Reading Athanasius

If you read one thing from this whole project, read this instead of anything I wrote.

For the spiritually nervous¶

The idea of rejecting penal substitution can feel like abandoning your faith. I assure you that it doesn’t have to be that way. So if you’re spiritually sensitive, but worried about deconstructing into agnosticism or atheism, I have a bit of practical advice to help.

Start by reading Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. Understanding the ontological atonement theory is the soft landing that is needed for people who have only ever heard the gospel through the penal substitution frame. If you’re here because penal substitution has brought you to your end, I think you’ll find Athanasius to be a breath of fresh air.

My goal with this project has never been to tear down your faith, but rather to strengthen it. Indeed, I built this whole thing so that I could hold onto mine.

Why this book in particular¶

Penal substitution runs as follows:

Sin → Guilt → Necessary Punishment → Death

So the question it forces you to ask is “how can we have our guilt forgiven so that the necessary punishment does not fall on our shoulders?”

Athanasius (mostly) runs as follows:

Sin → Corruption → Death

This restructure removes God from the sin-to-death pipeline. God has no part in our movement towards death, which means he has only one role in salvation: restoring.

Christ, through the incarnation, by joining himself to sinful man, has assumed humanity, and through it heals it from the inside. His death on the cross is not him receiving punishment from God so that God would be satisfied, but rather is the work of condemning sin in the flesh. By not retaliating, Christ refused to recycle sinfulness, which would cause corruption in his humanity, and for this reason he is incorruptible. The healing nature of Christ overflows to all of humanity and can be seen clearly in his miracles. By having faith in him, we can partake of the divine qualities of God and we will also be healed.

God is both the doctor and the antidote. We are healed by going to him.

Pick a version¶

Reading Athanasius was a big revelation for me. Here are a few versions you can pick from — all free, all direct downloads.

• Archibald Robertson translation (PDF) The 1911 translation by Archibald Robertson. If you want the translation closest to the actual text, and you have the mental bandwidth for early-1900s prose, this is the place to start.
• Robertson via Claude (PDF) We live in the age of AI, and archaic language is sometimes hard to grasp, so I’ve had Claude lightly update Robertson’s translation to read more easily for modern readers.
• Robertson via Claude — wide margin (PDF) The same text as above, but with wide margins for those of you who want to read it on an iPad or similar and add your notes alongside.
• Robertson via Claude (ePub) For Kindle, Apple Books, or any other eReader app.

Then what?¶

Athanasius sits near the root of the family tree, and the ontological line runs forward from him through McLeod Campbell to T. F. Torrance. You can follow that line on the map, or read where the penal line went instead.