On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione Verbi Dei)

Athanasius of Alexandria (circa 296-298) - d. 2 May 373] is also given the titles St. Athanasius the Great, Pope St. Athanasius I of Alexandria, St Athanasius the Confessor and (in the Coptic Orthodox Church, mainly) St Athanasius the Apostolic. He was the 20th bishop of Alexandria. His long episcopate lasted 45 years (c. 8 June 328 - 2 May 373), of which over 17 years were spent in five exiles ordered by four different Roman emperors. He is considered to be a renowned Christian theologian, a Church Father, the chief defender of Orthodoxy against Arianism, and a noted Egyptian leader of the fourth century. Athanasius' two-part work of apologetics, Against the Heathen and The Incarnation of the Word of God, completed about 335, was the first great classic of developed Greek Orthodox theology. In Athanasius' system, the Son of God, the eternal Word through whom God made the world, entered the world in human form to lead men back to the harmony from which they had fallen away.