Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (296-373)

The champion of Nicaea

Athanasius holds a decisive place in the history of dogma. In the 4th century, the Church went through the gravest doctrinal crisis of its early days: a priest of Alexandria, Arius, taught that the Son of God is not truly God, but a creature — the first and highest — drawn from nothing: "there was a time when he was not". If Arius is right, Christ is not God, and the Christian is not saved by God himself. The Council of Nicaea, in 325, condemned Arius and proclaimed that the Son is homoousios, consubstantial with the Father: true God from true God^[7].

Athanasius would spend his life defending that single word. When, after Nicaea, the emperors and a large part of the Eastern episcopate tried to turn back, replacing the homoousios with ambiguous formulas, it was he who held the line, at the cost of exile and slander. The great Cappadocian Father Gregory of Nazianzus, in his funeral oration, summed up the whole man in a single sentence:

"In praising Athanasius, I shall be praising virtue itself." — Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21, 1^[8]

"Father of Orthodoxy"

Tradition has given him the title of "Father of Orthodoxy"^[9]. The expression is apt: without the tenacity of Athanasius, the faith of Nicaea might have been smothered by the political compromises of the 4th century. He did not invent the doctrine — it comes from the Apostles and was proclaimed by the council — but he carried it through the storm, almost alone, until the next generation, that of the Cappadocians, could bring it to definitive triumph at the Council of Constantinople in 381, after his death. On these heirs, see Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.

The sources of his life

The life of Athanasius is exceptionally well documented for a figure of the 4th century. Three kinds of sources complement one another.

First, his own writings: his Apologies, his History of the Arians, his Festal Letters and his correspondence provide a mine of first-hand information on the councils, exiles and persecutions he went through. Then, the ecclesiastical historians of the 5th century — Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen and Theodoret — who recount his episcopate in detail and quote official documents. Finally, the panegyric of Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 21), delivered shortly after the death of Athanasius, which offers the portrait of an admiring contemporary^[10].

These sources are ancient and abundant: for the chronology of his exiles, we even have the exact dates recorded in the Alexandrian documents. Few Fathers of the 4th century are so solidly attested.

Birth and formation at Alexandria

Athanasius was born at Alexandria, around 296-298, probably into a Christian family^[11]. The great metropolis of Egypt was then the intellectual heart of Christendom: the city of Origen, the city of the famous catechetical school, a centre of Greek culture where Scripture was commented with all the refinement of philosophy. Athanasius received a solid theological formation there and learned the Greek of the Scriptures to perfection.

A tradition reported by the historians tells how Bishop Alexander noticed the young Athanasius as he was "playing" at baptizing other children on the beach, with such liturgical seriousness that the bishop judged the baptisms valid and took the child under his protection. The anecdote cannot be verified, but it expresses a truth: very early on, Athanasius entered the circle of the bishop of Alexandria, becoming his secretary and deacon.

An early work: "On the Incarnation"

Even before the great controversies, the young Athanasius composed a two-part work that has remained famous: Against the Pagans and its companion, On the Incarnation of the Word (De Incarnatione). Already present in it, in full force, is the central intuition that would govern his whole theology: only God can save man, so the Saviour must be God.

In it Athanasius sets out the "dilemma" of salvation. Man, created for incorruptibility, had delivered himself to death through sin; yet God could neither let his creature sink back into nothingness, nor go back on his word. Only the Word himself, by whom all things were made, could recreate man:

"The Word, seeing that the corruption of men could not be done away save by death as a necessary condition, and being himself immortal as Son of the Father, yet unable to suffer death, took to himself a body capable of death." — Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 9^[12]

Deacon and secretary at Nicaea (325)

When the Arian quarrel broke out, Athanasius was still only a deacon, but already the right hand of Bishop Alexander. In 325, the emperor Constantine summoned at Nicaea the first ecumenical council to settle the question. Athanasius accompanied Alexander there "in the character of secretary and theological adviser"^[13]. He did not vote there, but he stood at the heart of the debates that led to the homoousios and to the first version of the Nicene Creed.

