Athanasius [gr. The Immortal] was a titan in the formation of the Christian doctrine. It is vital to stress that Athanasius was writing the New Testament hasn't even been compiled and canonized, yet these were early early days. There were no official victims to refer to, no Orthodoxy, nothing like that. This man provided these things; it's difficult to overstate the importance of the creation of Christian Orthodoxy in his most essential writings entitled "On The Incarnation." It was a defense on precisely why God had to become a human being—why we are still paying for our sins, and how only one person is both fully a man and God could provide this. So what is the foundation for this belief? Simply put, it is a sinful state of humankind and their need for salvation.
Athanasius states plainly that Jesus died to resolve our state of corruption due to the sinful nature that all humans inherit from Adam and Eve. Jesus came to settle man's account with death and free him from the primal transgression. This transgression, Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, posits that ignorance is a virtue in the eyes of the church. We now know the stories of Genesis to be based on nothing more than a mixture of original superstition and plagiarized mythology. We are expected to take the metaphor of the fall of man as the basis for the original sin; we are all supposedly born with it, thus leading to the reason we need salvation.
If we follow this train of thought—this concept of inherited sin and inheritable moral responsibility—it could lead to the justification of human cruelty and discrimination. There is this idea that the crimes of our forefathers are ingrained in your DNA when, in reality, there was never any crime committed. There was no first man; there was no fool, and therefore there was no basis for this concept of original sin. For how many years has this invention been used to justify this idea? This idea that all of humanity is in a state of not just a mere transgression, but total corruption alongside the world's rapists and murderers? By this logic, children, from the moment of their conception, are in a state of corruption deserving unimaginable torture in an infinite series of punishment in hell.
Have you ever heard of anything more cruel and disgusting? Thanks to Athanasius, who grounded the entire necessity of Christ in the concept of original sin, Christianity can never deny this premise—let alone apologize for since this man believed that Jesus came precisely to solve this condition of humanity. More specifically, Athanasius wrote that Jesus came to resolve what he called "the divine dilemma." This dilemma is a conflict between two things; God created man with infinite life and happiness in mind but ruled that the price of sin must be death. It means that when Adam and Eve committed the first sin, God mandated not to disobey his rule, he has to stay to his words and condemn humanity that punishment. The dilemma is, God created us to achieve eternal life. Yet, he can't get back to his rules, so death is the payment. The reason being, if we die, it's an insult to God's demeanor because he may as well never created us in the first place. If we don't die, then God is violating his own words. It's a tight spot for God. This is the main reason why Jesus has to come to pay the price of death for humanity's behalf. Being a man, he could spend a man's punishment of death and being God; He has the power to resurrect himself, restoring eternal life. Ergo, the man pays the price of death, yet a man also achieves eternal life. The dilemma is solved.
The way Athanasius writes suggests that we should celebrate that Jesus offers a solution to the dilemma. However, the dilemma is God's creation in the first place. If we follow this puzzle, humanity should be grateful to show thanks after offering Jesus's life as payment for man's sins. How can God be so merciful as to offer the human race a chance to escape punishment for that crime that humanity didn't commit, and no one committed it in the first place? Of course, Athanasius wrote in his book that the reason Jesus Christ needed to die such a shameful and torturous death because he needed to demonstrate victory above all death, not just death in the noblest forms. Who decided that death should be the punishment for eating the forbidden fruit of Tree of Knowledge? Who created man that gave in the temptation? The existence of Athanasius' "divine dilemma" relies on that God dictated these things. It's because God decreed death as punishment for original sin, so Jesus must fulfill this punishment.
Athanasius was the father of Christian Orthodoxy. He wrote the book to the entire church as a creed for every churchgoer must speak aloud the indebtedness to his ideas and suppress humanity for failure to obey God's law. Irreversibly embossed doctrines of the modern church. Athanasius writes, and the church uses it that young boys and girls shall train themselves to die because they are excited by the prospects that Jesus paid for their sins. The reward for following the decree, even though there is no evidence where that falls, is attained. I must say this is not the way to influence children.
Credit to: CosmicSkeptic
Credit to: Carissa Cayson
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