There can be no doubt, therefore, what, according to Athanasius, must be believed concerning either the origin of the renewed human race, or the force and efficacy of the instituted renovation, or its ambit and amplitude. For its origin is the ἀγαθότης καὶ φιλανθρωπία, the goodness and humanity, of the Father and the Son, by which each, aroused and moved, did not permit his work and his image to go to ruin and be subjected to another lord—or rather, to a tyrant.
Moreover, the force and efficacy of the instituted renovation is so great that it repaired, not without increase, the losses inflicted by sin. It repaired the loss of corruption and death by the incorruption and immortality promised; it repaired infirmity by the strength supplied; it repaired the guilt of debt by the payment exhibited; it repaired enmities by men’s reconciliation with God; and it repaired the contracted ignobility by the power to be deified having been given.
But in what manner did he accomplish these things, and for whom did he accomplish them? The answer, with Athanasius leading, is ready at hand. For whence, I ask, did all human evils flow as from a native fountain? From nowhere else than from the broken society of benevolence and friendship with God. Therefore, that so many and such great evils might be provided for by obstructing the fountain, God brought it about by his goodness and wisdom that in Christ the whole nature of men should be united to God much more closely and intimately and, having been united, should be advanced to its pristine dignity.
God honored not one or another with this supreme and excellent good, but altogether all those whom he first founded through his Word, whom he fashioned according to his own image, who perished in Adam, whom death occupied, and whose nature the Word assumed and vindicated into liberty.
For it was unbecoming, writes Athanasius1, that things endowed with reason and once made participants in the Word of God should perish and return again through corruption into nothing. For it was altogether unworthy of the divine goodness—
—that things made by God should be destroyed because of the frauds by which the devil circumvented men. Most especially was it unbecoming that the art of God in men should be destroyed either because of their negligence or because of the cunning of demons. Therefore, when men were perishing and such works were falling into destruction, τί τὸν θεὸν ἔδει ποιεῖν ἀγαθὸν ὄντα; what ought God, who is good, to have done? To permit corruption to prevail against them and death to dominate them? But what would it have profited them to have been made in the beginning? For it was better that they should not have been made at all than, having been made, be neglected and perish. Ἀσθένεια γὰρ μᾶλλον καὶ οὐκ ἀγαθότης ἐκ τῆς ἀμελείας γινώσκεται τοῦ θεοῦ, εἰ ποιήσας παρορᾷ φθαρῆναι τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ἔργον, ἤπερ εἰ μὴ πεποίηκε κατὰ τὴν ἀρχὴν τὸν ἄνθρωπον· μὴ ποιήσαντος μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἦν ὁ λογιζόμενος τὴν ἀσθένειαν· ποιήσαντος δὲ καὶ εἰς τὸ εἶναι κτίσαντος, ἀτοπώτατον ἦν ἀπόλλυσθαι τὰ ἔργα, καὶ μάλιστα ἐπ᾽ ὄψει τοῦ πεποιηκότος· οὐκοῦν ἔδει τοὺς ἀνθρώπους μὴ ἀφιέναι φέρεσθαι τῇ φθορᾷ, διὰ τὸ ἀπρεπὲς καὶ ἀνάξιον εἶναι τοῦτο τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἀγαθότητος. For such negligence would have been an argument of weakness rather than of God’s goodness, if, having made his work, he permitted it to be destroyed, more than if he had not created man at all in the beginning. For if he had not created him, there would have been no one who might reflect upon the weakness; but after he made him and created him that he might exist, it would have been most absurd for the works to perish, especially before the eyes of their author. Therefore, it was foreign to God to permit men to fall into corruption, because this was unbecoming and unworthy of the divine goodness.
But2 when, transgression having gone before, men fell into the corruption owed to nature and were despoiled of the grace of the divine likeness, what else, I ask, ought to have been done? Or whose work was necessary for furnishing grace and restoration of this kind except that of the Word of God, by whom all things were first made from nothing? Αὐτοῦ γὰρ ἦν πάλιν καὶ τὸ φθαρτὸν εἰς ἀφθαρσίαν ἐνεγκεῖν, καὶ τὸ ὑπὲρ πάντων εὔλογον ἀποσῶσαι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα· λόγος γὰρ ὢν τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ ὑπὲρ πάντας ὤν, ἀκολούθως καὶ ἀνακτίσαι τὰ ὅλα μόνος ἦν δυνατός, καὶ ὑπὲρ πάντων παθεῖν, καὶ πρεσβεῦσαι περὶ πάντων ἱκανὸς—
—πρὸς τὸν πατέρα. For it belonged to him to render incorrupt again that which was corrupt and to preserve before the Father that which was fitting on behalf of all. For since he is the Word of the Father and far excels all, therefore he alone was able to restore all things; and he alone was equal to suffering for all and interceding with the Father for all.
Since he accomplished these things most abundantly, he therefore obtained3 the name and dignity τοῦ κοινοῦ πάντων σωτῆρος, of the common Savior of all.