Athanasius of Alexandria

Athanasius of Alexandria is an important figurehead in the development and defense of trinitarian thought. He attended the landmark council of Nicea as secretary to the bishop of Alexandria, and spent the remainder of his life heroically defending the council’s decision against the arians. In pursuit of this task, he was exiled five times by four Roman emperors, yet his faithfulness under great persecution led to the eventual rejection of Arianism, and acceptance of the Trinity, by the whole Christian Church.

While Trinity Berean as a project focuses on making biblical arguments against the Trinity, the long-standing and universal acceptance of trinitarian theology by the Church remains a substantial hurdle for those who would challenge its biblical quality. An examination of Athanasius’ theology, therefore, can help to show the problem of relying on historic tradition over careful biblical exposition. If this great trinitarian stalwart can be shown to have significant, heretical error in his theology, then the trinitarian reader will be more open to considering that the church fathers at Nicea may not have been as clear thinking and infallible in their treatment of scripture as is often believed.

By calling attention to Athanasius’ heretical views, the present author doesn’t mean to cast insults at him, or at those who hold him in high regard. Most people are heretical at one point or another in their theology and personal history. In opposing the trinity, I myself and other patternists are heretical, but that says nothing about the biblical quality of our ideas. The term “heretical” doesn’t contain in itself a whole lot of useful meaning, other than to posture a person as opposing consensus. To be a heretic merely means to depart from significant and well-accepted ideas of a particular religious establishment. By this measure, Jesus was a heretic in the eyes of the Sanhedrin. But he was still right, and biblical, and to be vindicated in the end.

Similarly, Athanasius is heretical by modern evangelical standards, meaning that he departs from orthodoxy in some important areas of theology. While I do believe that he is also unbiblical in those heresies, importing gnostic and other greek ideas into Christianity that do not belong here, I think that he does so as a mistaken but intelligent and genuine follower of Jesus Christ. He was a man of his time, who lived in the midst of great theological confusion within the Christian Church. Therefore like any of us, some of his contributions were insightful and biblically sound, while others were misguided and damaging.

It should be clearly stated that Athanasius is not heretical in his formulation of the Trinity itself. While he has less of an emphasis on the Holy Spirit than modern trinitarians, he doesn’t contradict the modern view. As I understand the history, two key aspects of theology developed after Nicea, namely the role of the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, and the delineations of Jesus’ divine and human natures. On the former issue, Athanasius seems to be merely negligent, due to his setting in the historic development of theology. On the latter issue, Athanasius comes across as mildly heretical, again because of his setting in history. But this is a problem in his christology, not a problem in his trinitarian formulation.

Athanasius’ Christology

An errant christology is of course a major charge of heresy, but it’s a minor issue for Athenasius because it’s difficult to categorically prove that he holds a truly heretical view. Thus I won’t develop a whole article on the subject, as I have on his other areas of significant departure from orthodoxy. But it’s worth including a brief discussion of the problem I see in Athanasius’ treatment of the subject, because I contend that the undeveloped christology of the Christian Church at the time of Nicea is a significant contributing factor to why we accepted certain errors into our thinking about the godhead.

For example, Athanasius and his contemporaries frequently contended over the nature of the begetting of the Son from the Father. The arians believed that this occurred as an act of creation, such that there was a time or point when the Son did not exist. The trinitarians on the other hand contended that this begetting must be an eternal, timeless generation of the Son from the Father, so as to preserve the true divinity of Jesus. However, with a proper distinction between Jesus’ divine and human natures intact, we can clearly show that the begetting described in scripture was something done to his human nature, at the point of Jesus’ ascension from the earth. Thus an entire category of trinitarian argumentation is made irrelevant, because the Council of Nicea simply had a mistaken understanding of christology that caused them to interpret scripture outside of its natural context.

Athanasius seems to reflect this confused christology in his own work, where he repeatedly represents the incarnation as the Word indwelling a human body. This is technically true, but modern christology is careful to emphasize that Jesus also had a human soul, with a human will and center of consciousness. Because he is truly man, he has everything that comes with being human. Athanasius on the other hand seems to affirm the common misconception that Jesus’ divine nature (the Word/Son) merely controlled a human body, replacing the soul as the exclusive controlling force over the body. He shows this errant view not by explicitly stating it, but by assuming it in sections of his work that compare and contrast the human soul and the divine Word.

While Athanasius’ christological view represents an important deficit in the early church’s theology, exposure to the modern orthodox view wouldn’t significantly change his beliefs or argumentation in other areas of theology. He could simply import the necessary revisions into his writings, and the logic would still flow seamlessly.

His more substantive errors flow out of the way in which he frames the divinity and incarnation of Jesus, so independent articles have been devoted to examining these problems in his thinking. First, Athanasius advances an anti-material view of the world that shares significant common ground with the heretical gnostics of his day. Second, he proffered the divinity of Adam and redeemed man, and third, he advaned a view of the fall that leads to the annihilation rather than eternal torment of unregenerate man.

Despite these and other errors, however, I believe that Athanasius should be considered a true hero of the Christian faith, and a brother in Christ worth seeking out and spending time with in eternity. His unwavering defense of trinitarian doctrine against the arians and their political machinations ensured that the true divinity of Jesus would be maintained within the Church for future generations to adopt and nuance. While I disagree that the Trinity as a system is essentially accurate in its framing of scripture, it nevertheless contains important biblical truths which Athanasius defended at all costs, even when he was pitted against the world.