SOURCE: Hardy, Edward Rochie. “Introduction to Athanasius.” In Christology of the Later Fathers, pp. 43-54. The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. III, edited by Edward Rochie Hardy. London: SCM Press Ltd, 1954.

In the following essay, Hardy provides an overview of On the Incarnation of the Word and explains why it is a Christian classic of great influence.

Background and Ideas

For forty-five years Bishop of Alexandria, for fifty a central figure in the exposition and defense of orthodox theology, Athanasius is one of the dominating personalities in the history of the Church. Yet practically all his writings were produced in response to some immediate need, or as a blow for the faith in one of the crises of his long struggle with successive emperors. Even the Life of Antony, the preparation of which seems to have been a kind of recreation in his laborious days, serves the immediately...