[De sancta Trinitat]

Athanasius, surnamed the Great and rightly hailed as Contra Mundum, was born in Alexandria toward the close of the third century, and became the twenty-first Patriarch of that city in A.D. 328. Though but a deacon at the Council of Nicaea, he proved a hammer to the Arian heresy, upholding with immovable resolution that the Son of God is consubstantial with the Father. In an age wherein emperors wavered, bishops faltered, and the Church was sifted as wheat, Athanasius stood unyielding, cast again and again into exile, yet never abandoning the standard of truth. He bore five exiles for the name of Christ, resisted four emperors, and refuted the heretics with unanswerable vigor. His theology, though clothed in the garment of patristic simplicity, was no less profound than apostolic. In his immortal Orations against the Arians, he laid the ax to the root of the subordinationist blasphemy. His De Incarnatione Verbi Dei remains to this day one of the purest expositions of the Word made flesh, affirming that “He became man, that we might be made divine.” Though not speculative, his faith was exact, resting not on novelty or dialectic invention, but upon the apostolic deposit, preserved inviolate. Nor was he barren in the fruits of devotion: his Life of Antony stirred the hearts of saints and solitaries from Egypt to Gaul, igniting the monastic fires that would spread across Christendom. Even in exile, he pastored his flock through festal letters, and though deprived of his see, he never ceased to uphold the Church’s Faith. When the world groaned to find itself Arian, Athanasius alone bore the mark of fidelity. Truly, as Gregory Nazianzen affirmed, “his life and conduct were the rule of bishops, and his doctrine the rule of the orthodox faith.”

Athanasius, surnamed the Great and rightly hailed as Contra Mundum, was born in Alexandria toward the close of the third century, and became the twenty-first Patriarch of that city in A.D. 328. Though but a deacon at the Council of Nicaea, he proved a hammer to the Arian heresy, upholding with immovable resolution that the Son of God is consubstantial with the Father. In an age wherein emperors wavered, bishops faltered, and the Church was sifted as wheat, Athanasius stood unyielding, cast again and again into exile, yet never abandoning the standard of truth. He bore five exiles for the name of Christ, resisted four emperors, and refuted the heretics with unanswerable vigor. His theology, though clothed in the garment of patristic simplicity, was no less profound than apostolic. In his immortal Orations against the Arians, he laid the ax to the root of the subordinationist blasphemy. His De Incarnatione Verbi Dei remains to this day one of the purest expositions of the Word made flesh, affirming that “He became man, that we might be made divine.” Though not speculative, his faith was exact, resting not on novelty or dialectic invention, but upon the apostolic deposit, preserved inviolate. Nor was he barren in the fruits of devotion: his Life of Antony stirred the hearts of saints and solitaries from Egypt to Gaul, igniting the monastic fires that would spread across Christendom. Even in exile, he pastored his flock through festal letters, and though deprived of his see, he never ceased to uphold the Church’s Faith. When the world groaned to find itself Arian, Athanasius alone bore the mark of fidelity. Truly, as Gregory Nazianzen affirmed, “his life and conduct were the rule of bishops, and his doctrine the rule of the orthodox faith.”

Table of Contents:

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Of Our Holy Father Athanasius: A Dialogue Concerning the Trinity, Wherein Converse an Orthodox Christian and an Arian Heretic, Anomoios

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The Nature of Christianity and Knowledge of God

Anom. Art thou a Christian?

Orth. Yea, verily.

Anom. What is Christianity?

Orth. But to say one thing is necessary, the other is not safe.

Anom. Wherefore?

Orth. For to say that I am a servant of Christ is necessary to say; but what Christianity is, is not safe, unless I know who asketh; lest perchance I be found casting holy things unto dogs, or pearls before swine. And verily, if thou askest me, Art thou a believer or a catechumen, readily I say what I am; but what it is to be a believer, I say not, lest haply he that asketh be a Jew.

Anom. But I say unto thee, I who ask thee, that I am a Christian.

Orth. It sufficed not thee that I said I am a Christian; neither doth it suffice me that thou sayest thou art a Christian, unless thou tell me what Christianity is. And even then thou art not altogether a Christian; for to know what Christianity is, is not to be a Christian; since neither is to know what Judaism is to be a Jew, nor to know what Hellenism is to be a Greek.

Anom. Knowest thou God?

Orth. Yea.

Anom. As He knoweth Himself?

Orth. Nay.