Announcing Kevin Vanhoozer

Biographical Sketch

From a young age, Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 295–373) was close to his predecessor bishop, Alexander of Alexandria (312–328). While many details remain uncertain and disputed, he would have been familiar with the dispute between Alexander and the presbyter under his jurisdiction, Arius, whom Alexander condemned at the Council of Alexandria in ca. 321.¹ Athanasius accompanied Alexander to the Council of Nicaea convened by Emperor Constantine during June and July of 325. His role and access would have been limited as he was only a deacon at the time.

The record of Athanasius goes quiet until a couple of months after Bishop Alexander died on April 27, 328, when Athanasius was elevated from deacon to Bishop of Alexandria. Although Alexander nominated Athanasius before his death, Athanasius was forced to contend for his office. This was the setting in which he penned his most magisterial, two-part theological treatise, Against the Nations-On the Incarnation (Contra Gentes/De Incarnatione).²

Athanasius would serve as bishop for forty-six years, though his tenure was extremely turbulent. He died on May 2, 373, less than a decade before the Council of Constantinople carried forward the Nicene faith in a manner that would honor Athanasius’s legacy as a champion of the Nicene Creed. Both Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus celebrate Athanasius. Not even ten years after his death, Gregory celebrated his conformity to Christ, praising him because he “embraced virtue in its entirety”³ and calling him the “pillar of the Church”.⁴

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Exiles

In the wake of the Council of Nicaea, which was called to overcome a controversy associated most notably with the Church in Alexandria, the influential episcopal see of Alexandria was contested, facing great scrutiny and many challenges. Despite his forceful influence and positive reception by the likes of the Cappadocian Fathers, while Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius was exiled five times (amounting to about 17 years of disruption).⁵  

(1) The Emperor Constantine first exiled Athanasius to Trier in the fall of 335 due to several factors, one of which was Athanasius’s refusal to observe the restoration of Arius at the 335 synod of Jerusalem. Two years later, a few months after Constantine’s death, Athanasius would return. At this time, Athanasius bound himself to the legacy of the Council of Nicaea in opposition to what he had described as the resurgence of “Arianism.”⁶  

(2) When Athanasius opposed cooperation between Melitians and Arians, eastern bishops (including Eusebius of Nicomedia) deposed Athanasius twice in two separate councils at Antioch and, with the help of eastern Augustus, Constantius, sought Athanasius’s removal. In the spring of 339, they appointed Gregory of Cappadocia as the Bishop of Alexandria in his place.⁷ Meanwhile, Athanasius evaded arrest and departed for Rome where he would compose his Discourses against the Arians. While there, Athanasius gained favor with western Augustus, Constans, who would convince his brother in the East, Constantius, to allow Athanasius’s return in 346 after Gregory died. Constantius would consolidate power after the death of Constans in 350, condemning Athanasius in Arles (353) and then exiling various western bishops.  

(3) In 356, Athanasius relinquished his jurisdiction to George of Cappadocia as he was forced into exile for a third time. In response to the rise of the Heterousians, Aëtius of Antioch and Eunomius of Cyzicus, Athanasius would write several treatises in defense of the Nicene Creed. After the deaths of Constantius and George in 361, Athanasius returned to Alexandria in February 362. Athanasius promoted unity within the Alexandrian Church and beyond, sending an overture of Nicene unity to Christian leaders in Antioch.  

(4) However, the year 362 was not yet complete when Emperor Julian the Apostate exiled Athanasius a fourth time. Fortunately, Emperor Jovian, who took Julian’s place in June 363, permitted his return in the fall of the next year.

(5) Athanasius’s final exile came at the hands of anti-Nicene emperor Valens. Athanasius was forced to hide within his own city from May 365 to February 366.

