St. Athanasius
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Athanasius. He was born towards the end of the third century in Egypt and reached adulthood at the time when the Emperor Constantine finally granted toleration to Christians and ended the time of persecution. However, though the Roman Emperor was now a Christian rather than a pagan this did not necessarily mean that they embraced the Orthodox Christian faith. Many of them sought to promote the heresy of Arianism and in fact it would be many decades before the Empire finally renounced Arianism and adopted the Orthodox faith. St. Athanasius was the great champion of orthodoxy during this period. He devoted virtually all his life to fighting for orthodoxy against Arianism. He had attended the Council of Nicea in 325 as a deacon (with his bishop Alexander). Later he himself became Patriarch of Alexandria. Though he held this office for forty six years he endured many periods of exile due to his opposition to Arianism. It was through this that the phrase Athanasius contra mundum (Athanasius against the world) was coined to describe his stedfast opposition against the powerful forces amassed on the Arian side. In the long term his cause prevailed, though the struggle went on for many decades. He died in 373.
But what was Arianism and why was it a heresy? Arius was an Alexandrian presbyter in the early fourth century who denied that the Son was co-eternal with the Father. In other words he believed that there was a time when the Son was not. Though the Son existed before the creation of the universe and it was through the Son that the universe was created, the Son was strictly speaking a creature rather than the creator. Hence, though Jesus Christ was indeed the only begotten Son of the Father, he was not God in the same way that the Father was God. At first sight this might seem like a reasonable view to hold, since if the Son was begotten of the Father it made sense to say that the Father existed before the Son. In practice, it fundamentally undermined the foundation of the Christian faith because it meant that the Redeemer was not the same as the Creator. In fact, it reduced the role of Jesus to that of a pagan demigod who had appeared on earth but was not himself actually the creator. This in part explains the popularity of Arianism in this period where the Roman Empire was starting to grant toleration towards Christianity and moving towards accepting it as the official religion of the Empire. The Arian belief in a redeemer who was not the creator seemed easier for a pagan accept than the Orthodox faith. Indeed, at one point it was so widespread that St. Jerome famously remarked that the “whole world groaned to find itself Arian”.
St. Athanasius proved the greatest champion of orthodoxy in this period. He saw clearly that Arianism, though superficially attractive, was fundamentally at odds with the Christian faith. If the Son was not God in the same way as the Father was God then the Redeemer was other than the Creator. St. Athanasius had already expounded his understanding of the Christian faith in a short treatise on the Incarnation (which was written before the crisis over Arianism erupted). While his basic position was clear from the outset finding a terminology for effectively combating Arianism was much more difficult (especially since at first sight Arianism could be made to appear superficially like Orthodoxy). The phrase homoousios (of one substance) was included in the Creed at the Council of Nicea in 325 to make it clear that the only begotten Son was not separate from the Creator, but was of one substance or essence with the Father. As St. Athanasius put it, the only thing that distinguished the Son from the Father was that the Father was Father and not Son. Though the phrase homoousios was not a biblical term, it was necessary to safeguard the biblical faith from the Arian heresy.
What complicated the situation was that many of Athanasius’ contemporaries shared his concerns about Arianism, but were doubtful of the propriety of including a non- biblical term like homoousios into the Creed. They feared that using this phrase risked falling into the opposite error of Modalism (that the Father, Son and Spirit were simply different modes of being through which God interacted with the world). They therefore favoured the phrase homoiousios (of like substance) which they thought more clearly expressed that, though the Son was fully God, the Son was still distinct from the Father. Consequently, it was very difficult for those whose faith was fundamentally Orthodox to form a united front against Arianism. Ironically it was the revival of paganism under the Emperor Julian that forced both sides to work together against Arianism. St. Athanasius now assumed the role of the elder statesman and in a synod in Alexandria in 362 reached an agreement with those who “mean what we mean and disagree only about the world”. This meant that the Orthodox were finally able to form a united front and St. Athanasius was able to gradually reconcile those who championed the phrase homoiousios (of like substance) to the phrase homoousios (of one substance). The revival of paganism under Julian did not last, and the Roman emperors were finally moving away from Arianism towards the Orthodox faith that St. Athanasius had championed. Orthodoxy was finally adopted at the Council of Constantinople in 381 (though this happened a few years after the death of St. Athanasius).
The whole period, with all the continuing shifts and turns, can seem one of bewildering complexity, but it is perhaps precisely because of this that there is so much to learn from this period for us today. Though the Creed which we still use today is that which was adopted against Arius at the Council of Nicea in 325 it is not the case that the Creed was immediately accepted throughout the Church. In fact it would be many decades before Arianism was finally defeated at the Council of Constantinople in 381. But though the Orthodox faith prevailed in the long term, Arianism often seemed to be more successful in the short term. Indeed, the period was one of such confusion that John Henry Newman in the nineteenth century described the period in the fourth century when so many of the Church hierarchy embraced Arianism as one in which the magisterium (the teaching office of the Church) was temporarily suspended. By this he did not mean that the hierarchy lost the divinely given authority that had been entrusted to it, but that in practice it often failed to uphold the orthodox faith in this period. But the gates of hell did not prevail against the Church in the long term.
We seem to be living in a period of similar confusion at the present time, in which unorthodox forms of Christianity often seem to be more superficially successful than the Orthodox Christian faith. But what we can learn from the turbulent life of St. Athanasius is that this is not a new phenomenon. We should not despair because (despite temporary setbacks in which everything seems to have failed) the truth will prevail in the end. Let us pray that we will be given grace to follow the example of St. Athanasius and be witnesses to the truth in our own time and place.
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