St. Athanasius

The "Athanasian Creed" carries his name, and the Coptic Church keeps a tradition that he was the chief author of the Nicene Creed; OrthodoxWiki reports the first as probably not his work, and the early accounts below describe a deacon at Nicaea and a bishop whose own writings are named in these pages.^ow

For Inquirers

Athanasius was a pastor in Egypt, and much of what we know about him comes from the fact that he kept being thrown out of his own church. His people loved him so much that when he came home from one banishment crowds poured in from all over Egypt to meet him, and the men who hid him in the desert would offer their necks to the soldiers before they said a word about where he was. He was driven out of his city again and again, and each time he came back and went on teaching the same thing.

What he taught fits in a sentence: Jesus is God himself, living a human life. In his day plenty of sincere people found that too much to say. It seemed more modest to call Jesus the first and finest thing God ever made, so close to God that you might almost call him divine. Athanasius would not accept "almost," and he had a picture for why. When a portrait has been smeared and ruined, the paint cannot put the face back; the person who sat for it has to come and sit again. People were made to look like God, and we have spoiled the likeness, so the only one who can restore it is the one whose likeness it is. If Jesus were only the best of the creatures, the portrait would stay ruined.

An old story, told in more than one way, says that as a boy he played at being a church on the beach, with himself as bishop, and baptized the other children, and that a real bishop watching from a window decided it had been done properly and took the boy under his wing. Nobody can say how much of it is true. It fits the man who, years later, on a night when soldiers surrounded his church with drawn swords, sat in his chair, asked the people to sing a psalm, and told them to go home; he would not leave until they had gone, and when most were out his monks and clergy took hold of him and pulled him away through the soldiers, because he would rather be in danger than see any of them hurt. Whoever reads him meets a person who held one thing very hard and was gentle with nearly everything else.

Overview

• Athanasius (born in Alexandria in the late 290s, died in 373) was bishop of Alexandria in Egypt for about forty-five years by OrthodoxWiki's count (the synaxarion says forty-seven),[^ow][^syn-may2] and one of the Church's chief witnesses in the fourth century that the Son of God is truly God.
• He was driven from his see several times, five by the Orthodox Church in America's count and five to seven by OrthodoxWiki's,^oca after he refused to receive Arius's friends back into the Church, and several of his polemical works come from the years of pressure and hiding.
• He wrote On the Incarnation, the Orations Against the Arians, letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit (described in the synaxarion), the Festal Letter that lists the books of the New Testament, and the Life of Anthony.[^syn-may2]
• The Church keeps his memory on January 18, together with St. Cyril of Alexandria, and on May 2, the day of the transfer of his relics.[^syn-jan18]

Summary

Athanasius was born in Alexandria in the late 290s, ordained deacon by Bishop Alexander, and taken by him to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325, where the Church confessed the Son to be of one essence with the Father. When Alexander died, the people of the city demanded Athanasius as his successor, and he held the see until 373, though the anonymous Alexandrian chronicle of his episcopate counts seventeen years, six months and twenty days of exile, hiding and travel within his first forty years.[^acephala-sum] The charges brought against him at Tyre in 335, the intruder Gregory in 339, the soldiers of Constantius in 356, the edict of Julian in 362 and the decree of Valens in 365 each took him from his church, and each time he returned to Alexandria. His treatise On the Incarnation explains why the Word of God had to become man, his Orations Against the Arians argue that a Son who was a creature could not save, his work with the council of Alexandria in 362 carried the same reasoning to the Holy Spirit, his Festal Letter for 367 lists the books of Scripture, and his Life of Anthony held up the monk's life as a pattern. St. Gregory the Theologian preached a panegyric on him, ecumenical councils cite him among the Fathers they follow, and the Church sings of him as "a pillar of Orthodoxy."[^troparion-may2]

Why It Matters

The question Athanasius spent his life on can sound like a quarrel over words: is the Son of God "like" the Father, or "of one essence" with him? He saw what hung on it. Salvation in his account is union with God, and union needs a Savior who is on God's side of the gap that separates the Creator from everything he made. He puts it plainly in the second of his orations: "For man had not been deified if joined to a creature, or unless the Son were very God." Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse II 21.165[^ar2-70] A creature, however exalted, is still on the near side of the gap, and joining ourselves to him leaves us where we started. The Church's whole hope of Theosis rests on the answer he defended.

He stood for decades against emperors who wanted unity in the Church and were ready to enforce it, and in the History of the Arians he argues that the faith cannot be settled by imperial order. A Christian who has to decide what to do when the civil power leans on the Church is in territory Athanasius mapped.

How It Applies

The candidate goes down into the water in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28.19), and Athanasius presses the Arians with what that implies: if they reckon the Son among the creatures, they may as well deny the Holy Laver too, "because it is administered into Father and into Son and not into Creator and Creature, as they account it." De Synodis 36.5[^syn36] A Christian who confesses at the Liturgy that the Son is "begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father" is saying what Athanasius suffered to keep in the creed.

