Athanasius ( c .296–373)

Abstract

Abstract Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Athanasius was secretary to Alexander, the Alexandrian bishop, as a young deacon during the Council of Nicaea in 325 – the first general council of the whole church of the Roman Empire. He became bishop of Alexandria in 328, a position he held for the following 45 years. Athanasius, thus, exerted influence over the entire Egyptian Church for nearly a half century. Through his association with Nicaea, Athanasius became the emblematic hero of the council's theology. He advanced a highly unitive theology that did not distinguish gradations of divinity, but insisted that Christ was fully divine by nature. He argued that the non‐biblical vocabulary introduced in the Nicene Creed was not a new teaching, but was, instead, the best way of preserving in precise language the previous teaching both of the New Testament and of prior tradition. For this reason, Athanasius is a pivotal figure in arguably the most significant moment in the development of Christian thinking. In an early, expansive, two‐part treatise, Against the Gentiles and On the Incarnation , Athanasius provides a coherent theology relating God and the world in such a way that Christ is the focal point of human salvation. In his interpretation, the life‐giving power of Christ's full divinity is the only remedy to the creaturely instability that arises from human finitude. Unable to be the source of their own existence, subject to decay and death, human beings find life itself given them in the flesh of Christ. Athanasius continued to expand upon these themes in his three Orations against the Arians , which are particularly noteworthy for their explication of the scriptural basis of Nicene Christology.