Athanasius on the crucifixion and resurrection:
And besides, the Saviour came to accomplish not His own death, but the death of men; whence He did not lay aside His body by a death of His own – for He was Life and had none – but received that death which came from men, in order perfectly to do away with this when it met Him in His own body. … The Lord was especially concerned for the resurrection of the body which He was set to accomplish. For what He was to do was to manifest it as a monument of victory over death, and to assure all of His having effected the blotting out of corruption, and of the incorruption of their bodies from thenceforward; as a gage of which and a proof of the resurrection in store for all, He has preserved His own body incorrupt. … So something surprising and startling has happened; for the death, which they thought to inflict as a disgrace, was actually a monument of victory against death itself. (On the Incarnation of the Word, 22.3–4; 24.4)