It was there that the drama of his life took shape: Athanasius understood, better than many, that the whole stake of salvation lay in that word. He would never let it go.

The election (328)

In 328, three years after the council, Bishop Alexander died. Despite his youth — he was about thirty — Athanasius was elected to succeed him on the see of Alexandria^[14]. He thus became the head of one of the greatest Churches in the world, the one that radiated over all Egypt, Libya and the Pentapolis, and whose bishop already bore the title of pope of Alexandria.

His episcopate would last forty-five years. But it would be no peaceful reign: it would be a succession of struggles, hostile councils, slanders and exiles.

The five exiles: an overview

No Father of the Church was so often banished. Five times, under four different emperors, Athanasius was driven from his see. In total, he spent about seventeen years in exile out of the forty-five of his episcopate^[15].

Tyre, Rome and Sardica: the battle of the councils

As early as 335, his Arian adversaries staged a council at Tyre against him, where he was accused of violence and even of murder — an accusation that collapsed when the supposedly murdered bishop, Arsenius, reappeared alive and well. Condemned all the same, Athanasius was exiled a first time to Trier^[16].

During his second exile, he took refuge at Rome, where Pope Julius I resolutely took up his defence. A Roman synod (c. 340-341) declared him innocent, then the great Council of Sardica (343) solemnly rehabilitated him and affirmed the right of bishops to appeal to the see of Rome^[17][18]. Athanasius thus experienced in concrete terms communion with Rome as a bulwark of orthodoxy: condemned by Eastern councils, he was cleared by the Apostolic See.

"Such was Athanasius to us, when present, the pillar of the Church." — Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 21, 26^[19]

The doctrinal struggle: the homoousios against a thousand formulas

The heart of Athanasius's struggle is of a formidable simplicity: he refuses to let the word homoousios (consubstantial) be replaced by compromise formulas. The Arians and semi-Arians propose many — homoiousios ("of like substance"), homoios ("like"), or creeds that carefully avoid the word of Nicaea. Athanasius sees in these variations one and the same danger: reducing the Son to a creature, however sublime.

In his Discourses Against the Arians, he dismantles Arian exegesis verse by verse and shows that the whole economy of salvation collapses if Christ is not fully God. His argument is always soteriological: this is not a quarrel about words, but the question of whether we are truly saved.

"God became man that man might be made God"

The whole doctrine of Athanasius culminates in a single sentence, one of the most famous in all patristics, which sums up divinization (theosis):

"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." — Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54^[20]

This formula is no slogan: it is the summit of a logic. If Christ is truly God, then in uniting himself to our humanity he divinizes what he touches, and the Christian, grafted onto him, is called to share in the very life of God. But if Christ is only a creature, as Arius would have it, then one creature cannot divinize another, and all hope of salvation collapses. That is why, for Athanasius, defending the homoousios and defending salvation are one and the same thing. Theology and spirituality are one.

The Life of Anthony: Athanasius and the desert

During his exiles, Athanasius found refuge with the monks of the desert of Egypt, the greatest of whom he knew personally. Of one of them, the father of monasticism, he wrote the biography that would become the greatest spiritual best-seller of Christian antiquity: the Life of Anthony (c. 357)^[21]. On this saint, see Saint Anthony the Great; for the other founder of Egyptian cenobitism, see Saint Pachomius.

The work had an immense impact in the West. Saint Augustine recounts, in his Confessions, how the story of Anthony's life — read by chance by imperial officials at Trier — brought about sudden conversions and prepared his own:

"He began to read [...] and his soul was being stripped of the world. [...] Suddenly, filled with a holy love [...] he said: 'I have already torn myself away from our former hopes, and I am resolved to serve God.'" — Augustine, Confessions, VIII, 6^[22]

Through this work, Athanasius did more than defend a dogma: he handed on an ideal of holiness that shaped Latin monasticism, from Saint Martin to Saint Benedict.

