On the Incarnation of the Word 15 – God Meets Us In Every Place We’ve Turned

Athanasius describes in this chapter of his treatise how the Incarnation meets man in every place he had turned.

For seeing that men, having rejected the contemplation of God, and with their eyes downward, as though sunk in the deep, were seeking about for God in nature and in the world of sense, feigning gods for themselves of mortal men and demons; to this end the loving and general Saviour of all, the Word of God, takes to Himself a body, and as Man walks among men and meets the senses of all men half-way, to the end, I say, that they who think that God is corporeal may from what the Lord effects by His body perceive the truth, and through Him recognize the Father.

Or as Jesus answered when Phillip asked him to show them the Father:

He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.

Athanasius goes on to describe how the Incarnation reaches out to meet us in the various places we had turned seeking God. The places he describes are not markedly different from where we turn today. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. In the Incarnation God meets us. As we actively seek to follow other Gods, we find Christ in every place we look.

For this cause He was both born and appeared as Man, and died, and rose again, dulling and casting into the shade the works of all former men by His own, that in whatever direction the bias of men might be, from thence He might recall them, and teach them of His own true Father, as He Himself says: “I came to save and to find that which was lost.”

As one who has followed, tried to follow, or considered following many different paths in my life, I deeply appreciate God seeking those who did not even know they were looking for him.