When death took possession more and more... people and corruption remained in them, then the human race was corrupted, but the verbal and created in the image man disappeared, and the work done by God perished: because... death prevailed over us by the power of the law, and it was impossible to escape the law, since it was ordained by God because of the crime. Something came out in the true sense incongruous and at the same time indecent. It was not in accordance with anything for God, having spoken a word, to lie... Then there would be no truth in God, if when God said that you would die, man did not die. But it was also unseemly that once created rational beings and those who partook of His Word should perish and through corruption should again turn into non-existence. It would be unworthy of God's goodness, that what God has created should be corrupted by the devil's deception of men. On the other hand, it was most unseemly for people, either through their own negligence or through demonic deception, to destroy God's art.

And so, when the verbal creatures were corrupted and such works of God perished, what was it necessary for God, who is good, to do? Shall we allow corruption to prevail over them and death to possess them? What was the need to create them in the beginning? It would be better not to create, than for the created to remain unvisible and to perish. If God, having created, ignores that His work is decaying, then from such negligence the impotence and not the goodness of God is known to a greater extent than if He had not created men in the beginning... Thus, it was necessary not to allow people to be swallowed up in corruption, because this would be unbecoming of God's goodness and unworthy of it.

("The Discourse on the Incarnation of God the Word", 6)

Athanasius, like all the Fathers of the Church, believes that death and corruption were not created by God, but came into the world as a result of the Fall. God created everything "good" (as the Bible says, "good"), but endowed with free will and capable of rebelling against Him. The result of the rebellion was death - a powerful cosmic reality that seized power and truly reigned in "this world".

The Doctrine of Salvation

Salvation, according to Athanasius, consists not simply in the forgiveness of the sins of the human race, but in the deliverance of the world from death and corruption:

For this reason, that bodiless, incorruptible, immaterial Word of God comes to our realm, from which it was not far from before, because not a single part of creation has remained deprived of Him, but, abiding with His Father, He fills the entire universe in all its parts. But He comes, condescending to us by His love for humanity and appearing among us. And seeing that the verbal human race is perishing, that death reigns over men in corruption: noting also that the threat of transgression keeps corruption alive in us, and it would be incongruous to abolish the law before it is fulfilled; noticing also the impropriety of what had been done, because that of which He Himself was the creator was destroyed; noticing also the wickedness of people, which surpasses all measure, because people gradually increased it to their own detriment to the point of intolerability; noticing also that all people are guilty of death, He took pity on our race, had compassion on our infirmity, condescended to our corruption, did not tolerate the possession of death, and so that what was created would not perish and be found in vain, which His Father did for people, He takes upon Himself a body, and a body that is not alien to ours. For it did not just want to be in the body and only wished not to appear. And if it only wanted to appear, then it could accomplish its Theophany by means of another more perfect one. But it receives our body, and not simply, but from the all-pure, uncorrupted, unadulterated Virgin, a pure body, not in the least inviolable to male intercourse. Being omnipotent and the Creator of the universe, in the Virgin He prepares a body for his temple and appropriates it to himself as an instrument, allowing himself to be known in it and dwelling in it. And thus, having borrowed from us a body similar to ours, because we were all guilty of the corruption of death, having given it over to death for all, he brings it to the Father. And this He does out of love for mankind, so that, on the one hand, since all were dying, to put an end to the law of the corruption of men, by the fact that his power was fulfilled in the Lord's body, ... and on the other hand, to return people who have turned to corruption to incorruptibility and to revive them from death by appropriating the body and by the grace of the Resurrection, destroying death in them like straw with fire.

(Ibid. 8)

The salvation of the world for St. Athanasius is not a speculative problem, as for Origen, but a matter of life and death. The created world is real, living, and therefore precious in the eyes of God; death is such a powerful enemy that it can be defeated only from within, only by its own weapon - death, and moreover by the death of the incarnate God himself. For this reason the Incarnation of God takes place, by which the power of death is overcome, and corruption is destroyed: