his glory. Gregory asserts that our knowledge on this side of eternity is incomplete, though we ought to grow through Spirit-led biblical exploration. In his Oration 28, the second of the five, Gregory assesses the doctrine of God, while noting his own “frailty” in undertaking such a task. Remarking on the beauty and order of creation, Gregory draws a helpful comparison: “No one seeing a beautifully elaborated lyre with its harmonious, orderly arrangement, and hearing the lyre’s music will fail to form a notion of its craftsman-player, to recur to him in thought though ignorant of him by sight. In this way the creative power, which moves and safeguards its objects, is clear to us, though it be not grasped by the understanding.”22 Clearly, “dissolution is utterly alien to God the prime nature . . . [and] no dissolution means no division; no division means no conflict; no conflict means no composition, and hence no body involving composition.”23
The otherworldly cosmic redemption guaranteed by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection makes salvation beautiful in the Christian perspective. The Incorruptible One secured what we corrupted ones could not. In Christ, God’s created image bearers move away from disintegration and back toward oneness with God.
No “Because” Required
Later in his Oration 28, Gregory describes the task of theology in terms of a massive building project using the smallest of tools. Inviting his hearers to consider the entirety of creation, Gregory explains the intricacies of animal and plant life. Why do this? Gregory addresses our finite nature and challenges our ability to comprehend even the basics of the created order, not to mention the mysterious nature of God and redemption. If we have trouble wrapping our minds around biology, how can we even begin to comprehend the grand schemes of the Creator? God’s salvation cannot be fathomed with the mind and senses alone; it must be received by faith in the deep recesses of our hearts. When confronted with the majesty and mystery of God, all we can do is either accept it with humility or reject it with utter pride. While wondering at the immensity of the sea, consider the awe of God who created it and set all things in motion, including the work of salvation in Christ. Gregory ended his sermon pondering: “[I have] been engaged in a struggle to prove that even the nature of beings on the second level is too much for our minds, let alone God’s primal and unique, not to say all-transcending nature.”24
While Oration 28 does not directly mention the work of salvation, its implications are clear: finite man cannot comprehend God’s plans. In Orations 29 and 30, Gregory argues for the necessity of Christ and the work of the Son in accomplishing redemption. After discussing the eternal generation of the Son, Gregory implores his hearers to consider the biblical reality of Christ’s divinity and humanity, mainly referencing NT passages. What seems to be a series of contradictions, or textual ammunition for heretics, is, in fact, a necessary description to articulate the beautiful union of Christ’s humanity with his divinity. Both exist in exquisite harmony, for “[he] remained what he was; what he was not, he assumed. No ‘because’ is required for his existence in the beginning, for what could account for the existence of God.”25 For Gregory, the harmony of Christ’s human and divine nature was not only a matter of faith, but of awe-inspiring worship.
Biblical Connections
As with nearly every early church father, both Athanasius and Gregory supported their positions by closely reading Scripture, with the Bible open in front of them. In light of this example, we marvel at the rich spiritual truth contained in John 1:1–14. “In the beginning,” as John witnesses in John 1:1, “was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John makes both a biblical assertion and a philosophical connection. The Word is eternal (i.e., before the beginning), is God (as whatever God is by nature, so is the Word), and with God (united with God the Father and Spirit). The Word, or Logos, is the operating agent of all wisdom and reality. The Word is simultaneously an instrument of the Father and himself God; though an instrument, we should never assume the Son is less in divinity and glory. In becoming human, the Word made flesh became the light for creation (John 1:5, 9).
Colin Kruse observes, “To receive him means, as this verse indicates, to believe in his name. To believe in a person’s name is to believe in the person, because the name stands for the person. Receiving him involves accepting the teaching and revelation of God (the ‘light’) he brought.”26 To believe in Christ is to place one’s complete trust and allegiance to God’s light! This only makes sense if he is worthy of such confidence. Christ, being both God and man, truly deserves our fidelity and loving obedience. The truth that the eternal Son took on flesh for our salvation is core to the gospel proclamation. The Fathers at Nicaea understood this, and thus, to mitigate or jettison this conviction leads to a compromise in the gospel message. D. A. Carson adds, “This is the supreme revelation. If we are to know God, neither rationalism nor irrational mysticism will suffice: the former reduces God to mere object, and the latter abandons all controls.”27 Special revelation in the form of Christ’s incarnation is the content of our salvation. Only a humble and Spirit-wrought acceptance of Christ as the incarnate Lord constitutes saving faith.
