Athanasius expounds the prayer of Jesus in John 17 as follows: “whence is this their perfecting, but that I, Your Word, having borne their body, and become man, have perfected the work, which You gave Me, O Father? And the work is perfected, because men, redeemed from sin, no longer remain dead; but being deified , have in each other, by looking at Me, the bond of charity.”

This is a remarkably dense statement, and demands some disentangling.

First, Jesus speaks of perfecting, telos-ing, humanity reaching its end.  He “completes” the work, and in so doing “completes” His disciples.

Second, this perfection is linked with redemption from sin and death, but also to deification.  Man made in the image of God is destined to be deified.

Third, deification is closely connected with resurrection, overcoming death, which raises the question: Given that the Greeks thought of the gods as “immortals,” do the fathers use “deification” simply as a way of speaking about eternal life?

Fourth, this perfecting of the human race depends on the incarnation.

Fifth, this perfecting, deliverance from death and sin, and deification, is a social reality.  Through the Son, especially in the Son’s unity with the Father, believers have a paradigm of charity.  And not a paradigm: It is axiomatic for Athanasius that the gaze is a transforming gaze; “by looking at Me” is not just looking at a model, which one then strives to conform to; the conformity comes through the transforming impact of the gaze.  By looking at Jesus, contemplating His unity with the Father, disciples are bound in charity with one another.

This, finally, as always, takes us back to the Arians.  They don’t contemplate the Son in unity with the Father, but profess a false Son who is alien to the Father.  Their Christological heresy thus cannot be anything but schismatic, since they cannot be transformed and bound in charity by contemplation of the Son who is proper to the Father’s essence.

And, finally finally, this is a fine example of how Athanasius’ work replicates the density of Scripture.  He won’t stay put in a neatly defined Christological locus.  His Christological/Trinitarian polemic spurts out to soteriology, eschatology, anthropology, ecclesiology.  Just like John, just like Jesus.