Athanasius of Alexandria was a bishop in fourth-century Egypt. His life was one of conscience and conviction, standing up for what he believed, even in the face of very powerful opponents. At the age of 27, he plunged himself into the debate about whether Christ was just the Son of God, but essentially distinct, or whether He was also God Himself. Thanks in part to Athanasius’ arguments, his position of Trinitarianism (that the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost were all One God) became the official position of Christendom, and remains so to this day. Later in his career as a bishop, he found himself exiled five different times by four different Roman emperors. Ultimately, however, Athanasius’ fierce devotion to his beliefs won out, and he became widely recognized as one of the most influential and central Christian theologians of all time.

This work, On the Incarnation (or sometimes On the Incarnation of the Word of God), was his first book. It tackles the central point of the divine saga, God’s embodiment on Earth as Christ, and seeks to understand, in detail, the “why” and “how” of it all. It argues why such an act was necessary to rescue mankind from damnation, and how we should best understand the idea that Christ was both God and man at once. It lays out perhaps the most concise and carefully crafted summary of Christian Orthodox thought about the most important event in human history. C.S. Lewis called the work “a masterpiece”, and it is still widely read and widely beloved.

It is our hope that this audiobook version will help you in your spiritual journey. We hope it will bring clarity, conviction, and a deeper sense of devotion to your faith, as it did to the Church fathers so many centuries ago.