The pastor and the canon of the Scriptures

Each year, like every bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius addressed his faithful a Festal Letter announcing the date of Easter. Now, in his 39th Festal Letter, of the year 367, he lists the books of Scripture — and this is the first time in history that the exact list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament appears as the Church holds them today to be canonical, neither one more nor one fewer^[23].

"Behold the fountains of salvation, that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the words they contain. Let no one add to these, neither let him take aught from these." — Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (367)^[24]

This text is decisive for the history of the Bible: it shows that the canon of the New Testament is no late invention, but the discernment of a Church receiving its Scriptures through apostolic tradition. On the question of the canon, see the canon of the Scriptures.

A peaceful end (373)

After so many storms, the last years of Athanasius were at last peaceful. Restored to his see, venerated as a hero of the faith, he governed his Church and wrote to the very end. He died at Alexandria on 2 May 373, in his bed, surrounded by his clergy — an almost surprising death for a man so often threatened^[25]. He would not see the triumph of his cause, but he made it possible: eight years later, the Council of Constantinople (381) definitively consecrated the faith of Nicaea.

The "Athanasian" Creed: a clarification

A famous text bears his name: the Athanasian Creed (Quicumque vult), a Trinitarian profession of faith widely used in the West. But scholarship is now unanimous: this creed is not by him. It was composed in Latin — whereas Athanasius wrote in Greek — probably in the south of Gaul in the 5th or 6th century, and is mentioned neither by Athanasius nor by his contemporaries^[26]. Its incipit, in the form attributed to Saint Athanasius, has remained famous: "Whosoever will be saved must before all things hold the catholic faith. Whosoever does not keep it whole and undefiled shall doubtless perish everlastingly."^[27] The text bears his name in homage to his defence of the Trinity, not because he authored it. Saying so takes nothing from his glory: it is, on the contrary, the mark of the authority his name had acquired.

Doctor of the Church and "Athanasius against the world"

Athanasius is honoured as one of the four great Doctors of the Greek Church, with Saint Basil, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint John Chrysostom^[28]. His feast is celebrated on 2 May on the Roman calendar and on 18 January in the East (where he is celebrated with Saint Cyril of Alexandria, his great successor on the Alexandrian see).

Of his whole life, posterity has retained one image: that of the man alone, standing against all. The formula Athanasius contra mundum, "Athanasius against the world", has become proverbial for the one who holds to the truth when numbers abandon him^[29]. It is not quite exact — Athanasius always had allies, at Rome, in the desert, among the faithful people — but it expresses a profound truth: at the worst moments of the Arian crisis, it could seem that the faith of Nicaea rested on his shoulders alone.

Sixteen centuries later, Saint Athanasius remains strikingly relevant. He reminds us first that truth is not a matter of majorities: at the worst hours of the Arian crisis, the immense majority of Eastern bishops had yielded, and it was an exiled, slandered, condemned man who held the faith of the whole Church. Contra mundum is no taste for the margins, but the courage not to yield when what is at stake is Christ himself.

He reminds us then that dogma and spiritual life are one. Athanasius did not defend an abstract word: he defended our salvation. If Christ is not God, we are not divinized; if we are called to "be made God", it is because he who became man is truly God. His whole theology is a doctrine of hope.

"He was made man that we might be made God." — These words, engraved like a programme, say enough about why the Church has never ceased to read Athanasius: he is the theologian who saved, for us, the very face of God.

• The Council of Nicaea (325) — the council of which Athanasius was first the deacon, then the champion until death.
• Arianism — the heresy of Arius that Athanasius fought all his life.
• Saint Anthony the Great — the father of monasticism, whose Life Athanasius wrote.
• Saint Pachomius — the other founder of Egyptian monasticism whom Athanasius protected.
• Saint Cyril of Alexandria — his great successor on the see of Alexandria, celebrated with him on 18 January.
• Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus — the Cappadocians who completed his struggle at Constantinople (381).
• The Doctors of the Church in history — the group of the four great Greek Doctors to which Athanasius belongs.