The same man left the Church a list of New Testament books that matches the one it reads, a biography that held up Anthony's life as a pattern for monks, and, in Basil's letters to him, the picture of an old pastor to whom troubled churches looked for a steady hand. A Christian today who is pressed to keep quiet for the sake of peace can take one line from him to heart: "For if it be a bad thing to flee, it is much worse to persecute." Apologia de Fuga 8.4[^fuga8]

A Boy in Alexandria

Alexandria in his day was, as the historian Theodoret describes it, "an immense and populous city, charged with the leadership not only of Egypt, but also of the adjacent countries, the Thebaid and Libya."[^theod-alex] Athanasius was born there in the late 290s; the synaxarion for May 2 says about 297, and the Orthodox Church in America gives about 298.[^birth] Accounts of his family differ. The synaxarion says he was born to pious Christian parents, while OrthodoxWiki says his parents were pagan.[^birth]

The story of the beach comes down in two forms. Socrates Scholasticus, who takes it from Rufinus, says the children were playing at the priesthood on the day the Church remembered the martyr-bishop Peter, with Athanasius in the bishop's chair; Alexander, passing by, sent for the children, questioned them about the parts they had played, and ordered that they be brought to church and taught, Athanasius above all. Socrates adds that it is not improbable that it took place, "for many transactions of this kind have often occurred."[^soc15] The synaxarion tells it with more detail: the children baptized their pagan playmates, Alexander watched from a window, judged that the baptisms had followed the Church's order, sealed them with chrismation, and began to look after the boy's upbringing, first as a reader and then as a deacon.[^birth]

Gregory the Theologian says that he studied literature and philosophy only briefly, so as not to be ignorant of what he meant to despise, and gave himself to the books of the Old and New Testaments.[^or21-6] OrthodoxWiki says that he wrote On the Incarnation before he was twenty.^ow

The Deacon at Nicaea

Alexander's bishopric was troubled from the start by a priest of his own city. Arius taught that the Son was made out of nothing, and Alexander deposed him; the friends of Arius, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia, wrote repeatedly begging Alexander to take him back, and when he refused they turned their resentment on the young deacon who was, as the bishops of Egypt later wrote, "much in the familiarity of Bishop Alexander."[^apol-alex] The scene at Nicaea itself, with its creed and its single disputed word, is told in Nicaea I and the controversy in Arianism.

The early accounts agree that he was at Nicaea as a deacon and that he argued. Theodoret says he attended as one of Alexander's retinue, "then a very young man, although he was the principal deacon,"[^theod-pd] and Socrates, following Rufinus, says that Alexander brought him there to assist in the disputations.[^soc15] Socrates records elsewhere that Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis and Maris "were powerfully opposed by Athanasius, a deacon of the Alexandrian church, who was highly esteemed by Alexander his bishop, and on that account was much envied."[^soc8]

Gregory, preaching his panegyric half a century later, says that he "held the first rank among the members of the Council, for preference was given to virtue just as much as to office." Select Orations — Oration 21 14.2[^or21-14] The Orthodox Church in America adds that, though only about twenty-seven, he was a leader in promoting homoousios, "of one essence," as the word that best fitted the truth.[^oca] No early source cited here makes him the author of the creed or gives him a title beyond deacon, whether principal deacon or Alexander's assistant; the Coptic tradition that he was the main author of the Nicene Creed, which OrthodoxWiki reports, is not found in them.^ow

Its enemies knew his name afterward. The bishops of Egypt wrote that the hatred of Eusebius and his friends grew once they had seen his boldness at Nicaea, and burst out when God raised him to the episcopate.[^apol-alex]

Bishop of Alexandria

Alexander died soon after the council, and the see passed to Athanasius. The sources do not give one date. Athanasius says that five months had not yet passed since the Meletians were received at Nicaea when Alexander died, and Theodoret says that Alexander died five months after the council; the Orthodox Church in America says that Athanasius became bishop in 328, OrthodoxWiki's text gives May 9, 328 while its succession box reads 326, and the synaxarion's forty-seven years of episcopate before 373 points to 326.[^alex-death] His enemies later said that six or seven bishops had chosen him secretly, in a hidden place. The bishops of Egypt answered in their encyclical that the whole Catholic people of the city had gathered "as with one mind and body," and cried and shouted that Athanasius should be their bishop, for many days and nights, and would not leave the church or let the bishops leave it. Apologia Contra Arianos — Part I 1.69[^apol-elect] Gregory, with some distance, says that he was led to the throne of St. Mark by the vote of the whole people, "not in the evil fashion which has since prevailed, nor by means of bloodshed and oppression." Select Orations — Oration 21 8.1[^or21-8] Socrates records that the Eusebians objected to the ordination as that of an unworthy man chosen by unqualified persons.[^soc23]

Eusebius of Nicomedia asked him to admit Arius and his friends to communion, and when he refused on the ground that they had been condemned by the whole Church's council, Eusebius got the emperor to write. Athanasius preserves the letter: "I will immediately send some one who shall depose you by my command, and shall remove you from your place." Apologia Contra Arianos — Part II 5.17[^apol-threat] Athanasius also reports that Eusebius had bought the support of the Meletians, a schism of the Egyptian church that Peter of Alexandria had begun by deposing Meletius for sacrificing to idols, and who had been received back at Nicaea on terms; they became the accusers.[^apol-melet]

Tyre and the First Exile

The accusations came in several shapes. Meletians said that Athanasius had imposed a tax of linen garments on the Egyptians, and the presbyters of Alexandria disproved it at the emperor's court.[^soc27] Theodoret adds a charge that he had given the gold collected from Egypt to a man preparing to seize the throne.[^theod-pd] They said that a presbyter of his, Macarius, had broken the chalice of a man named Ischyras, who claimed to be a priest, and the bishops of Egypt answer that Ischyras had never been ordained, that the place was no church, and that the day was no Lord's day.[^apol-cup] And they said that he had murdered a bishop named Arsenius and cut off his hand. Theodoret tells that at Tyre a woman was brought in to swear that Athanasius had violated her, and that the devisers of the plot were put to shame when the presbyter Timotheus, who stood beside him, answered her.[^theod-tyre]

The council met at Tyre in 335, with a Count presiding and soldiers attending as guards of the bishops,[^apol-tyre] and Arsenius was alive. The accounts of how he came to light differ. Socrates tells how Athanasius brought him in with his hands covered by his cloak, turned back one side and then the other, and asked: "Arsenius, as you see, is found to have two hands: let my accusers show the place whence the third was cut off."[^soc29] Theodoret says instead that Athanasius's friends hunted Arsenius up and kept him at an inn until the hour came.[^theod-tyre] The bishops of Egypt tell it more soberly: Arsenius was alive, wrote in his own person to Athanasius, and asked to be admitted to communion. Apologia Contra Arianos — Part I 1.108[^apol-arsenius]

