Athanasius of Alexandria

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373), known as Athanasius Contra Mundum — Athanasius Against the World — was the chief defender of Trinitarian orthodoxy in the fourth century. His opposition to Arianism, the teaching that the Son of God was a created being subordinate to the Father, cost him five separate exiles from his episcopal see, totaling more than seventeen years, yet he never capitulated to imperial pressure. Born in Alexandria and given a thorough classical and theological education, Athanasius first stepped onto the stage of church history as a young deacon accompanying his bishop, Alexander of Alexandria, to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. There the assembled bishops condemned Arius and embedded the word homoousios — 'of one substance' — into the Nicene Creed, declaring the Son fully equal to and not created by the Father. Three years later Athanasius succeeded Alexander as the 20th Patriarch of Alexandria, inheriting the defense of that formula against an Arian faction that retained considerable imperial backing. Over the next four decades, four Roman emperors — Constantine, Constantius II, Julian the Apostate, and Valens — each ordered him into exile at different points. During those years of banishment he sheltered among the monks of the Egyptian desert and continued writing. His theological works, above all 'On the Incarnation' and the 'Orations Against the Arians,' built the intellectual architecture that ultimately secured Nicene Christianity's victory at the Council of Constantinople in 381, eight years after his death. Athanasius also shaped the Church beyond doctrine. His 'Life of Antony,' a biography of the great Egyptian hermit, circulated widely across the Roman world and did more than almost any other text to spread the monastic ideal into the Latin West. His 39th Festal Letter of 367 is the earliest surviving document to list the twenty-seven New Testament books in the canon recognized today — though some scholars note that Origen of Alexandria may have compiled a comparable list earlier. Athanasius died peacefully in Alexandria on 2 May 373. Within a few years, Gregory of Nazianzus called him the 'Pillar of the Church.' He is venerated as a Doctor of the Church and a saint by Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions.