Section XCIV

He proceeds¹ to illustrate this with a suitable comparison, saying²:

Just as, if someone’s likeness painted on some panel has been disfigured by dirt cast upon it, it is necessary that he whose likeness it is be present again, so that his image may be renewed in the same material; for the material itself is not cast away on account of the image impressed upon it, but the violated likeness is renewed in it.

Κατὰ τοῦτο καὶ ὁ πανάγιος τοῦ πατρὸς υἱός, εἰκὼν ὢν τοῦ πατρός, παρεγένετο ἐπὶ τοὺς ἡμετέρους τόπους, ἵνα τὸν κατ᾽ αὐτὸν πεποιημένον ἄνθρωπον ἀνακαινίσῃ, καὶ ὡς ἀπολωλότα εὕρῃ διὰ τῆς τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἀφέσεως, ὅ φησι καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς εὐαγγελίοις· ἦλθον τὸ ἀπολωλὸς εὑρεῖν καὶ σῶσαι· ὅθεν καὶ πρὸς τοὺς Ἰουδαίους ἔλεγεν, ἐὰν μή τις ἀναγεννηθῇ· οὐ τὴν ἐκ γυναικῶν γέννησιν σημαίνων, ὥσπερ ὑπενόουν ἐκεῖνοι, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἀναγεννωμένην καὶ ἀνακτιζομένην ψυχὴν ἐν τῷ κατ᾽ εἰκόνα δηλῶν; so also the all-holy Son of the Father, who is the Image of the Father, came to our regions that he might fashion anew the man who had been made according to his likeness, and recover him as one lost by granting the forgiveness of sins, as he himself says in the Gospels³: “I came that I might find and save what had perished.” Whence he also said to the Jews⁴, “Unless one be born again.” By these words he did not signify birth from women, as they indeed suspected, but denoted the soul regenerated and fashioned anew according to the image of God.

In this excellent disputation of Athanasius, there must be accurately distinguished, on the one hand a) what he affirms concerning the amplitude of renovation through Christ and concerning its character and nature, and on the other hand b) the arguments by which he strives to persuade and demonstrate what he has affirmed.

Now, concerning the amplitude of the reformation and renovation through Christ, he affirms that it pertains to all those whom the criminal cunning of Satan destroyed, who first received the sincere knowledge of God, who bore the divine image within themselves, and who are comprehended in the number of those creatures whom God made participants in reason. But these are all and only men. The amplitude, therefore, of reformation and renovation through Christ is of such a kind that it embraces all men and passes over no one at all.

But what is its rationale, what its character, and in what ought it chiefly to be judged to consist? Athanasius replies that by the reformation and renovation through Christ it was especially brought about

that death and corruption were conquered, that the darkness of ignorance was dispelled, that men were recalled to the true worship of God, and that the image of God in them, defiled and nearly obliterated⁵, was cleansed again and, having been cleansed, flourished anew.

All these things he confirms and proves partly by the authority of the Scriptures and partly by reasons drawn from the very nature of things. To this latter class pertain those which he takes from the origin of the human fall, from the primitive nobility of men, from the clemency and wisdom of God, and from the office of Creator, so that he may demonstrate that it was in no way becoming to leave the lost human race in its destruction. And you would believe that these things occurred to the mind of Thomas when, treating the question whether the punishment of original sin is privation of the divine vision, he first proposed to himself⁶ this difficulty:

That which does not attain the end for which it exists exists in vain. But man is naturally ordered to beatitude as to his ultimate end, which beatitude indeed consists in the divine vision. Therefore man exists in vain if he does not attain to the divine vision. But God, on account of original sin, did not cease to cause the generation of men, as Damascene says. Since, therefore, nothing is in vain in the works of God, it appears that man, on account of the sin which he contracts from his origin, does not incur the guilt of privation of the divine vision.

He replies:

Man would have been made fruitlessly and vainly if he could not attain beatitude, just like any thing which cannot attain its ultimate end. Wherefore, lest man born with original sin should have been made fruitlessly and vainly, from the beginning of the human race God proposed to man a remedy by which he could be freed from this vanity, namely, the mediator himself, God and man, Jesus Christ, through faith in whom the impediment of original sin could be removed.

Whence it is said in the Psalm: “Remember what my substance is; hast thou established all the sons of men in vain?” Expounding this, the Gloss says that David asks for⁷ the incarnation of the Son, who was to assume flesh from his substance, and through whom men were to be freed from vanity.

Finally, by the authority and suffrage of the Scriptures, and expressly by these words⁸, ἦλθε ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός, “the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost,” Athanasius establishes and maintains the universal amplitude of the reparation.