Mary the Mother of True God from True God

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

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.

When Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”, they perceive that Jesus is asking a question of interpretation, rather than a question of reputation or where Jesus actually came from. It’s obvious to many that Jesus is a figure of great significance, whose apocalyptic arrival in first century Judea must be anticipated by the Scriptures. The disciples report, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets” (Matt. 16:15). Peter’s response likewise offers an interpretation that works to connect the dots concerning what God has said and done as revealed in Scripture.

When Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah, and “Son of the Living God,” we must immediately ask what these titles mean according to the Hebrew Bible’s expectations, as well as how Jesus interprets their fulfillment for us in himself. If we pull on the string of what these titles signify, the whole story of God comes with them: Jesus is the coming one who would speak God’s words (Deut. 18:15), suffer for Israel (Is. 52-53), sit on the Davidic throne (II Sam. 7:13, Zech. 9:9), and usher in the glorious kingdom of God (Dan. 7:13-14). Likewise, when Peter says that Jesus is the “Son of the Living God,” when surveyed across the unfolding expectations of the Hebrew Bible, and its reception by Jesus, and then by early Christians, this title points to ontology: Jesus is the Divine Son of the Father.¹ When we go to explain all that is packed into Peter’s confession, the whole of God’s self-revelation in Scripture comes with it.

At least this was how the confession that Jesus is Lord functioned for the early church. In his classic work on the Nicene faith, John Behr says, “This question, posed by Jesus Christ, is the one that Christian theology seeks to answer.”² Indeed, for both the early Christians and for us today, there is no greater question. From it unfolds the entirety of our faith, and in the act of confessing Christ with Peter proceeds the whole of the Christian life. But to get it right, to rightly confess Christ according to the Scriptures, we have to read the Scriptures well. The early Christians wrestled with precisely this, recognizing that a literal approach to particular words or passages without seeing the thematic coherence and theological trajectories of the whole, leads to misunderstanding God’s words about himself.³ It is their example that we seek to be better readers—and therefore better confessors—of God’s revelation in the face of Christ Jesus.

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Taught by God

This article begins a series on “The Road to Nicaea” in which we seek to not only chart the important figures and theological developments leading to the Nicene tradition, but also we seek to put our cards on the table for what the project of the Alexandrian Institute is about. We’re convinced that Scripture is divine revelation—it is not merely a record of what God did and said long ago (which it is!). It is also God’s own self-interpretation of his speech and acts, a divine self-theologizing, God interpreting his person and work for us through people and places, genres and books across the canon, which we are to receive with and for the church. Scripture comes to us ready to “teach.” ⁴ It confronts us as ready to form us theologically to think God’s thoughts after him, and only in being so formed are we ready to hear God’s voice.⁵  

As good Protestants, we certainly stand on the conviction of sola Scriptura, for God’s inspired Word has no authoritative competitor. Yet we recognize the wisdom of the church through the ages, especially in the consensus of Nicaea. Those who walked the road to Nicaea are well positioned to model for us today how to be “taught by God.” ⁶

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The Nicene Confession

The first ecumenical council of the church, consisting of bishops and leaders from across the ancient world, convened in Nicaea in AD 325 to settle disputes over the very substance of Peter’s confession in Matthew 16: who is Jesus? What is his nature? In what way is he God’s Son? The council articulated a confession, a rule drawn from the plenary witness of the canon of Scripture, that summarized their answer to the question. The Nicene Creed, expanded in AD 381 at the second ecumenical council in Constantinople, offers a consensus grammar on what Scripture says about who God is, his work in history, and especially the significance of Christ’s person and work in the incarnation and sending of the Holy Spirit.

Some may be quick to say that we do not find the creed in Scripture. It is a humanly constructive system laid over the top of Scripture. But to see the creed as something untethered from Scripture is to miss how thoroughly faithful it is to the whole of the canon, and how instructive it is in how to read the canon. The creed begins, like Genesis, with the recognition that God is the maker of all that is, “heaven and earth, all things visible and invisible.” Yet it also begins Christianly, which is to say trinitarianly, naming God as “the Father Almighty,” as the “only-begotten Son of God”, and as “the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.” The canon is given by God to reveal God, which culminates in the Christ event by God showing himself to be Father, Son, and Spirit, speaking and acting that we might know him as he is. To recognize this is to show that we have understood the question presented to Peter, and that we can answer in the grammar of God’s speech about himself—that we get the message.