Two things:
Great Info! Thanks you for your post.
I will read "On Incarnation, by St. Athanasius" as you suggested. I recently have been reading Augustine and Clement of Alexandria, and I think it's an oversight on the part of newer denominations not to study the early church. These guys were not only God-fearing men, but quite brilliant as well.
1.
@Constantine the Sinner is not a Roman Catholic, or in communion with the Roman Catholic Church; indeed, this entire thread is actually largely built upon an Orthodox critique of Roman Catholic theology. However, the Orthodox churches do believe that we are exclusively the Catholic church, and the Eastern Orthodox of which
@Constantine the Sinner is a member also have a good claim on being Roman, given that the five ancient archbishophrics of the eastern Mediterranean that people like to call the Greek Orthodox Church were really the church of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was very close to the Latin speaking Church of Rome until Rome was conquered by Charlemagne and subjected to political influences that divided the two churches.
2. Jesus Christ is the uncreated Word of God in His Divinity, who for our sakes condescended to assume our created human nature, saving and glorifying us by uniting us personally and hypostatically with the Godhead. This is why we call His birth the Incarnation, and why He is named Emanu-El, meaning God with us. He is not a creature, but He assumed a created nature, putting on our humanity without change, confusion, admixture or division. Indeed, in the writings of the church Fathers, the glory of the Incarnation is often expressed by referring to our Lord as "the God-man Jesus" because of His theandric nature (or his human and divine natures in hypostatic union, if you prefer Chalcedonian terminology).
It is entirely possible to discern this truth from the Scriptural text, and indeed, impossible to believe in a purely created Christ; if you read John 1:2-17, it becomes clear that the Word of God created all things, and ergo is not a creature, but became incarnate, putting on our created nature. As such, He is the firstborn of all creation, having put on created humanity while Himself being uncreated, begotten and not made.
This is the only logical and reasonable answer, and is the belief of the Christian church, as expressed in the Nicene Creed (the Statement of Faith for this site).
St. Athanasius was the fourth century bishop who was horribly persecuted for defending this doctrine against the evil heretic Arius and the vicious sons of Emperor St. Constantine who lacked the saintliness of their Father and instead embraced Arianism, having been tutored by the infamous Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia. St. Athanasius also is the originator of our New Testament canon; he was the first bishop to list the twenty seven books that were to be universally accepted as canonical, resolving what had been a disputed question for several decades (many earlier attempts at a canon either omitted Revelations, Hebrews, Jude, 2 John, 3 John, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and other books, and/or included dubious psuedepigraphical works like 1 Barnabas or the Shepherd of Hermas, or included works that were doctrinally correct but not of apostolic origin, like 1 Clement, or included books of church order like the Didascalia that St. Athanasius reckoned should remain outside of the defined canon of sacred scripture, being subject to revision according to pastoral need, and in some respects already obsolete or only locally applicable).
Every time you read the New Testament, you should think of St. Athanasius, because he edited it; the Table of Contents is his crowning accomplishment.
And he explained the mystery of the Incarnation thus:
"God became man so that we might become god" "becoming sons of God through adoption" "by grace what Christ is by nature"
This is the apostolic faith, as a reading of the works of earlier Patristic figures such as St. Ignatius, St. Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen will confirm.
It also allows us to understand, without resorting to Mormon polytheism, difficult passages like "know ye not that ye are gods?", "be perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect," et cetera.
I suggest you read the book St. Athanasius wrote on the subject, entitled On the Incarnation. It is readily available for free from many websites right across the Internet, translated into English. At least one has a nice introduction by CS Lewis.