The charge of the cup went on. The council sent a commission to the Mareotis to look into it, made up of men to whom Athanasius had objected as Arian partisans, among them the young Ursacius and Valens, and it left the accused Macarius in custody at Tyre and took the accuser with it.[^apol-mareotis] The synod voted his deposition in his absence.[^soc32] Athanasius went to the emperor. Constantine's letter to the bishops describes the meeting: he was riding into Constantinople, and Athanasius met him in the middle of the road, so unexpectedly that he did not at first recognize him; he would have refused to listen, but when Athanasius asked only that his accusers be summoned, he agreed.[^constantine-letter] The Eusebians then brought a fresh charge, that Athanasius had threatened to stop the grain ships from Alexandria, and Constantine sent him to Trier in Gaul.[^soc35]

Athanasius's friends said that the grain charge was a lie that moved a trusting emperor.[^apol-grain] Socrates reports that some said the emperor wanted unity in the Church, and Athanasius refused to commune with Arius and his friends.[^soc35] The younger Constantine, restoring him after his father's death, wrote that Athanasius had been sent to Gaul "for a time" so that he might escape the bloodthirsty hatred of his enemies. Apologia Contra Arianos — Part II 6.214[^constantine2] The Historia Acephala, an anonymous Alexandrian chronicle, counts two years, four months and eleven days at Trier, in a figure its translator restores in brackets.[^acephala-sum] The sources thus put the cause in a lie, in the emperor's wish for unity, or in protection from his enemies. It was also the first time Athanasius met the rhythm of his life: charges laid, a council he believed hostile, a bishop sent away, a people left waiting.

Gregory, Rome and Sardica

Constantine's sons let the exiles go home, and the Eusebians wrote to Rome and to the emperors against Athanasius. Julius of Rome replied that a council should be held where Athanasius's friends wished, and when the Eusebians saw they could not win an ecclesiastical hearing, Athanasius says, they went to Constantius alone and asked him to begin a persecution.[^ha9] Constantius sent Philagrius as prefect and Gregory, a Cappadocian, to occupy the see. Athanasius's own encyclical describes how the prefect announced the stranger by public edict. Encyclical letter 0.20 It goes on to tell how, in the days before Easter in 339, churches were stormed, virgins stripped, and the Holy Table desecrated.[^enc] He withdrew from the second church where he lived, he says, so that the church and the virgins in it would not suffer, remembering the Lord's word, "If they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another." Encyclical letter 0.57[^enc] In the History of the Arians he says instead that at the first report of their proceedings he sailed to Rome, before the violence began.[^ha11] The two accounts differ on the order, and each is given here as he tells it.

Julius received him. About fifty bishops met in Rome, found the Eusebians unworthy of credit for refusing to come, and received Athanasius into communion.[^ha15]

The letter Julius wrote to the Easterns survives because Athanasius copied it into his Apologia. He complained that Gregory had been sent from Antioch to Alexandria with soldiers, and asked: "Are you ignorant that the custom has been for word to be written first to us, and then for a just decision to be passed from this place?" Apologia Contra Arianos — Part I 2.183[^julius] That was a claim about how disputes over bishops had been handled, and Julius rested it on tradition, writing that what he sets down is "what we have received from the blessed Apostle Peter." Apologia Contra Arianos — Part I 2.187[^julius] The letter says too that Athanasius stayed a year and six months at Rome waiting for his accusers.[^julius-wait]

The Council of Sardica was called by the two emperors, and its year is disputed: Socrates and Sozomen place it in 347, while the introduction to the canons, arguing from the Historia Acephala and the old preface to the Festal Letters, hesitates between 343 and 344.[^sardica-date] Athanasius says that about a hundred and seventy bishops assembled, that the Easterns, seeing that no Count and no soldiers would be present, shut themselves in their lodging and fled, and that the council cleared Athanasius and his friends and deposed his chief accusers.[^ha-sardica] The bishops of the West at Sardica gave Rome a part in such disputes. The third canon says that if a deposed bishop thinks his case sound, those who judged him should "write to Julius, the bishop of Rome," and that if the Roman bishop thinks it right, the case is to be tried again by bishops of the neighboring provinces whom he appoints. The 21 Canons 3.3[^sardica-c3] The fifth canon lets the Roman bishop send presbyters to sit with the bishops.[^sardica-c3] The Quinisext Council in 692 lists the canons of Sardica among those that stand.[^trullo] What these texts do and do not establish for the larger question of Roman primacy is weighed in Nicaea I; here it is enough that when Athanasius was cut off in the East, Rome heard him, and that the Church of the next centuries kept the record.

Gregory of Alexandria died about ten months after, and Constantius wrote to Athanasius three times, urging him to return.[^ha21] Athanasius re-entered Alexandria on October 21, 346, after seven years and six months away by the chronicle's count, and the chronicle says he then lived undisturbed for nine years and some months.[^acephala-return] Ursacius and Valens, in the meantime, wrote to Julius and to Athanasius confessing that their charges had been false and anathematizing Arius.[^ha26]

The Years of Constantius

The peace ended when Constans died and Constantius ruled alone. The chronicle records that in 353 an imperial officer, Montanus, came with a letter forbidding Athanasius to come to court, and that in 355 the notary Diogenes besieged the church for months.[^acephala-353] The decisive night came in the winter of 356, and Athanasius tells it in his Apology for His Flight. Some of the people were keeping a vigil before a communion when the general Syrianus came with more than five thousand soldiers. Athanasius judged it wrong to desert the people in such a disturbance: "I sat down upon my throne, and desired the Deacon to read a Psalm, and the people to answer, 'For His mercy endures for ever,' and then all to withdraw and depart home." Apologia de Fuga 24.8[^fuga24] When the soldiers forced their way in, the clergy and the laity still there cried out that he must withdraw too, and he refused to go until they had all gone, "it was better that my safety should be endangered, than that any of them should receive hurt." Apologia de Fuga 24.11[^fuga24]