What is clear from Athanasius’s exiles is not only that he was displaced and his office under siege but also that he often redeemed the time by forging politically (e.g., Julius of Rome and Marcellus of Ancyra) and spiritually (e.g., Antony of Egypt) important relationships. He remained steadfast in his commitment to advancing the unity of the Church around the Nicene faith. It is not without reason that modern commentators have been critical of Athanasius and some of his antics, but John Behr rightly concludes that in many and various ways, “Nicene Christianity exists by virtue of his constancy and vision.”⁸  

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FOUR EMPERORS, FIVE EXILES · Gold coins of Constantine, Constantius II, Julian and Valens

If theology is the task of thinking about God and all things in relation to God, dogmatics is the Church's disciplined attempt to articulate what it believes, teaches, and confesses about God on the basis of Scripture.

It begins with the posture of faith — a faith seeking understanding — not in isolation, but within the communion of the saints: receiving with gratitude the theology that has been handed down, and seeking to speak the truth of the Scriptures in the present moment.

In this way, dogmatics follows, guides, and accompanies the Church's witness.

It follows, because dogmatics, properly speaking, flows out of the confession of the Church. It guides, because it concretely reminds the Church that all its teaching remains accountable to God and must be enriched through the act of reflection. And it accompanies, because the dogmatician stands not apart from the Church, but with the Church under God's instruction.

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"Faith turns into wonder, and knowledge terminates in adoration."

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Herman Bavinck adds that when this work is rightly done, it does not remain cold or technical. It becomes doxology — a hymn of adoration to all God's virtues and perfections. Faith turns into wonder, knowledge terminates in adoration, and confession becomes a song of praise.

Shortly after the Great Persecution ended and Constantine legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, a controversy arose in the eastern city of Alexandria that would shape the course of subsequent Christian theology. The presbyter Arius came into conflict with his bishop Alexander over the nature of the Word of God, the Logos. In what sense could Jesus be considered God? In what sense was the Son one with God the Father, and how, in turn, does he save? Over the last forty years, scholarship on Arius has shifted from viewing him as a stand-alone heresiarch who founded a movement to seeing him as the catalyst for a theological conflagration that spread far beyond the boundaries of his own thought.¹ Lewis Ayres summarizes this shift well by describing “Arius as a catalyst for a controversy.”² Arius’s error spurred forth-century theologians to articulate the essential unity of the Father and Son securing both the Christian view of the divine and human salvation.

Arius centrally taught a fundamental difference between the Father and the Son. Only the Father is unoriginated. The Son exists before all things and is the instrument through whom the Father created the cosmos. Nevertheless, the Son has a beginning: he was made from nothing by the Father, just as the whole cosmos was. In a letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia (c. 321–323), Arius explains his position:

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“Before he was begotten, or created, or defined, or established, he did not exist. For he was not unbegotten. But we are persecuted because we have said the Son has a beginning but God has no beginning. We are persecuted because of that and for saying he came from non-being. But we said this since he is not a portion of God nor of anything in existence.”³

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In one sense, the Son can be described as eternal and unchanging, but not by nature; rather, he is so by the Father’s will. Fundamentally, the Son is to be distinguished from the Father not only temporally but also with respect to origin, nature, authority, and transcendence over the cosmos. This is captured in the Thalia, a poetic statement of Arius’s theology: “There was when the Son was not” and “once when he was not.”⁴

Arius draws on a line of reasoning widespread in the ancient world: the singular origin of reality and the cosmos it created are fundamentally incompatible. Proper engagement between the cosmos and Theos therefore requires intermediaries. As Hanson summarizes, “The first point to notice is that Arianism in its characteristic form always assumed that revelation and redemption on the part of God necessitated a reduction or lowering so that they had to be undertaken by a being who, though divine, was less than fully divine.”⁵ God, in and of himself, is distant from the world and ultimately stands in a competitive relationship to it, such that he cannot be known within creation without ceasing to be God. Arius, therefore, posits the Logos as an intermediary who can bridge this gap, placing him on the creaturely side of an infinite divide. To support this position exegetically, Arius and later allies cite texts such as “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28) and the statement in Proverbs 8:22 that Wisdom is the first of God’s works. The precise motives behind Arius’s concerns remain debated among scholars. Whether he sought to uphold a particular aspect of Origen’s theology or to make Christianity more palatable to the philosophical preferences of the imperial elite, Arius advanced a bold new synthesis that challenged the very heart of Christian theology and piety.