In parts 27-28 of his classic work On the Incarnation, Athanasius asserts that death has been objectively defeated by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and one of the ways you can see this is true is by observing that, for Christians, “no longer is death fearsome, but all believers in Christ tread on it as nothing.”
First of all, I’m struck by how he talks about the death of death as a cosmic fact. It’s not merely a private religious experience someone may have, but when a person becomes a Christian, they personally begin to participate in a cosmic reality that took place in the death and resurrection of Christ: the death of death itself!
You can see this reality by observing those who participate in it: by the way so many Christians (even boys and young girls, Athanasius says!) treat death as nothing, knowing that it has been defeated by Christ.
Secondly, Athanasius’ argument in part 28 makes me laugh out loud. He is speaking to those who may still doubt that death has been defeated in the resurrection of Jesus. Even after seeing so many martyrs go willingly to death, he says,
If, regardless, he still has doubt in his mind that death has been destroyed and brought to an end… let the one not believing the victory over death accept the faith of Christ and come over to his teaching, and he will see the weakness of death and the victory over it.
Athanasius is basically saying. “Don’t believe me about death being defeated? Become a Christian and you’ll see it’s true!” Isn’t that funny? But Athanasius is not just being cute or flippant. Rather, he understands that, while the death of death really is an objective fact, you can really only perceive it with the eyes of faith. It’s not the kind of thing that’s scientifically verifiable by disinterested, academic observation. It’s a reality we enter into when we take a step of embodied trust in Jesus.
One of the axioms in Having the Mind of Christ is that God transforms us not through detached analysis but through embodied participation. In other words, we can never truly see a spiritual truth by examining it from a safe distance. We can’t understand the kingdom of God by moving away from it and analyzing it. We only really see and understand spiritual things from the inside, as we participate in them.
It’s kind of like trying on a new pair of glasses. You can’t really know if they work by looking at them and analyzing them from a distance. You have to put them on your face and participate in the way they bend the light, and see how your eyes respond to it. Only after trying the glasses on do you know whether or not they are helpful to you. (And often it takes a few days or weeks to acclimate to a new prescription, but the only way to acclimate is to keep wearning the glasses.)
It’s the same with faith—if you want to find out whether death has been destroyed by the death and resurrection of Christ, there’s no other way to really find out except to “accept the faith of Christ and come over to his teaching.” Just try following Jesus as a disciple, and then you’ll find out. You’ve got to give yourself over to it before you’ll really understand even the first part of it.