ABSTRACT
In our analysis of the Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione, we have already noted how Athanasius uses the notion of to articulate God’s gracious intervention in terms of qualifying the difference and separateness that necessarily obtains between created nature and the Creator. Thus while it is intrinsic to the definition of created nature1 to relapse into the nothingness whence it came, God acts to qualify this ontological poverty of creation by granting it a participation in the Word.2 Such participation stabilizes and orders creation in a way reflective of the divine power and goodness rather than of creation’s intrinsic definition. The natural difference between God and creation is thus de facto modified by this participation. This kind of modification achieves a much more intensified expression in the case of humanity. In this context also, Athanasius speaks in terms of God acting to mitigate the intrinsic definition of creaturely being by means of “grace”:
3 The “added grace” granted to humanity consists in a distinct level of participation in the Word which renders human beings
4 As a result, the natural difference by which human beings would have been prevented from knowledge of God, “since he was uncreated, while they had been made from nothing,”5
is overcome such that humanity can come to know God and “live a divine life.”6
