(an excerpt from a paper I recently wrote for Theopolis Institute)

Athanasius speaks of the pre-existence of the Word; the Son is “by nature bodiless and existing as the Word;” in time He “appeared to us in a human body for our salvation.” (Incarnation, 1) Yet Athanasius also speaks frequently of the act of creation not by abstracting, but in reference to “our Savior Jesus Christ” (particularly in Against the Gentiles, 2). He looks back on the whole of the life of God through the lens of what God has done in Christ on the cross.

Robert Jenson (in the first volume of his Systematic Theology as well as his clarifying article, ‘Once More the Logos asarkos‘) takes this further. For Jenson, we cannot conceive of the Word of God asarkos, without flesh. That is, the Word of God is Jesus of Nazareth, not a metaphysical entity to…