Athanasius reminds us that Advent is for teaching—and learning
For those long out of school, Advent may appear completely unrelated to the academic calendar. But for students and teachers in the throes of exams, and for parents planning around pageants and vacation days, the academic calendar is related to Advent—because it runs directly in opposition to this season. People who have to obey academic calendars feel the compromises that December schedules force—cards sent late, cookies not baked, wreaths unmade, gifts chosen last minute. It almost seems like intentional competition. And Advent usually loses.
Athanasius, a fourth-century AD theologian from Alexandria, can help us resolve this conflict in favor of Advent with a tender reflection on God as our teacher. In his treatise On the Incarnation, Athanasius explains that the purpose of God’s dwelling with humans is to heal and teach us. Churches with liturgical calendars mark Advent as a penitential season, but along with Athanasius, I claim Advent as an instructional season. Prayer, almsgiving, and self-discipline belong in this time, as do teaching and learning.
Many Christmasy moral tales push the point that God became a person to speak our language. These stories tend to fall flat, though they take inspiration from the opening verses of Hebrews pointing out that God spoke through the Son, or the hymn in John’s Gospel to the Word made flesh. God came as a man not because you have to be a bird to speak to birds or because people only learn from those who look like them. The special challenges we humans face in understanding God come from our frailty, and not just from speaking a language different from God’s.
Athanasius was an opponent of Arian heresies, and in this text he offers reasons why God “who pervades all” decided to appear in human form rather than as “other and nobler parts of creation . . . such as sun or moon or stars or fire or air.” Nudging the imagination away from the spectacle of God revealed as flame or whirlwind, Athanasius explains that God’s aim was not “to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear.” God came to teach humans what they need to know—and to teach in a way not beyond “their capacity to receive it.”
The Incarnation brought gorgeous infinity closer to us through humility because our capacities are so small. Athanasius’s reflection feels shockingly contemporary in assumptions it makes about the lengths a teacher might go, lengths that fall far beyond platitudes about teaching. Knowing us well, God plans necessary accommodations, waits out the shenanigans and the sleepiness and distractedness and misunderstanding of the beloved refractory persons who need to learn. God knows our capacity for sight and understanding. God puts Himself at the disposal not of those who could perform best but of those who need Him most. God makes the way around our weakness by entering it because he does not want us to miss this gift. God will teach in the way we can learn. The point of God’s coming to humans this way is not to bring shock and awe but to make a way for us to understand and be healed.
This passage from Athanasius is about God, but it also invites meditation on what it means to be a good teacher. A good teacher offers something precious in a shape that learners can receive, even though the great thing the teacher hopes to give might be too big to take in all at once. The teacher’s accommodation is more than caring for a kid as whole person in order to get him to open up the hatch and let algebra in. The good teacher dwells with students, observes impediments, and meets students as persons—not ID numbers or butts in seats, but not as colleagues either. Teachers squander their office on clichés like, “they taught me more than I taught them.” If that were true, it would be hoarding of a treasure rather than generosity. It would be roughly the same error as flaunting learned brilliance without making a way for students to grow into it themselves.
Athanasius also invites reflection on what it means to be a good learner. Our capacities are so small! To pretend otherwise is to disregard the Incarnation. It is salutary in Advent to recognize ourselves as needy and weak—a typical exercise for Christian preparation to meet God. Americans might reflect a little further than that, though, given democratic and meritocratic idioms of education. These idioms may be in tension with each other but share agreement on pedagogy. Seldom do they urge learners to think of themselves as incapable and slow. Yet we all are slow and limited in many spheres. We handle ourselves better and can be patient with others when we remember this fact. Admitting weakness may not be American Christians’ strong suit at this historical moment. But God comes to us as a perceptive and patient teacher because of our weakness. God accommodates not to concede or to avoid conflict but because it really matters that we grasp the healing truth. We are the ones—all we like sheep—who need the accommodation.
Advent can help Christians overcome their common blunting of awe by over-familiarity (baby Jesus asleep on the hay) or their no-less-common defensiveness (Jesus is the reason for the season!). In contrast, meditating on God’s tenderness to instruct us can awaken astonishment.
Instruction at the very heart of the Incarnation is a beautiful image. Athanasius confronted challenges to Christianity different from ours. I can’t help but note that his text seems like a case for knowing church history. The strangeness of the reasons against Christianity leveled in other periods puts current ones in perspective—they seem so puny. When considering earlier Christian writers, we also notice truths that we may not observe when approaching the faith only from present-day angles. I am dumbstruck by Athanasius’s observation that God, choosing to enter creation, could have been incarnated as a star or wind. What an astonishing kind of incarnation that would have been! But that is not what we needed, and God knew it. Heaven and nature should sing that song.
Agnes R. Howard is a Contributing Editor for Current. She teaches in Christ College, the honors college at Valparaiso University, and has many debts of gratitude to her colleague Amanda Ruud, not least for directing her to this text from Athanasius.
Image: St. Athanasius, St. Patrick’s Seminary, Menlo Park, California