Athanasius of Alexandria

Pope of Alexandria from 328 to 373 (296–373)

b. 296 · d. 2 May 373

20th Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria (Coptic line) · c. 328–c. 373

Offices

Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria (Coptic line) № 20 · c. 328 – c. 373

Athanasius I of Alexandria, also called Athanasius the Great, Athanasius the Confessor, or, among Coptic Christians, Athanasius the Apostolic, was a Christian theologian and the 20th patriarch of Alexandria. His intermittent episcopacy spanned 45 years, of which over 17 encompassed five exiles, when he was replaced on the order of four different Roman emperors. Athanasius was a Church Father, the chief proponent of Trinitarianism against Arianism, and a noted Egyptian Christian leader of the fourth century.

Related people

Pope Alexandros of Alexandria disciple of · traditional
Pope Alexandros of Alexandria ordained by · traditional
Pope Alexandros of Alexandria succeeded · inferred
Zeno of Verona teacher of · traditional
Epiphanius of Salamis influenced · traditional
Pope Peter II of Alexandria preceded · inferred

Works

Events

Commemorated

Places

Alexandria ministry
Trier exile
Rome exile
Egypt refuge

How we know

Recorded as a historical figure.

The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF series 2 vol. 14) 2 claims — First Council of Nicaea; Council of Sardica
History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria 1 claim — Life of the 20th patriarch
Ecclesiastical History 1 claim — Conversion of Aksum
The Path of Christianity: The First Thousand Years 2 claims — Athanasius writes On the Incarnation; Anthony comes down from the desert to Alexandria
The Early Church 1 claim — First Synod of Tyre
The Canon of the New Testament 1 claim — The thirty-ninth Festal Letter

Documents

On the Incarnation author
Life of Antony author

Sayings

But now that the Saviour has raised His body, death is no longer terrible Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — Written by a man who watched the last great persecution as a boy in Alexandria. He treats the willingness of ordinary Christians to die as evidence rather than as piety…
For where the Saviour's name is named, there every demon is driven out Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — One of a run of rhetorical questions asking who else has done what Christ has done. In fourth-century Egypt exorcism was the common test of a claim to power, and he is putting…
For He was made man that we might be made God Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — The sentence the whole treatise exists to reach, and the plainest statement of deification in the Greek fathers. It is the argument of Nicaea put as an exchange: if the Word were…

Show all 5

has throughout all the world persuaded whole churches full of men to despise death, and to mind the things of immortality Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — Set against the philosophers, who he says persuaded not even their own neighbours. The claim is deliberately checkable in his own century: not that the teaching is finer, but…
Therefore He put on a body, that He might find death in the body, and blot it out Checked word-for-word against the book it cites — His answer to the objection that God could have saved by a word. Corruption had got inside human nature, so the remedy had to be taken inside it too — the reason the Incarnation…

What he held

Homoiousios The Son is of like substance with the Father.
Homoousios The Son is of one substance with the Father.
The Son is created The Son is a creature, made out of nothing before all ages, and there was when he was not.

In the disputes

The Arian crisis Sixty years of argument about whether the Son is God in the same sense the Father is.

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