ALONE AGAINST THE WORLD? - A LOOK AT ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA

 When I started reading Getting To Know The Church Fathers: An Evangelical Introduction by Bryan Litfin, I already had a pair of favorite Church Fathers. In both cases, Litfin confirmed my positive impression. One was Tertullian, who we looked at three days ago. The other is Athanasius.

Before I look at my hero, though, let me paint the picture. The second edition of this book has 12 chapters, and we've now entered the second half. However, the game is completely changed. At least four of the six were ushered into eternity by a cruel pagan Roman government; we don't know about the other two, but even if they weren't martyrs, their lives were touched by persecution. 

But then, a game-changer took place. The Emperor who was set out to exterminate Christianity was replaced by a successor who at least gave lip service to being a Christian. Clergy men who physically bore the marks of the Great Persecution of Diocletian (e.g. missing eyes, lack of use of hands) were a few years later dining as honored guests of Constantine.

Was Constantine a hero, a villain, or merely an important figure in Church History? Good question, but do you see his name mentioned in the title of this blog? Do you see an artist's representation of him above? No? That's because the focus is on Athansius.

As said, the above artwork is an artist's impression, as it is with all the other church fathers. I gave up trying to find photos or videos of them. In the case of Athanasius, the artist seemed to be unaware of his nickname, "The Black Dwarf." Would Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman be a good actor to play him? Maybe, but they might be too tall. 

Of course, heroes stand out more when you have a villain, and in this case it was a gentleman named Arius. The area of disagreement? Whether Jesus was God Incarnate or a lesser, created being. Minor topic? Not to Athanasius. Rather, the "Black Dwarf" considered Christ's deity to be crucial in our salvation. 

Constantine called a council at Nicea to resolve this issue, which was when he dined with the bishops as I mentioned above. The overwhelming number of bishops agreed with the Nicean Creed, ex-communicating and condemning Arius. (Some have suggested one of the bishops - St. Nicholas, no less - punched Arius in the nose; Litfin considers this to be a legend that probably didn't happen.) And thus, Arianism was defeated.

Guess again. One thing I've noticed about false teaching is that when proven to be in error, the false teachers regroup and try again to get acceptance of their views. This happened here. Constantine's idea of the Council was to come to a conclusion, have the two sides shake hands, and get along. Thus, the Arians managed to get Constantine to be more conciliatory, and when Athanasius would not re-instate Arius, the Emperor exiled him. In fact, Athanasius was exiled a total of five times by three different Caesars. In fact, while Constantine was apparently neutral, his successor Constantius was pro-Arian, and the heresy grew (even though Arius himself passed on due to an explosive intestinal disorder).

However, Athanasius was no more likely to cave in than the Arians. He fought long and hard for Trinitariansm, even if he seemed to be fightin alone. Almost 1500 years later, John Wesley urged William Wiberforce to keep his fight against slavery going, as Athanasius contrta mundum (Athanasius against the world). 

He wasn't alone. Athanasius had help from a trio of church fathers known as the Three Capodocians (Gregory of Naziananzus, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa). Then, pro-Nicene Theodosius became Caesar and convened the Great Council of Constantinople which affirmed Trinitarianism as orthodoxy (though Athanasius had passed on eight years before then).

Litfin has interesting ways of comparing the church fathers with other people. He likened Tertullian to a stubborn cowboy. In the case of Athanasius, Litfin used the story of Hans Brinker keeping his finger in the dike to illustrate how the "Black Dwarf" stemmed the flood of Arianism.

Do you have the same zeal to stand up against false teaching, even if it's you against the world?