Athanasius of Alexandria

Dates

around 296 - 373 — The year of his birth is uncertain; he died on 2 May 373.

Region

Egypt

See

Alexandria

Language of composition

Greek

Commemoration

18 January and 2 May (Orthodox Church in America and other Orthodox jurisdictions) — 18 January is kept jointly with Cyril of Alexandria. Julian-calendar jurisdictions observe these dates thirteen days later on the civil calendar.

Life

Athanasius attended the Council of Nicaea as a young deacon accompanying his bishop, Alexander. Three years later he succeeded him, and spent the next forty-five years defending what the council had confessed.

He was driven from Alexandria five times, by emperors of several persuasions, and spent something over seventeen years in exile — in Trier, in Rome, and among the monks of the Egyptian desert. The phrase Athanasius against the world exaggerates, but not by very much: there were long stretches when the bishops who agreed with him were in a minority.

He died in Alexandria in 373, seven years before the Council of Constantinople vindicated his position.

Works

Generally accepted as authentic

• On the Incarnation of the Word
• De Decretis, or Defence of the Nicene Definition
• From Festal Letter 39 (for 367)
• The Life of Antony
• Four Discourses Against the Arians — Not archived here.

Disputed, spurious or lost

• The fourth Discourse Against the Arians — Its attribution to Athanasius is doubted.
• The Athanasian Creed (Quicunque vult) — Not by Athanasius. A Latin composition of the fifth or sixth century, unknown in the Greek East until much later.

Theological and spiritual contribution

On the Incarnation sets out why the Word had to become man: creation was slipping back into the nothing from which it came, and only the Word who made it could renew it, and only from within. Its argument turns on a claim about salvation, not on a claim about metaphysics, and that is the argument that made Nicaea intelligible to ordinary Christians.

De Decretis defends the use of homoousios, a word that is not in Scripture, on the ground that it says nothing more than Scripture says and is needed because the alternatives had been emptied of meaning by those who would not be pinned down.

The thirty-ninth festal letter, for the year 367, gives a list of the books of the Old and New Testaments. Its New Testament list is the twenty-seven books now received. It also distinguishes those books from a further group appointed to be read by those coming to instruction — the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the Didache and the Shepherd — and from books it calls apocryphal.

Controversy and reception

In their own words

Every quotation below was located in the archived text of the edition named, at the locator given, by the build's own quotation check.