When the greater part had gone out and the rest were following, the monks and some of the clergy came up and dragged him away, and he passed through the soldiers unobserved, glorifying God that he had sent the people away first and had not betrayed them.[^fuga24] The chronicle puts this night at the thirteenth into the fourteenth of Mechir, in early February 356.[^acephala-356]

He went to the desert. Gregory describes it as a gift: Athanasius turned an exile into a school, and in the Egyptian monasteries he showed the solitary and the community that the priesthood can be contemplative and contemplation needs a guide.[^or21-19] Soldiers came hunting him "like a wild beast," and the monks gave them not one word and offered their necks to the sword. Select Orations — Oration 21 20.5[^or21-20] A rival, George of Cappadocia, held the churches of Alexandria from early 357.[^acephala-george]

The Apology to Constantius defends him against the charges the emperor had accepted. The Apology for His Flight answers the charge of cowardice with the examples of Peter, Paul, Moses and David. The History of the Arians, addressed to monks, tells the story of the Eusebians from Nicaea onward, and there he sets the sword against persuasion: "For the truth is not preached with swords or with darts, nor by means of soldiers; but by persuasion and counsel." History of the Arians — Part IV. 0.40[^ha33] Its target is an emperor who sat over bishops' judgments, and the question it puts to him is plain: "When did a judgment of the Church receive its validity from the Emperor?" History of the Arians — Part VII. 0.41[^ha52] The Church had held many councils, he continues, and the Fathers never asked the emperor's consent.

Hosius of Cordova, who had presided over the western bishops at Sardica, and Liberius of Rome both suffered for Athanasius's cause, and he lists them among the witnesses who chose exile rather than see the judgment in his favor reversed. He admits that neither held out to the end: Liberius did not endure the sufferings of banishment to the last, and Hosius yielded for a season "through the weakness of old age, being unable to bear the stripes." Apologia Contra Arianos — Part II 6.230[^apol-hosius] He explains their fall by violence and age, and the same letter finds no change of mind in either.

Julian, Jovian and Valens

Constantius died in 361, and when the news reached Alexandria the city rose against George and killed him.[^acephala-george] Julian recalled the exiled bishops, and Athanasius, the chronicle says, was seen in Alexandria twelve days after the prefect's edict ordering his return, in February 362. Historia Acephala 10.3[^acephala-362] He stayed eight months. In October the prefect published an edict of Julian that Athanasius must leave, and he left. Socrates says that he fled, telling his friends, "Let us retire for a little while, friends; it is but a small cloud which will soon pass away," and then embarked and crossed the Nile.[^soc-cloud] The synaxarion says that Julian considered him a pillar of Orthodoxy and meant to kill him, but died first, mortally wounded in battle.[^syn-may2] Jovian, a Christian, wrote that the churches should hold communion, and Athanasius went by sea to meet him and returned to his church in the autumn of 363.[^acephala-362]

In 365 Valens and Valentinian ordered that bishops recalled under Julian be cast out again, and the people of Alexandria rioted, insisting that Athanasius was not covered by the decree. Constantius, they said, had not banished him but had restored him; Julian, who recalled the others, had cast him out anew; and Jovian had brought him back. Historia Acephala 14.7[^acephala-valens] Some months later, on the eighth of Paophi, which the translator gives as October 5, he left the church secretly and stayed in a villa near the New River for four months, until an imperial notary brought a letter restoring him. Historia Acephala 14.10[^acephala-valens] Socrates says instead that during these months he hid in an ancestral tomb, and that the emperor, seeing the people's tumult, ordered him to preside over the churches unmolested.[^soc-valens] That is the fifth departure in the account given here, which matches the five exiles the Orthodox Church in America reports.[^oca] OrthodoxWiki says at least five and perhaps seven,^ow and the synaxarion says only that he was expelled several times.[^syn-may2]

The chronicle reckons the first forty years of his episcopate, to June 368, as seventeen years, six months and twenty days of exile, hiding and travel: two years, four months and eleven days at Trier, ninety months and three days in Italy and the West, fifteen months and twenty-two days on journeys, four months at the villa, and seventy-two months and fourteen days at Alexandria and in uncertain hiding places while the notary Hilary and the Duke harassed him. Historia Acephala 14.24[^acephala-sum] Against that it sets twenty-two years, five months and ten days at Alexandria in quiet. Historia Acephala 14.25[^acephala-sum]

In his last years the bishops of Egypt and Libya wrote with him to Africa, and he wrote to Damasus of Rome about Auxentius, who had taken the church of Milan. Ad Afros Epistola Synodica 10.7[^afros] In 367 he sent his Festal Letter on the books of Scripture. He died on the eighth of Pachon, which the chronicle's translator renders as May 3, 373, Historia Acephala 14.29[^acephala-death] and Peter, one of his old presbyters, had been ordained to succeed him five days before.[^acephala-death] Gregory says only that "in a good old age he closed his life, and was gathered to his fathers." Select Orations — Oration 21 37.3[^or21-37]

Against the Nations and On the Incarnation

A pair of books addressed to a friend named Macarius opens his teaching on the Word, and OrthodoxWiki dates On the Incarnation to before he was twenty.^ow In Against the Heathen he argues that the Cross, which the pagans mock, is the very sign of Christ's divinity, since the whole world has been filled with the knowledge of God by it, and so is "not a disaster, but a healing of Creation." Against the Heathen 1.9[^cg1] He then lays out what he understands the world to be. Evil is no part of nature; it came when souls turned from God to lower things. The universe stands because the Word holds it. "For one that is good can grudge nothing: for which reason he does not grudge even existence, but desires all to exist, as objects for His loving-kindness." Against the Heathen 41.9[^cg41]

