Why was it not enough for God that humans repent of sin?[ 669]

It was not worthy of God to have warned Adam of the judgment that would result from his eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and then simply take back that judgment when Adam transgressed. St. Athanasius says, “For as I said earlier, by the law death thereafter prevailed against us [because of transgression], and it was impossible to escape the law, since this had been established by God on account of the transgression. And what happened was both truly absurd and improper. It was absurd, on the one hand, that having spoken, God should prove to be lying: that is, having legislated that the human being would die by death if he were to transgress the commandment, yet after the transgression he were not to die but rather this sentence dissolved. For God would not be true if, after saying that we would die, the human being did not die.”⁶⁷⁰

St. Athanasius adds, “But repentance would neither have preserved the consistency of God, for he again would not have remained true if human beings were not held fast by death, nor does repentance recall humans from what is natural, but merely halts sins. If then there were only offence and not the consequence of corruption, repentance would have been fine.”⁶⁷¹ Repentance alone could never restore humanity to that state of purity it had enjoyed from the beginning, nor could it heal human nature of the nature of incorruption that afflicted it as a result of sin.

This can be likened to someone who goes out into icy weather without sufficient clothing and then comes down with a terrible cold. When he visits his doctor, would it be appropriate treatment for the doctor merely to advise him not to go out in the cold weather again without

668 St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Concerning His Own Life 1945–1949 (FOTC 75:130; PG 37:1165–66).

669 See Fr. Marcos Daoud and Mourad Magdy. The Service of Salvation (Arabic: Khedmet Al-Khalas ) (2007): pp. 52–54.

670 St. Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, trans., John Behr (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011) 6: p. 63.

671 St. Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, trans., John Behr (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011) 7: p. 65.

warm clothing? Clearly not. First, she must treat his infection, and only after that should she resort to advising him not to repeat his error.

If God cannot take back the sentence of death upon humanity, and if our repentance is not enough because it cannot by itself heal the corruption of our nature, then His mercy demands that He take up our human nature through the incarnation in order to renew us and take away from us the sentence of death with which we had been justly condemned.