The Life of St. Athanasius
Rarely in the history of the Church has the course of its
development been more significantly influenced by one person than it was by
Athanasius in the fourth century. It is
not an exaggeration to say that by his tireless defense of the phrase in the
Creed of Nicaea, homousios, “of one being [with the Father]“, he preserved
orthodox teaching for the Church in the East during a doctrinally turbulent
time in the Church’s history. Two of the
late fourth century defenders of the Nicene teaching noted his contribution,
Gregory of Nazianzus calling him “the pillar of the Church”, and Basil
the Great saying that Athanasius was “the
God-given physician of her wounds”.
Born about 296 in Alexandria of Christian parents who were
probably Egyptian (several writers commented on the darkness of his skin),
Athanasius was educated in the catechetical school in that city. He joined the clergy about 312 and was
ordained to the diaconate by Bishop Alexander in 319. He quickly gained attention by his opposition
to the teaching of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, whose denial of the full
deity of the Second Person of the Trinity (the Son) was gaining widespread
acceptance through the East. Athanasius
accompanied Alexander as his secretary and theological adviser to the Council
of Nicaea in 325, which dealt with the Arian controversy. Athanasius was successful in winning
acceptance of the phrase, homousios, (see
below) despite the fact that a number of the bishops objected to the use of a
phrase not drawn directly from the Scriptures.
Athanasius realized that nothing less than the unequivocal expression of
the full Godhead of the Son in homousios was necessary to defend the Church’s
confession of Jesus against the Arians.
On Alexander’s death in 328, Athanasius, whom Alexander had
named as his successor, became bishop of Alexandria, with the general approval
of the bishops of Egypt. As a new
bishop, Athanasius made extensive pastoral visits in the entire Egyptian
province (over which the bishop of Alexandria was metropolitan), but he faced
vicious opposition from numerous schismatics who had opposed his election to
the episcopate.
Throughout the fractured and tumultuous course of his
episcopate, Athanasius defended Nicene christology against emperors,
magistrates, councils, bishops, and theologians. He suffered exile five times, to places as
far-flung as northern Gaul and the Libyan desert. Supported by the bishops of Rome and
generally supported by the Church in the West, Athanasius sometimes seemed to
stand alone in the East for the catholic faith, hence the phrase that became a
byword: Athanasius contra mundum – Athanasius against the world. In his own city he became a beloved bishop,
so that by the time of his last exile, in 364, the emperor Valens had to recall
him after only four months to avoid an insurrection in the city. He then remained in his see until his death
on May 2, 373. During his forty-five
year episcopate he had spent altogether seventeen years away from his see in
exile.
Athanasius wrote voluminously. His Defense against the Arians and The
History of the Arians remain the best extant sources of knowledge about the
Church in the first half of the fourth century.
His brilliant treatise On the Incarnation, written in his youth, and his
Discourses against the Arians remain among the clearest and most forceful
explanations of the unity of the triune God and of the necessity of the
incarnation of Jesus. His biographical
Life of Saint Antony was immensely popular (it was known to English
hagiographers at the time of the Venerable Bede) and had a wide influence in
promoting monasticism. Because
Alexandria was recognized as having the best astronomers in the classical
world, it fell to the bishop of Alexandria to send out a festal letter soon
after the feast of the Epiphany each year, giving the proper date for the
beginning of Lent and for the celebration of the Paschal feast (Easter). In his Festal Letter of 367, his thirty-ninth
such letter, Athanasius gave the oldest extant list of the twenty-seven books
of the New Testament, calling them “the springs of salvation”.
In On the Incarnation, he writes: The Savior of us all, the Word of God, in his
great love took to himself a body and moved as man among men, meeting their
senses, so to speak, halfway. He became
himself an object for the sense, so that those who were seeking God in sensible
things might apprehend the Father through the works which he, the Word of God,
did in the body. Human and human-minded
as men were, therefore, to whichever side they looked in the sensible world,
they found themselves taught the truth.”
Adapted from
Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1980), The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, and The New
Book of Festivals and Commemorations
St.
Athanasius “Homousios”
The Fathers of the Council at Nice
were at one time ready to accede to the request of some of the bishops and use
only scriptural expressions in their definitions. But, after several attempts, they found that
all these were capable of being explained away.
Athanasius describes with much wit and penetration how he saw them
nodding and winking to each other when the orthodox proposed expressions which
they had thought of a way of escaping from the force of. After a series of attempts of this sort it
was found that something clearer and more unequivocal must be adopted if real unity
of faith was to be attained; and accordingly the word homousios was adopted.
Just what the Council intended this expression
to mean is set forth by St. Athanasius as follows:
“That the Son is not only like to the Father, but that, as his image, he
is the same as the Father; that he is of the Father; and that the resemblance
of the Son to the Father, and his immutability, are different from ours: for in us they are something acquired, and
arise from our fulfilling the divine commands.
Moreover, they wished to indicate by this that his generation is
different from that of human nature; that the Son is not only like to the
Father, but inseparable from the substance of the Father, that he and the
Father are one and the same, as the Son himself said: ‘The Logos is always in the Father, and, the
Father always in the Logos,’ as the sun and its splendour are inseparable.”