The second book, On the Incarnation of the Word, opens by saying it presupposes the first, and it is here that the Creator/creature line is drawn most clearly. God made everything out of nothing through his Word, and made human beings in his image with a share in that Word, so that they might live in blessedness. Creatures are therefore mortal by their origin, but they were given a way out of their own weakness: "For man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not; but by reason of his likeness to Him that is… he would stay his natural corruption, and remain incorrupt." On the Incarnation of the Word 4.15[^inc4] When they turned from the Word they began to go back toward the nothing they came from. Athanasius sets out God's dilemma: if God lets the race perish, his goodness is in doubt; if he lets his word about death go unfulfilled, his truthfulness is. Repentance could not mend it, because it cannot change a nature already corrupted. Only the one who made man could recreate him, and the Word did it by taking a body that could die and giving it for all. In taking a body he also met men whose minds had sunk to the senses where they were, so that seeing him as a man they might be led on to know him as God.[^inc13]

The first picture is a city: when a great king has entered a large city and taken up his abode in one of its houses, the whole city is held in honor and no enemy dares attack it. On the Incarnation of the Word 9.11[^inc9] The second is a portrait. When the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains, its sitter must come again to have it renewed, and so "the most holy Son of the Father, being the Image of the Father, came to our region to renew man once made in His likeness." On the Incarnation of the Word 14.9[^inc14] The two pictures meet at one point, that the likeness of God in human beings can be renewed only by the original it was copied from. By the twentieth chapter the conclusion is stated in a single line: "none other could create anew the likeness of God's image for men, save the Image of the Father." On the Incarnation of the Word 20.4[^inc20]

Near the end of the work, describing how the works of Christ's body show that he is more than a man, he writes: "For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality." On the Incarnation of the Word 54.8[^inc54] The sentence is one of the best-known statements of Theosis in the Fathers, and it can be set beside the promise of 2 Peter that believers become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1.4). The treatise is also the place to start with The Incarnation.

The Orations Against the Arians

Athanasius reports the faith of Arius in the words of Arius's own song, the Thalia, and the report is blunt. Arius said that "once God was alone, and not yet a Father, but afterwards He became a Father," Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse I 2.7[^ar1-5] and that the Son was made out of nothing, as all creatures are, so that "once He was not." Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse I 2.8[^ar1-5] The Arians used Scripture, and the key text was Proverbs 8:22, where Wisdom says that the Lord created her at the beginning of his ways (Proverbs 8.22). Athanasius answers that the word applies to the flesh the Word put on for us, so that in Proverbs "He created" is the Word's economy among creatures, and that the Proverbs themselves call the Son an offspring and not a creature.[^ar2-proverbs]

He answers first from the word "once," which would put time before the Word: "For how could He both be and not be?" Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse I 4.10[^ar1-11] The Egyptian bishops' letter to Africa argues that if all things were made through the Son and he too is a creature, he must be the creator of himself, and so the question becomes "how can what is being created create?" Ad Afros Epistola Synodica 4.13[^afros4]

A being that resembles God only by virtue and will can change, and "a mutable thing cannot be like God who is truly unchangeable." Ad Afros Epistola Synodica 7.16[^afros7] All of these arguments end in what Athanasius says about salvation. In the first oration he writes that the Word became man for a reason that cannot be reversed: "He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us." Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse I 11.33[^ar1-39]

The second oration turns it into the chain that makes the incarnation effective: the Word takes a human body, renews it as its Framer, and "deify it in Himself, and thus … introduce us all into the kingdom of heaven after His likeness." Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse II 21.164[^ar2-70] The third oration offers an illustration that later generations used. In an emperor's portrait the form of the emperor is in the picture and the emperor is in the form, so that whoever honors the image honors him. Athanasius takes it as a figure of the Father in the Son, and says that since the Son is the Father's image, "the Godhead and propriety of the Father is the Being of the Son." Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse III 23.51[^ar3-image] John of Damascus, defending holy images against the iconoclasts, copies the passage into his third treatise; the logic of the Icons entry is Athanasius's own.[^damascene]

One in Essence

The word homoousios was the council's answer to people who agreed to everything except the sense. Athanasius's defense is in the De Decretis. When the bishops wrote that the Son is "from God," the Eusebians took the phrase to say no more of the Son than of us, since Paul writes that all things are from God; so the council wrote "from the essence of God," "that we might believe the Word to be other than the nature of things originate, being alone truly from God." De Decretis 5.16[^decr19] The scene in the council hall, the winks and whispers, is told in Nicaea I; the later treatise is where he explains the word's careful meaning, including a warning that it carries no picture of cutting a thing in two: "Further, let every corporeal reference be banished on this subject." De Decretis 5.63[^decr24] Terms such as Homoousios, Ousia and Hypostasis have their own entries.

When the emperor's party moved from attacking the word to replacing the creed, Athanasius defended the council from its own successors. The synods of Rimini and Seleucia in 359 and the long run of other councils are the subject of On the Councils. In it he refuses to count a man an enemy for hesitating over the word. Those who accept all else that Nicaea defined and doubt only homoousios, he says, "must not be treated as enemies; … we discuss the matter with them as brothers with brothers, who mean what we mean, and dispute only about the word." De Synodis 41.1[^syn41] Basil of Ancyra is his example.

