Recovering our memory: Athanasius

Name: Athanasius
When: 296 - 373
Where: Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt

So what?:

Athanasius lived in a time of furious arguments about exactly who Jesus was. Christians today take it for granted that the church teaches that God the Son is fully God, but distinct from the Father. But in Athanasius’ time, the church was being torn apart by disagreement on this point. There were four basic “camps”:

• “Arians” argued that Jesus was a created being, semi-divine but not God Himself.
• “Origenists” said Jesus was uncreated, but not quite as divine as God because he was of a different substance.
• “Nicenes” held that Jesus was God the Son—of the same nature (the Greek summary word they used was homoousia—same essence) as God the Father. Jesus was totally divine, but not identical to the Father.
• “Sabellianists” said that Father and Son were the same person in different appearances (a bit like a man can “look like” a father, an accountant, and a runner, at different times of his week).

Athanasius was the champion of the “Nicene” camp. His great insight, the rock which his teaching returned to again and again, was that, if Christ were not divine and immortal, He could not truly give immortal life and a share in the life of God to His people; and if Christ were not man, then He could not live and die to rescue man. For Jesus to save man, He must be God, and He must be man.

As the debate raged throughout the Christian world (but particularly in the east), Athanasius was exiled and recalled five times. It was only eight years after he died, at the Council of Constantinople, that the debate was finally settled. This Council upheld Athanasius’ insistence that the Son was fully God, just as the Father was— they were homoousia. But to guard against Sabellianism (the idea that the Father and Son are exactly the same, just appearing differently at different times), the Council added that Father and Son were distinct persons (hypostases, in Greek).

Random fact: Athanasius spent his final period of exile living in his father’s tomb.

Good quote: “[The] Jesus that I know as my Redeemer cannot be less than God”.

Prayer of thanks:
God, Thank you that you are Father, Son and Sprit, each distinct persons yet each fully God. Father, thank you for men like Athanasius, who would not let your Son be robbed of His divine glory, even at great personal cost. Thank you for guiding your church to see the truth about who You are and who He is. Amen.