Athanasius of Alexandria

Life and work

Athanasius rose from deacon to become secretary to Bishop Alexander of Alexandria, in which role he attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 as a young man, though not yet a bishop himself. He became Bishop of Alexandria in 328 and would hold the see, with interruptions, for over four decades.

His life's defining struggle was against Arianism, the teaching (associated with the priest Arius) that the Son was a created being, not co-eternal with the Father. Athanasius insisted on the term homoousios ("of the same substance") adopted at Nicaea, becoming so identified with the cause that later historians speak of "Athanasius against the world."

Political shifts among emperors sympathetic to Arian factions led to Athanasius being exiled from Alexandria five separate times across his career, spending roughly seventeen years total in exile, including time in Trier and Rome, where he helped popularize Egyptian monasticism in the West.

His theological writings, including On the Incarnation and his Life of Antony (which spread the ideal of desert monasticism), proved deeply influential. He also, in a festal letter of 367, provided one of the earliest lists matching exactly the 27 books of the later New Testament canon.

In their own words

"God became man so that man might become god" (a summary of his doctrine of theosis).On the Incarnation

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: Saint Athanasius
• New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia: St. Athanasius