Athanasius of Alexandria — Overview
Champion of Nicene orthodoxy; on the Incarnation and salvation by union with Christ.
On the Incarnation: Why God Became Man
He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.
On the Incarnation, 54 (NPNF 2.4) (2 Pet. 1:4; John 14:9; Gal. 4:4–5)
...the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense this was not far from Him, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are...Yet He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us.
For just as, though the sun is not defiled by the contact of his rays with earth and dung, but rather enlightens and cleanses them, thus He Who made the sun is not defiled by being made known in a body, but rather the body is cleansed and quickened by His indwelling.
On Christ's Death and Resurrection
...the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished. Death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of all might be paid. Wherefore, the Word, as I said, being Himself incapable of death, assumed a mortal body, that He might offer it as His own in place of all...
On the Incarnation, 17 (NPNF 2.4) (Heb. 2:9; Rom. 6:10; 2 Cor. 5:21)
For if death is on the body, and death is destroyed by the indwelling of the Word, as we have said, what then was needed for such a grace but the Word of God, which has power also over death? And from where else could the power of life come to destroy the corruption of death, but from the Life Himself, even our Lord Jesus Christ?
On the Incarnation, 44 (NPNF 2.4) (1 Cor. 15:54–57; John 11:25)
On the Deity of the Son
The Arians did not stop there, but thought to make Him a creature; and said that once He was not, and that He was made out of things not existing. But the Church anathematized them for this, as holding what is not of faith, since that is not in the Scriptures...But His generation is ineffable to every created nature.
Defence of the Nicene Definition, 3.14 (NPNF 2.4) (John 1:1–3; Prov. 8:22–31)
The Son of God, the same is Jesus Christ. Let no one then, who believes in the Son, doubt about the Holy Spirit; but let him know that the Holy Spirit is not a creature, but is proper to the substance of God, and is divine...not as one of many, but as the one Spirit of God, and His one Word, who belongs to the one God.
Letter to Serapion, IV.1 (NPNF 2.4) (1 Cor. 2:11; John 4:24)
On the Psalms as Christ's Prayer Book
The Psalms surpass all other books of Scripture in this respect: they reflect on us the movements of our own soul, and help us toward what we need — to turn to God and to be corrected by Him...In most books of Scripture, you read either precepts or examples; in the Psalms, you read the very feelings of the heart.
Letter to Marcellinus, 10–11 (NPNF 2.4) (Ps. 119:9–11; Col. 3:16)
But beyond all this, it is the peculiar and excellent feature of the Psalms, that they possess, described and portrayed in all their variety, the movements of the human soul — its risings and its falls in various ways, its repentances, its conversions, all these are written out in the Psalms.
Letter to Marcellinus, 10 (NPNF 2.4) (Ps. 22:1; Ps. 51:1; Ps. 95:1)