Midway through the work he draws an analogy from another disputed word. A man who takes "unoriginate" to mean "without a personal cause" will say that the Son is not unoriginate, yet he need not blame one who means "an eternal offspring, not a work" and says that the Son is; both speak suitably for their own purpose. So, Athanasius concludes, "even granting that the Fathers have spoken variously concerning the Coessential, let us not dispute about it, but take what they deliver to us in a religious way." De Synodis 46.3[^syn46] He then presses the brothers with an argument from what they already confess, and again the chain runs through salvation: a Son who only shares in divinity cannot give it. "It is not possible that He, who merely possesses from participation, should impart of that partaking to others." De Synodis 51.4[^syn51]

The Peacemaker of 362

At Alexandria in 362 Athanasius was content to leave a quarrel over words unsettled when the faith itself was agreed. OrthodoxWiki's timeline places a synod of Alexandria in that year, and Socrates says that it met when Eusebius of Vercelli reached the city and acted with Athanasius.[^soc37] The bishops confessed the divinity of the Spirit and included him in the consubstantial Trinity, declared that the Word took a soul as well as flesh, and examined the terms ousia and hypostasis closely. Socrates reports their decision: the terms ought not to be used of God, since ousia is nowhere in Scripture and the apostle used hypostasis only from necessity, but against the Sabellian error they were admissible "in default of more appropriate language."[^soc37]

The council's letter to the churches of Antioch, the Tomus, survives. It tells the Antiochene bishops to receive those who gather in the Old church and those who are leaving the Arians, asking of them no more than three things: to anathematize the Arian heresy, to confess the faith of Nicaea, and to anathematize those who say that the Holy Spirit is a creature and separate from the essence of Christ. That, the letter says, is a complete renunciation of Arianism, "to refuse to divide the Holy Trinity, or to say that any part of it is a creature." Tomus ad Antiochenos 3.3[^tomus3]

Some of the Antiochenes spoke of three hypostases and others of one, and each side had suspected the other of heresy. The council asked both what they meant. The three-hypostasis party said they meant a Trinity that truly exists and subsists, not three gods; the one-hypostasis party said, "we use the word Subsistence thinking it the same thing to say Subsistence or Essence." Tomus ad Antiochenos 6.3[^tomus6] Both sides anathematized Arius and Sabellius and agreed that the faith confessed at Nicaea is better than the phrases. The letter then turns to its readers and asks them to accept those who confess and explain themselves rightly, and to counsel them not to continue "to fight about words to no useful purpose." Tomus ad Antiochenos 8.3[^tomus8]

Gregory the Theologian says that Athanasius dealt with the same quarrel at its root. He talked to both parties, found that they meant the same, and "permitting each party to use its own terms, he bound them together in unity of action." Select Orations — Oration 21 35.13[^or21-35] Elsewhere Gregory sums up what Athanasius held: he knew that to shrink the three persons to a numerical unity was the error of Sabellius, and to sever them by nature was a mutilation of the Godhead, and he "happily preserved the Unity, … and religiously taught the Trinity." Select Orations — Oration 21 13.3[^or21-13] See The Trinity and Cappadocians.

The Holy Spirit

In the texts that survive here, his treatment of the Spirit follows from his treatment of the Son. The Tomus has just refused to let any part of the Trinity be a creature. The letter of the Egyptian bishops to Africa says the same of the creed: after the words on the Son, the fathers of Nicaea added "And we believe in the Holy Ghost," and its conclusion for baptism is stated at once. We believe in "one God, known in the holy and perfect Trinity, baptized into which, and in it united to the Deity, we believe that we have also inherited the kingdom of the heavens." Ad Afros Epistola Synodica 11.5[^afros11]

He also wrote letters to his friend Serapion of Thmuis, which the synaxarion describes as four epistles on the Holy Spirit and his equality with the Father and the Son, aimed at the heresy of Macedonius.[^syn-may2] The text of those letters is not among the sources cited here. Serapion himself appears as one of the five bishops the Historia Acephala says Athanasius sent to the emperor in 353, and in the Life of Anthony the dying hermit leaves a sheepskin to him.[^acephala-353] Gregory says of Athanasius that when all the rest who sympathized with the Nicene side were divided into three parties, with many hesitating about the Son and more about the Spirit, he was "the first and only one, or with the concurrence of but a few, to venture to confess in writing, with entire clearness and distinctness, the Unity of Godhead and Essence of the Three Persons." Select Orations — Oration 21 33.6[^or21-33] The Spirit's divinity is treated further in The Holy Spirit.

The Canon of Scripture

In the Festal Letter for Easter 367, the thirty-ninth, Athanasius writes to his churches about books. Heretics, he says, have fabricated books of their own, and he fears that the simple will be led astray by the likeness of their names to the true books, so he asks his readers to bear with him if he writes by way of remembrance of matters they already know. He gives the books of the Old Testament as twenty-two, a number which, as he has heard, is also the number of the letters among the Hebrews, with Baruch, Lamentations and the epistle counted with Jeremiah, and then the New: the four Gospels, Acts, seven catholic epistles, fourteen epistles of Paul with Hebrews among them, and the Revelation of John.[^fl39] Of these he says: "These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. … Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these."[^fl39]

He adds, for greater exactness, that there are other books not included in the canon but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join the Church: the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith and Tobit, together with the Teaching of the Apostles and the Shepherd. The NPNF translation then reads that the former are included in the canon and the latter merely read, a sentence that is hard to fit with what precedes it, so the line between the two groups is not clear from that rendering. He separates all of these from the apocryphal writings, which he calls an invention of heretics.[^fl39] OrthodoxWiki says that Athanasius was the first person to identify the same twenty-seven New Testament books now in use, and that a series of synods later ratified his list.^ow The history of the Church's decisions on the books is given in Canon of Scripture.

