What follows is a fairly lengthy quote, but I hope you will be blessed by it. I tried to type it ‘as is’ but I’m sure there are some typos for which I will take responsibility.
“10 Truly this great work supremely befitted the goodness of God. For if a king constructed a house or a city, and it is attacked by bandits because of the carelessness of its inhabitants, he in no way abandons it, but avenges and saves it as his own work, having regard not for the carelessness of the inhabitants but for his own honour. All the more so, the God Word of the all-good Father did not neglect the race of human beings, created by himself, which was going to corruption, but he blotted out the death that had occurred through the offering of his own body, and correcting their carelessness by his own teaching, restoring every aspect of human beings by his own power. One may be convinced of these things by the theologians (He means the writers of Scripture) of the Saviour himself, taking their writings, which say, “For the love of Christ constrains us, as we judge this, that if one died for all, then all died; and he died for all that that we should no longer live for ourselves but for him who died and rose” from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Cor 5: 14-15). And again, “We see Jesus who, for a little while, was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour because of the passion of death, that by the grace of God he might taste death on behalf of all” (Heb 2:9). Then he also points out the reason why it was necessary for none other than the God Word to be incarnate, saying, “For it was fitting that he, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Heb 2:10). Saying this, he means that it was for none other to bring human beings out from the corruption that had occurred except the God Word who had also created them in the beginning. And that the Word himself also took to himself a body as a sacrifice for similar bodies, this they indicated saying, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of them, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is the devil, and might deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb 2: 14-15). For by the sacrifice of his own body, he both put an end to the law lying against us and renewed for us the source of life, giving hope of the resurrection. For since through human beings death had seized human beings, for this reason, again, through the incarnation of the God Word there occurred the dissolution of death and the resurrection of life, as the Christ-bearing man says, “For as by a human being came death, by a human being has come also the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive” and that which follows (1 Cor 15: 21-22). For now we no longer die as those condemned, but as those who will arise do we await the common resurrection of all, which God, who wrought and granted this, “in his own time will reveal” (1 Tim 6:15; Titus 1:3).
This therefore, is the first cause of the incarnation of the Saviour. One might also recognise that his gracious advent consistently occurred from the following.”
On The Incarnation, St Athanasius. St Vladimir’s Press. Popular Patristics Series, Number 44b. Pp, 59 & 60.
Page 60 is as far as I have read.
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