Tag: Athanasius

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Lord's Day Liturgy

Counting Waves

In our Omnibus class for adults we discussed On the Incarnation by Athanasius last Thursday night. It is a 1600 year-old book about God taking on flesh in Christ, and it is both accessible and encouraging. Near the end Athanasius wrote this:

“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.” (107)

This is not a discouragement to stand on the beach and watch a wave, nor a discouragement to read the Bible and look for the Logos. It is a reminder that however great what we see is to us, the reality is even greater. We could sooner count all the oxygen molecules in the sea than we could count all the glories of the Son.

As just one example, from Jesus’ self-identification to the church in Smyrna, He is “the first and the last, who died and came to life.” Where would our meditation on the waves of implications end?

At the Lord’s Table we “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” I still get struck meditating on why Paul chose “death” as the element proclaimed. When we know who Jesus is, His death is the element that is the most surprising, even scandalous. How could “the first and the last” die? In some ways His resurrection is more obvious, what sticks out is that He died.

His death is His glory, and our redemption. Even though we cannot count the flood of blessings that come to us in Christ, we should swim in thanks.

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A Shot of Encouragement

The Clean Sea Breeze of the Centuries

Perhaps my favorite Preface of all time is that by C. S. Lewis for On the Incarnation by Athanasius. Here’s an example, on why we should read old books:

“Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.”

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A Shot of Encouragement

A Noble Trick

I highly recommend Eve in Exile and the Restoration of Femininity by Rebekah Merkle. Here is a taste of the book where she describes the glory of a woman who gives substance and shape to an idea.

Our job as women—and it’s a phenomenal responsibility—is to enflesh the weighty truths of our faith. If our role is to make truth taste, to make holiness beautiful, then what does that look like in the details?

As a random example of this, take Christmas. Christmas is, of course, when God did ultimately what we women can only shadow. The ultimate enfleshing. At Bethlehem, God’s Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Consolation of Israel was born of a woman–and that moment was so staggering that even the stars had to come down and see it. And then, every year, we celebrate that moment. We take one of the most difficult theological truths—the Incarnation—and attempt to show that truth through our celebrations. The men can talk about the Incarnation, church fathers can write important treatises about it, pastors can preach about it, theologians can parse and define it…but we women are the ones who make it taste like something. We make it smell good. How crazy is that?

“And for my next trick, I will take Athanasius’ De Incarnatione and I will say it with cookies and wrapping paper and cinnamon and marshmallows and colored lights and tablecloths and shopping trips and frantically-last-minute-late-night-Amazon-orders and ham–and I will do it in such a way that my four-year-old will really get it, and it will send roots deep down into his soul where it will anchor his loves and his loyalties and shape his allegiances well into his nineties.”

(175-76, one paragraph that I made into three)

Knocking down dualism is good, but not as good as never letting it be built in the first place. I’m thankful for my wife who helps me get it better, even if late.