atonement needed

Athanasius wrote the following in On the Incarnation:

It was necessary that the debt owed by everyone should be paid, and this debt owed was that everyone should die. For this particular reason, Jesus Christ came among us… He offered up his sacrifice on behalf of everyone, yielding his temple [i.e., his body] to death in the place of everyone…. And so it was that two wonderful things came to pass at once: the death of everyone was accomplished in the Lord’s body, and death and corruption were completely done away with by reason of the Word that was united with it. For death was necessary, and death must be suffered on behalf of everyone, so that the debt owed by everyone might be paid.

HT:TOG