Deification of Christ’s Flesh and Ours According to Athanasius’ Contra Arianos

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, is perhaps best known as the chief opponent of Arian Christology after the Council of Nicaea until his death in 373. One of his most influential works is his voluminous Contra Arianos (Against the Arians) that showcase his theological commitments to the co-eternality and consubstantiality of the Son to the Father. While much of the work is a demonstration of Athanasius’ skillful and often painstaking method of exegesis, he also emphasizes the soteriological ramifications when one succeeds or fails to attribute full deity and full humanity to the person of Jesus Christ. Athanasius’ discussions of deification, particularly in the third discourse of this writing, reveals his understanding of the divine Son’s relationship of the flesh he assumed. While some scholars assume that Christ’s flesh is fully deified at his conception, Athanasius actually argues that full deification occurred “by degrees” throughout Christ’s life culminating in his own resurrection. Christ never sinned, of course, but he did experience the affections of the flesh. Importantly, the pattern of Christ’s own deification in his flesh is give to us who are deified in Christ, even to the point of human impassibility. My aim in this paper is to explain the means by which Christ’s own flesh “progresses” in deification and how that process mirrors our own human deification as Athanasius makes clear in his Contra Arianos.