Christus Victor: St. Athanasius on Christ’s Victory Over Death
*Originally written by St. Athanasius in his book On the Incarnation. Translated into modern English by Modern Saints.
Since God is good (in fact, He is the very Source of all goodness), He would never withhold anything from His creation. Not only did He freely grant existence to all things, but He brought them into being from nothing through His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ. And of all His earthly creations, God reserved a special kindness for humanity. He bestowed upon humans a unique grace: the imprint of His own image, a share in the rational nature of the Word Himself. Humanity was created to reflect God's nature and embody His reason, though in a limited way. Through this grace, they were offered the chance to dwell eternally in the blessed life alongside the saints in paradise.
However, because the human will is free to choose, God made this grace conditional upon two things: a law and a place. He placed humans in His paradise and set forth a single prohibition. If they guarded this grace and retained the beauty of their original innocence, they would enjoy life in paradise without sorrow, pain, or care, and afterward, they would be assured of immortality in heaven. But if they strayed and lost their birthright of beauty, they would fall under the natural law of death, no longer living in paradise but remaining in a state of death and decay outside of it. Scripture makes this clear in this command of God: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (Gen 2:16-17). This warning, “You will certainly die,” does not mean merely to die once, but to remain in a state of death and corruption.
You might wonder why we’re discussing the origin of humanity when our focus is on the Word becoming human. The connection lies in this: it was our plight that brought the Word down to us. Our wrongdoing stirred His love and moved Him to come to our aid. It was out of love for us that He took human form, becoming one of us for our salvation. God had created humanity as embodied spirits, and His intention was that we remain free from corruption. But when humanity turned away from God and pursued our own evil desires, we fell under the law of death. Instead of preserving the state in which God had created us, we began to descend into corruption, with death taking full hold over us.
When humanity first broke God’s command, they began to slip back toward their original state; just as they had once been created from nothing, they were now on a path that would lead them back to nothingness. It was the presence and love of the Word that gave them life, and in losing their connection to God, they began to lose life itself, as only God truly exists. Evil, in contrast, is not a real thing in itself—it is simply the absence and opposite of good.
This, then, was the plight of humanity: God had not only created them from nothing but had also graciously given them His own life through the Word, but, under the devil’s influence, they turned their focus from eternal truths to corruptible things, becoming the authors of their own corruption and death. Though they were naturally subject to decay, the grace of their union with the Word had made it possible for them to escape the natural law of corruption, provided they maintained the beautiful innocence with which they were created. In other words, the presence of the Word among them protected them from natural corruption, as Wisdom states: “God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of His own eternity, but through the devil’s envy, death entered the world” (Wis 2:13-24).
At this point, humanity began to die, and corruption spread rapidly among them, gaining a hold that went beyond what was natural. This was the penalty God had warned would come from disobedience to His command. In their sin, humanity had crossed every boundary; by embracing wickedness, they fell into the grip of death and decay. They spiraled from bad to worse, never satisfied with a single form of evil, but rather, with an unquenchable appetite, they constantly invented new sins. Adultery and theft became widespread. Murder and violence filled the earth. The law was cast aside, resulting in pervasive injustice and chaos, as people committed all kinds of wickedness both individually and together.
Humanity was teetering on the edge of destruction, with death and corruption tightening their hold. Humans, created in God’s image and bearing the reflection of the Word through reason, were slipping toward ruin, resulting in the undoing of God's work. The law of death, brought about by humanity’s transgression, reigned over us, and there seemed to be no escape. It was a situation both tragic and dire. On one hand, God couldn’t simply ignore His own law and allow those who had sinned to escape death. On the other hand, it was unthinkable that beings once united with the nature of the Word should perish and fade into nothingness through corruption.
It was not in keeping with God’s goodness for His creatures to fade into nothing all because of the devil’s deceit, nor was it fitting for God’s work in humanity to dissolve due to their own negligence or the influence of evil spirits. These rational beings, made in the likeness of the Word, now faced ruin; God’s precious creations were on the verge of falling apart. So, what was God, in His goodness, to do? Would He let death and corruption have the final say? In that case, what purpose would there be in having created them in the first place? Surely, it would have been better never to have been created than to be abandoned to ruin. Moreover, to turn a blind eye to the destruction of His own work would reflect not God’s goodness, but a profound limitation—a failure far worse than if He had never made humanity at all. Thus, it was unthinkable that God would abandon humanity to corruption; doing so would be unworthy of His very nature.
So, what was God to do? Could He call for humanity to repent of their transgression? Some might argue that this would be fitting, suggesting that just as transgression led to corruption, repentance might restore them to a state of incorruption. Repentance alone, however, would not satisfy divine consistency; if death did not follow from the transgression, it would undermine God’s truthfulness.
Furthermore, repentance alone does not free humanity from the corruption now ingrained into their nature; it only stops the sinful actions. If humanity’s plight were simply a matter of sin without the resulting corruption, repentance might suffice. But once humanity transgressed, they fell under the sway of corruption intrinsic to their nature and forfeited the grace of being made in God’s image. Repentance alone, then, could not resolve the crisis.
So, what—or rather, who—was required to bring about the grace and restoration needed? Who else but the Word of God Himself, who had originally created everything from nothing? It was His role, and His alone, to restore the corruptible to incorruption and to maintain the Father’s consistency in character. As the Word of the Father, He alone had the power to re-create all things and was worthy to suffer for all, serving as humanity’s representative before God.
For this purpose, the incorporeal, incorruptible, and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, He was not far from us before, as no part of creation has ever existed without Him; while He ever abides in union with the Father, He also fills all things that are. But now, He entered the world in a new way, humbling Himself in love and revealing Himself directly to us. He saw that humanity, a race endowed with a reason that reflected the Father’s Mind, was deteriorating and facing ruin, with death reigning over all.
He saw that corruption held us captive, the inevitable consequence of our transgression. He saw, on the one hand, how impossible it would be to simply repeal the law without fulfilling it, but also how unthinkable it was for His own creations to vanish into nothingness. He saw the immense wickedness of humanity accumulating against them, and He saw their universal vulnerability to death. And so, compassion moved Him; He could not bear to see death victorious over us. Instead of allowing His creatures to perish and His Father’s work to come to nothing, He took on a body—a human body, just like ours.
He did not simply take on any generic form or merely appear; if that had been His intent, He could have revealed His divine majesty in any other way. No, He took our body, and not only that, but He took it directly from a pure, stainless virgin, without the intervention of a human father—a body untainted by human will. He, the Almighty and Creator of all, prepared this body within the virgin as His own temple, a sacred vessel in which He dwelled and through which He was made known.
Then, by taking a body like ours, subject to death, He surrendered His body to death on behalf of all humanity and offered it to the Father. He did this purely out of love for us, so that in His death, all might die, and the law of death would be abolished. Having fulfilled its purpose in His body, the law’s power over humanity was rendered powerless. Through this act, He restored humanity, turning them from corruption to incorruption, and brought life to all through His death and the grace of His resurrection. In this way, death was destroyed in humanity just as completely as fire consumes straw.
The Word recognized that corruption could not be overcome except through death; but, as the immortal Word and the Father’s Son, He Himself could not die. For this reason, He took on a body capable of death so that, through its union with the Word, it might serve as a sufficient exchange for all. By this act, His body—remaining incorruptible because of His presence within it—could put an end to corruption for others as well, by the grace of the resurrection. By offering Himself as a pure and perfect sacrifice, He paid the ultimate price for humanity, abolishing death on our behalf.