The Life of Anthony

Athanasius wrote the Life of Anthony for monks abroad who wished to equal the monks of Egypt, and he opens by saying that "for monks the life of Antony is a sufficient pattern of discipline." Life of St. Anthony 0.5[^loa-pro] The biography follows the young Egyptian from his parents' church to the tombs where he fought the demons, and its long middle is his teaching to the brothers about the demons and about discernment.

Athanasius appears in the story too. When Arians told the world that Anthony agreed with them, the old man was angry, and, called by the bishops and brothers, he came down from the mountain to Alexandria and publicly denounced them, saying that their heresy was "the last of all and a forerunner of Antichrist." Life of St. Anthony 69.2[^loa69] He taught the people that the Son is not a created being. The writer says that as Anthony left, "we" were setting him on his way, and that in those few days as many Greeks became Christians as would usually be made in a year.[^loa69] In the History of the Arians Athanasius adds that Anthony wrote from the mountain to the intruder Gregory, who had his officer spit on the letter and throw it away.[^ha14] Anthony's last request returns to the same friendship: "To Athanasius the bishop give one sheepskin and the garment whereon I am laid, which he himself gave me new, but which with me has grown old." Life of St. Anthony 91.17[^loa91] The synaxarion adds that John Chrysostom advised every Orthodox Christian to read this Life.[^syn-may2] See St. Anthony the Great.

How the Church Remembers Him

Gregory the Theologian's panegyric is the fullest portrait of him in the sources cited here. He compares Athanasius to the whole line of the holy from Enoch to the apostles and says he gathered the best of each. The ideal is humility joined to height: he calls him "sublime in action, lowly in mind; inaccessible in virtue, most accessible in intercourse." Select Orations — Oration 21 9.4[^or21-9] Each company in the Church, Gregory continues, found its own reason to love him, and the virgins honored in him "the friend of the Bridegroom." Select Orations — Oration 21 10.7[^or21-10]

His account of Athanasius's return after the fall of George pictures a whole country coming out, like the Palm Sunday crowd, with branches and garments, and the bishop riding on a colt.[^or21-29] Once home, Gregory says, he restored what had been overthrown: "the Trinity was once more boldly spoken of, and set upon the lampstand." Select Orations — Oration 21 31.4[^or21-31]

Basil the Great, writing to him as an old man, turned to him for counsel in the troubles of the East. He wrote: "I remember that our Lord has appointed you to be physician of the diseases in the Churches; and I recover my spirits." Letters (St. Basil of Caesarea) — Letter 82 0.4[^basil82] Years of struggle had given Athanasius a standing far beyond Egypt, and in another letter Basil asks him to send men of sound doctrine to the West, since "what through all the West is more honoured than your venerable gray hairs?" Letters (St. Basil of Caesarea) — Letter 66 0.13[^basil66]

The councils name him among the Fathers by whom the faith is measured. At Chalcedon, the imperial judges told the bishops that the emperor believed according to the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople and "the Canonical epistles and ectheses of the holy fathers Gregory, Basil, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose" and the letters of Cyril.[^chalcedon] The Fifth Council, Constantinople II, says it follows the holy Fathers Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian and the rest.[^cp2] The Sixth Council, Constantinople III, appeals to "the most wise Athanasius" in teaching that Christ's human will is subject to his divine will. The Definition of Faith 6.6[^cp3] The Quinisext Council, in its second canon, ratifies the canons of Athanasius among those of the Fathers. The 102 Canons 2.7[^trullo]

John of Damascus writes that when he speaks of the nature of the Word become flesh he speaks as "the blessed Athanasius and Cyrillus" did, by which he means that the divinity was joined to the flesh.[^dam-exp] Michael Pomazansky lists him with Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa and others among the Fathers who refuted the Arians, and among those who accused the heresy of Macedonius, who made the Holy Spirit a creature.[^pomaz]

The Feast

The Church keeps Athanasius on January 18 with Cyril of Alexandria, and the synaxarion says the two share a feast for the sake of their dogmatic writings that affirm the Orthodox faith, interpret Scripture, and expose the delusions of heretics.[^syn-jan18] The troparion sings: "You shone forth with works of Orthodoxy and quenched all heresy, and became victorious trophy-bearers, hierarchs Athanasius and Cyril."[^syn-jan18] The same synaxarion adds that he is also commemorated on May 2, the transfer of his holy relics,[^syn-jan18] and the troparion for that day addresses him alone: "You were a pillar of Orthodoxy, O Hierarch Athanasios, supporting the Church with divine doctrines; you proclaimed the Son to be of one Essence with the Father, putting Arius to shame."[^troparion-may2]

The only source cited here that gives the day of his death is the Alexandrian chronicle, which has the eighth of Pachon, a date its translator renders as May 3, 373,[^acephala-death] so the May 2 feast marks the relics and is no rival date for his death. OrthodoxWiki reports that his body was moved to Italy and that his relics were returned to Egypt in 1973.^ow

The hymns sing of him as a pillar of Orthodoxy who proclaimed the Son to be of one Essence with the Father, and as one who, with Cyril, quenched all heresy. That is the word he would not surrender, and it is why the doctrine of Theosis and the confession of The Trinity both stand with it. The word itself is treated in Homoousios, and the history around it in Arianism and Nicaea I.

