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“God became man to make man God,” obviously emphasizes incarnation (“God became man...”) and man’s deification (“to make man God”); it does not even mention Christ’s redemptive death on the cross or His resurrection.
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Probably, that is how a Protestant understands St Athanasius’ maxim. For an Orthodox Christian, the phrase "God became man to make men gods" emphasizes incarnation, Christ's resurrection and man’s salvation (deification). These three things are intimately connected. Let me try to explain this. (Brothers, please excuse me. Since English is not my native language, I will have to use my “copy and paste” approach).
Roman Catholics and Protestants tend to see the relationship between God and man in juridical terms. God is the judge, man is the criminal. The Son of God takes the sentence upon Himself, therefore God forgives man. (BTW, does it sound logically when God became angry with man after Adam’s fall, but later, seeing how people tortured, crucified and killed His only begotten Son, the Father tempered justice with mercy?)
Orthodox faith sees the relationship
therapeutically. The Eastern Fathers have been consistent in understanding that the language is of the Old Testament is often figurative and should not be understood literally.
St. Anthony the Great says: “God is good and is not controlled by passions. He does not change... It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him to change, but that through our actions and our turning to the Divinity, we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.”
For Orthodox Christians, “sin” or “sinfulness” is not just a violation of God's law that leads to punishment. Sin is sickness, a self-perpetuating illness which distorts the whole human being and corrupts the image of God. Man is sick (sin and death are consequences of the sickness). Christ is the Great Physician. As a man the Son of God dies and rises to life again. Through His participation in humanity, Christ heals the sickness and restores/divinizes human nature, destroying the power of death.
St Athanasius the Great and St Cyril of Alexandria claimed that we are not guilty of Adam’s sin, though we inherit a corrupted nature.
“The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image. In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once and for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed according to the Image [of God].” St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation.
Despite the Western understanding of redemption in terms of penal substitution or satisfaction models, the Eastern understanding of redemption - a redemption which ultimately calls all of the created order to deification by grace.
It is the gift of the Incarnation which gives humanity the possibility of deification. Since the first Adam went astray and deprived himself of the gratuitous gift of union with God, the Second Adam, the divine Logos achieved this union of the two natures in his person. Therefore the Incarnation of Christ does not simply redeem humanity from the effects of the fall but completes the pre-fallen nature of humanity by deifying it. For the fathers, the deification of Christ's human nature became the vessel by which our human nature too could be deified. This is the basis of the theology of deification which is found in the fathers. Fr John Meyendorff described it in this way:
"The hypostatic union of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ is the very foundation of salvation, and therefore of deification: in Christ, humanity has already participated in the uncreated life of God because the 'flesh' has truly become 'the flesh of God'".
So, where is the resurrection in the phrase "God became man to make men gods"? The resurrection of Christ is the center of Orthodox faith. But Resurrection does not simply mean bodily resuscitation. In His resurrection Jesus is in a new and glorious form. He appears in different places immediately. He is difficult to recognize (Lk 24.16; Jn 20.14). He eats and drinks to show that He is not a ghost (Lk 24.30, 39). He allows himself to be touched (Jn 20.27, 21.9). And yet He appears in the midst of disciples, “the doors being shut” (Jn 20.19, 26). And he “vanishes out of their sight” (Lk 24.31). Christ indeed is risen, but His resurrected humanity is full of life and divinity. It is humanity in the new form of the eternal life of the Kingdom of God.
“So it is with the resurrection of the dead: What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raked in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.
Thus, it is written, the first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam [i.e. Christ] became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, then the spiritual.
The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man from heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have home the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven (1 Cor 15.42–50).
The resurrection of Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection of all humanity. It is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, “according to the Scriptures” where it is written, “For Thou doest not give me up unto Sheol [that is, the realm of death], or let Thy Godly one see corruption” (Ps 16.10; Acts 2.25–36). In Christ all expectations and hopes are filled: O Death, where is your sting? O Sheol, where is your victory? (Hos 13.14).