Athanasius Of Alexandria's On The Incarnation

Christianity has always been subjective and ambiguous, which allows for theories and speculation to develop regarding the religion’s values and characteristics. A key matter in theology seeks to understand those values and to identify a model of living that guides people away from corruption to remain in God’s image. Athanasius of Alexandria’s On the Incarnation and Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ address this issue with viewpoints that directly contradict each other. Athanasius examines the Incarnation to defend his position that natural human desires corrupt mankind and suggests there is nothing to prevent evil and sin other than God’s salvation while Nietzsche asserts that corruption occurs from a loss of instinctive nature and proposes

It claims that this religion instills guilt for the feelings and aspirations that are inherent to humanity while promoting a moral system that consistently goes against the instincts and nature of mankind. In seeking moral excellence and “the ideals of humanity,” Nietzsche asserts that mankind loses its instinctive desire to grow and become powerful and, therefore, becomes corrupt (Nietzsche 6). To simplify, corruption can be defined as straying away from innate feelings that encourage growth and yearn for power. Nietzsche uses the concept of transvaluation of values to reiterate his argument that everything that Christianity suggested is good is actually evil and vice versa. Nietzsche sees Christianity as nihilistic, stressing that the values and traditions leave people yearning for redemption that they will never be able to achieve on their own. He does not believe in a God, stating that the church exists to “devalue nature and natural values” and claiming that these religious systems steal power, creating weakness in mankind (Nietzsche 34). He creates a primitive and selfish lifestyle as a model to compliment this new concept of inverted values. This lifestyle is based on the Hyperboreans, a mythical race that lives North of the Arctic Circle and exemplifies strength and vigor. Nietzsche believed in training people from a young age to maximize power to assert dominance and exude toughness because goodness was associated with everything that creates a feeling of power and, therefore, happiness. Straying away from this is the reason for man’s weakness, which he claims is equivalent to unhappiness and all that is considered bad. According to The Anti-Christ, weakness is to be avoided at all costs and adopts a mindset similar to the concept of survival of the fittest. More specifically, the weakest should die and it is