If he did not rise, but is still dead, how is it that he routs and persecutes and overthrows the false gods, whom unbelievers think to be alive, and the evil spirits whom they worship? For where Christ is named, idolatry is destroyed and the fraud of evil spirits is exposed; indeed, no such spirit can endure that name, but takes flight on the sound of it. This is the work of One who lives, not of one dead; and, more than that, it is the work of God. It would be absurd to say that the evil spirits whom he drives out and the idols which he destroys are alive, but that he who drives out and destroys, and whom they themselves acknowledge to be the Son of God, is dead.
In a word, then, those who disbelieve in the resurrection have no support in facts, if their gods and evil spirits do not drive away the supposedly dead Christ. Rather, it is he who convicts them of being dead.
Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, fourth century A.D.
