On the Incarnation
Athanasius, Contra Gentes — De Incarnatione
Athanasius of Alexandria
Two books against the heathen, written young. He was still defending them forty-five years and five exiles later.
- Catch rate
- 55 / 255
- Base research
- 196
- Stat total
- 296
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Two parts, about ninety chapters — a theodicy, a case against the idols, an argument that the soul can know God, and only then the incarnation. Jerome catalogued the pair as one book, and the manuscripts carry them that way.
Athanasius went into exile five times across forty-five years rather than sign a word he thought was wrong, and the creed the whole church says on Sundays is the one he defended. Very high Contend.
A well-attested Greek text in two recensions that agree on everything that matters.
The second half is the one work of patristic theology most modern readers have actually finished. The first half they have mostly not heard of.
Cited for this book
He wrote it in his twenties — a deacon, years before Arius, and the book never mentions him. The first half argues the pagans out of their idols and up to a God the soul can know; the second asks what such a God could do about a creation coming apart, and answers that nothing less than the maker could remake it. He then spent forty-five years defending it.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Only the Maker Remakes | Christology | Argument | 78 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 8 | The Soul Travels Without the Body | Anthropology | Argument | 54 | 100% | 20 |
| 12 | The Sculptor Forgets | Rationality | Argument | 58 | 100% | 20 |
| 16 | A God for Every Village | Rationality | Argument | 62 | 100% | 15 |
| 20 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 24 | Word Made Flesh | Christology | Argument | 70 | 100% | 6 |
| 28 | Rule of Faith | Christology | Argument | 55 | 100% | 15 |
| 32 | Two Gods Cancel Out | Rationality | Argument | 66 | 100% | 10 |
| 36 | No Substance in Evil | Theology Proper | Argument | 68 | 100% | 10 |
Read it: That We Might Be Made God
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Koine Greek.
“In the beginning wickedness did not exist. Nor indeed does it exist even now in those who are holy, nor does it in any way belong to their nature.”
Athanasius, Against the Heathen 2 (trans. Robertson, NPNF² 4, public domain, lightly modernized).
“The way of truth will aim at reaching the real and true God. But for its knowledge and accurate comprehension, there is need of none other save of ourselves.”
Athanasius, Against the Heathen 30 (trans. Robertson, NPNF² 4, public domain, lightly modernized).
“For being Word of the Father, and above all, He alone of natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father.”
Athanasius, On the Incarnation 7 (trans. Robertson, NPNF² 4, public domain).
“For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.”
Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54 (trans. Robertson, NPNF² 4, public domain).
One book in two halves. Jerome catalogues them as a single work, and the NPNF editor says outright that the two titles are a modern convenience.
The order is the argument. The first half clears the ground — idolatry is something men invented, and evil has no nature of its own to stand on. Only then does the second half build.
Written young, and it shows: no bishop yet, no exiles yet, none of the forty years of fighting that came after.
Read the last line again and watch the direction. Made God, not made a god. Athanasius means a share, given, of what belongs to God by nature — and he has just spent fifty sections arguing that only God could hand it over.