Sources

[^acephala-sum]: Historia Acephala 17 (anonymous Alexandrian chronicle, trans. A. Robertson; bracketed words and figures in the translation are editorial restorations). [^troparion-may2]: Synaxarion for May 2, Saint Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of Alexandria (Orthodox Church in America), life, troparion and kontakion. [^ar2-70]: Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians 2.70. [^syn36]: Athanasius, De Synodis 36. [^fuga8]: Athanasius, Apologia de Fuga 8. [^theod-alex]: Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 1.1. [^birth]: Synaxarion for May 2, Saint Athanasius the Great (Orthodox Church in America); Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Athanasius and his defence of Nicea"; OrthodoxWiki, "Athanasius the Great." [^soc15]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.15 (reporting Rufinus). [^or21-6]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.6. [^apol-alex]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 6 (letter of the bishops of Egypt). [^soc8]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.8. [^theod-pd]: Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 1.25. [^or21-14]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.14. [^oca]: Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Athanasius and his defence of Nicea." [^alex-death]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 59; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 1.25; Orthodox Church in America, "Saint Athanasius and his defence of Nicea"; OrthodoxWiki, "Athanasius the Great" (text and succession box); Synaxarion for May 2 (Orthodox Church in America). [^apol-elect]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 6 (encyclical of the Egyptian bishops). [^or21-8]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.8. [^soc23]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.23. [^apol-threat]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 59. [^apol-melet]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 59–60. [^soc27]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.27; Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 60. [^apol-cup]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 6, 11–12 (letter of the bishops of Egypt). [^theod-tyre]: Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 1.28. [^apol-tyre]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 8, 10 (letter of the bishops of Egypt). [^soc29]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.29. [^apol-arsenius]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 8 (letter of the bishops of Egypt). [^apol-mareotis]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 13–14 (letter of the bishops of Egypt); Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.31. [^soc32]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.32. [^constantine-letter]: Constantine, letter to the bishops at Tyre, in Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.34. [^soc35]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.35. [^apol-grain]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 9, 87. [^constantine2]: Constantine II, letter to the church of Alexandria, in Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 87. [^ha9]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 9–11. [^enc]: Athanasius, Encyclical Letter 2–5. [^ha11]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 11. [^ha15]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 15; Apologia Contra Arianos 1. [^julius]: Julius of Rome, letter to the Eusebians at Antioch, in Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 35. [^julius-wait]: Julius of Rome, letter to the Eusebians at Antioch, in Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 29. [^sardica-date]: Council of Sardica, introduction to the canons (on the dates 343, 344 and 347). [^ha-sardica]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 15–17. [^sardica-c3]: Council of Sardica, canons 3 and 5. [^trullo]: Quinisext Council (in Trullo), canon 2. [^ha21]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 21. [^acephala-return]: Historia Acephala 1–2 (anonymous Alexandrian chronicle). [^ha26]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 26. [^acephala-353]: Historia Acephala 3–4. [^fuga24]: Athanasius, Apologia de Fuga 24. [^acephala-356]: Historia Acephala 5. [^or21-19]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.19–20. [^or21-20]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.20. [^acephala-george]: Historia Acephala 5–8. [^ha33]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 33. [^ha52]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 52. [^apol-hosius]: Athanasius, Apologia Contra Arianos 89. [^acephala-362]: Historia Acephala 9–13. [^soc-cloud]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 3.14. [^syn-may2]: Synaxarion for May 2, Saint Athanasius the Great, Patriarch of Alexandria (Orthodox Church in America). [^acephala-valens]: Historia Acephala 15–16. [^soc-valens]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 4.13. [^afros]: Athanasius and the bishops of Egypt and Libya, Ad Afros 10. [^acephala-death]: Historia Acephala 17, 19. [^or21-37]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.37. [^cg1]: Athanasius, Against the Heathen 1. [^cg41]: Athanasius, Against the Heathen 41. [^inc4]: Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 4. [^inc9]: Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 9. [^inc13]: Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 13–16. [^inc14]: Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 14. [^inc20]: Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 20. [^inc54]: Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word 54. [^ar1-5]: Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians 1.5. [^ar2-proverbs]: Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians 2.44–82. [^ar1-11]: Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians 1.11. [^afros4]: Athanasius and the bishops of Egypt and Libya, Ad Afros 4. [^afros7]: Athanasius and the bishops of Egypt and Libya, Ad Afros 7. [^ar1-39]: Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians 1.39. [^ar3-image]: Athanasius, Orations Against the Arians 3.5. [^damascene]: John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons, Part III. [^decr19]: Athanasius, De Decretis 19. [^decr24]: Athanasius, De Decretis 24. [^syn41]: Athanasius, De Synodis 41. [^syn51]: Athanasius, De Synodis 51. [^syn46]: Athanasius, De Synodis 46. [^soc37]: Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 3.7; OrthodoxWiki, "Timeline of Church History: Nicene Era (325–451)." [^tomus3]: Athanasius, Tomus ad Antiochenos 3. [^tomus6]: Athanasius, Tomus ad Antiochenos 5–6. [^tomus8]: Athanasius, Tomus ad Antiochenos 8. [^or21-35]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.35. [^or21-13]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.13. [^afros11]: Athanasius and the bishops of Egypt and Libya, Ad Afros 11. [^or21-33]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.33. [^fl39]: Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (367), §§1–7. [^loa-pro]: Athanasius, Life of Anthony, Prologue. [^loa69]: Athanasius, Life of Anthony 68–71. [^ha14]: Athanasius, History of the Arians 14. [^loa91]: Athanasius, Life of Anthony 91. [^or21-9]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.9. [^or21-10]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.10. [^or21-29]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.27–29. [^or21-31]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21.31. [^basil82]: Basil of Caesarea, Letter 82. [^basil66]: Basil of Caesarea, Letter 66. [^chalcedon]: Council of Chalcedon (451), Session 2, address of the imperial judges. [^cp2]: Second Council of Constantinople (553), sentence of the synod. [^cp3]: Third Council of Constantinople (680–681), Definition of Faith. [^dam-exp]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 3, the chapter on the union of the divine nature with the human in one subsistence. [^pomaz]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, "The Oneness of Essence, the Equality of Divinity, and the Equality of Honor of God the Son with God the Father," and "The Equality of Honor and the Divinity of the Holy Spirit." [^syn-jan18]: Synaxarion for January 18, Saint Athanasius the Great, Archbishop of Alexandria (Orthodox Church in America), life, troparion and kontakion.