John’s opening declaration of Christ’s incarnation also points to the glory of the Son. John and others were witnesses to the glory of Christ. Beauty is a less-recognized synonym for glory. The apostles looked on the cosmic beauty of God in the incarnation, including in the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. This glory, or beauty, “the glory of the one and only Son from the Father,” is not a mere grace given to the Son as a divine creature, as Arian thought describes. God’s glory cannot be replicated, for he declares, “I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other” (Isa 42:8 ESV). Pure beauty from the divine nature is fully present in and manifested by the Son, in whom we are now united. Our salvation is possible only through the glorious Son. We echo what Carson notes: “The glory displayed in the incarnate Word is the kind of glory a father grants to his one and only, best-loved Son—and this ‘father’ is God himself. Thus, it is nothing less than God’s glory that John and his friends witnessed in the Word-made-flesh.”28 John and the NT resound with this simple yet life-altering truth: no incarnation, no salvation.
Conclusion
While trying to capture the wondrous beauty of the incarnation and its effects, Athanasius expressed, “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 struck with exceeding awe.”29 Like one who gazes “at the expanse of the sea” and attempts to count the waves, Christians cannot even begin to “comprehend the achievements of Christ in the body.”30 The problem with the Arian and Eunomian vision of God, according to Athanasius and Gregory, is its narrowness. When we purge the mystery of God, we are left with a God unworthy of worship. The beauty and majesty of salvation through Christ fuels our worship and permits us to revel in God’s extraordinary but inexplicable love and mercy. Nicaea and its pro-Nicene defenders wished to ensure that Christians maintained this proper view of salvation so that they would gaze at the splendor of the triune God and be transformed as a result.
- This article is an excerpt from Nicaea for Today. Copyright (c) 2025 by Coleman M. Ford and Shawn J. Wilhite. Used with permission of the author and publisher, B&H Academic. ↩︎
- Translations of Scripture are from the CSB unless otherwise noted. ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 56 in St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011). ↩︎
- For a helpful summary of Athanasius’s logic of salvation based on Christ’s incarnation, see Alister McGrath, Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought, 2nd ed. (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 43–46. ↩︎
- David M. Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexandria: Bishop, Theologian, Ascetic, Father, Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 66. ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 24. ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 4. ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 57. ↩︎
- Prov 8:22–23 LXX (translation by author). ↩︎
- Prov 8:22–23 LXX (translation by author). ↩︎
- Against the Arians 2.19, 45 in St. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, trans. John Henry Newman and Archibald Roberton, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, ed. Philip Shaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1892). ↩︎
- For more on Athanasius’s reading of Prov 8 in de Decretis (i.e., Athanasius’s defense of the Creed), see Amy Brown Hughes and Shawn J. Wilhite, “The Beginnings of a Pro-Nicene Trinitarian Vision: Athanasius of Alexandria on the Activity of the Son and the Spirit,” in On Classical Trinitarianism: Retrieving the Nicene Doctrine of the Triune God, ed. Matthew Barrett (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024). ↩︎
- Against the Arians 2.22, 74. ↩︎
- For more on this idea as it relates to Prov 8, Athanasius, and partitive exegesis, see Shawn J. Wilhite, Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis: Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity, Studia Traditionis Theologiae 70 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2026). ↩︎
- Against the Arians 1.11, 38. ↩︎
- Against the Arians 1.11, 38. ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 54. ↩︎
- For a summary of deification, see C. M. Ford, “Deification,” ed. Michael A. G. Haykin, The Essential Lexham Dictionary of Church History (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2022). For a good one-volume work on deification in Greek patristic thought, see Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For an assessment of deification in Latin Christianity, see Jared Ortiz, ed. Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019). ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 54. ↩︎
- Eunomius was an anomoian (“not of same substance”) teacher in Cappadocia, consistently asserting the Son was not of the same nature as the Father. Both Basil and then his brother Gregory of Nyssa wrote against his teaching. A defrocked bishop, he led several people to form a schismatic community until his death in 394. For a summary of the controversy, see Saint Basil of Caesarea, Against Eunomius, trans. Mark DelCogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 3–55. ↩︎
- Oration 27.2 in St Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, ed. John Behr, trans. Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham, Popular Patristics Series (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), 25. ↩︎
- Oration 28.6. ↩︎
- Oration 28.7. ↩︎
- Oration 28.9. ↩︎
- Oration 29.19. ↩︎
- Colin G. Kruse, John: An Introduction and Commentary, 2nd ed., TNTC (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 61, emphasis original. ↩︎
- D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 127. ↩︎
- Carson, The Gospel According to John, 128. ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 54. ↩︎
- On the Incarnation 54. ↩︎
