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By Archibald Robertson.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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76 Pages (Part II)
Page 9
The second book is addressed to the question of the compatibility of the entire manhood with the entire sinlessness of Christ. This difficulty he meets by insisting that the Word took in our nature all that God had made, and nothing that is the work of the devil. This excludes sin, and includes the totality of our nature.
This closes the list of the dated works which can be ascribed with fair probability to Athanasius.
The remainder of the writings of Athanasius may be enumerated under groups, to which the 'dated' works will also be assigned by their numbers as given above. Works falling into more than one class are given under each.
a. Letters. (Numbers 3, 7, 11, 12, 17, 18, 21, 26-28, 30-33; spurious letters, see infr. p. 581.)
b. Dogmatic. (2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 20, 22-24, 26, 27, 29-31, 34.)
(35.) De Trinitate et Spiritu Sancto (Migne xxvi. 1191). Preserved in Latin only, but evidently from the Greek. Pronounced genuine by Montfaucon, and dated (?) 365.
(36) De Incarnatione et Contra Arianos (ib. 984). The Athanasian authorship of this short tract is very questionable. It is quoted as genuine by Theodoret Dial. ii. and by Gelasius de duabus naturis. In some councils it is referred to as 'On the Trinity against Apollinarius;' by Facundus as 'On the Trinity.' The tract is in no sense directed against Apollinarius. In reality it is an argument, mainly from Scripture, for the divinity of Christ, with a digression (13-19) on that of the Holy Spirit. On the whole the evidence is against the favourable verdict of Montfaucon, Ceillier, &c. That Athanasius should, at any date possible for this tract, have referred to the Trinity as 'the three Hypostases' is out of the question (S:10): his explanation of Prov. viii. 22 in Orat. ii. 44 sqq. is in sharp contrast with its reference to the Church in S:6; at a time when the ideas of Apollinarius were in the air and were combated by Athanasius (since 362) he would not have used language savouring of that system (S:S:2, 3, 5, 7, &c.). It has been thought that we have here one of the Apollinarian tracts which were so industriously and successfully circulated under celebrated names (infra, on No. 40); the express insistence on two wills in Christ (S:21), if not in favour of Athanasian might seem decisive against Apollinarian authorship, but the peculiar turn of the passage, which correlates the one will with sarx the other with pneuma and theos is not incompatible with the latter, which is, moreover, supported by the constant insistance on God having come, en sarki and en homoiomati anthropou. The anthropos teleios of S:8 and the homoiothe kata panta of S:11 lose their edge in the context of those passages. The first part of S:7 could scarcely have been written by an earnest opponent of Apollinarianism. This evidence is not conclusive, but it is worth considering, and, at any rate, leaves it very difficult to meet the strong negative case against the genuineness of the Tract. (Best discussion of the latter in Bright, Later Treatises of St. A., p. 143; he is supported by Card. Newman in a private letter.)
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/athanasius-life-arianism-2.asp?pg=9
