Commenting on the theme of the Fall resulting in the coming of Christ (the concept of the felix culpa) in early Christianity, Darwell Stone provided the following from Athanasius, Augustine, and Leo the Great:
The Fathers on the connexion between the Fall and the Incarnation
The following passages are those chiefly referred to in Athanasius, De Incar., 4: ‘In speaking of the appearing of the Saviour among us, it is necessary for us to speak also of the origin of men that you may know that we were the cause of His coming down (οτι η ημων αιτια εκεινω γεγονε προφασις της καθοδου), and that our transgression (η ημων παραβασις) called forth the loving-kindness of the Word, so that the Lord hastened to us and appeared among men;’ Orat. C. Arian, ii. 54: ‘The need of men (η των ανθρωπων χρεια) precedes His becoming man, and without out (ης ανευ) He would not have put on flesh.’
St. Augustine, Serm., clxxiv. 2: ‘If man had not perished, the Son of man had not come.’
St. Leo, Serm., lxxvii. 2: ‘If man, made in the image and likeness of God, had remained in the dignity of His own nature, and had not been deceived by the fraud of the devil and departed, through appetite, from the law laid down for him, the Creator of the world would not have become a creature, nor would the Everlasting have entered temporal condition, nor would God the Son, equal to God the Father, have put on the form of a servant and the likeness of sinful flesh.’ (Darwell Stone, Outlines of Christian Dogma [London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900], 286)
