The "historical section" of this book contains concise vignettes of some of the Church Fathers, and follows a style that is similar to my monthly articles in Magnificat (which I have been writing since 2013). If God wills, I may yet return to working on a "more mature" scholarly project bringing together the various themes and methodological approaches that I sketched out in this book nearly a quarter of a century ago. The intellectual realm of historical studies within the context of philosophical and theological anthropology (i.e. this multifaceted approach to "the created person and the mystery of God") is still the inspiration for my studies and what writing I have been able to do. My experience and my thinking have grown much since the days of this book, and circumstances have opened new doors and indicated larger vistas that would require several volumes to bring together in a formal academic study.
If someone gave me a very large financial grant (enough to keep my wife and I going for the rest of our lives) and if they were very patient, a project like this might be possible. I am certain that no form of "AI" will ever be able to do it (perhaps it could assist in some tasks, like finding sources).
Who knows what might happen? May the Lord lead me, empower me, and show me the way. We live in a time of epochal change. I think right now of some poor archbishop who might be a bit older than me, taking a coffee in Roman coffee bar, looking forward to what he hopes will be a short bit of ecclesiastical "business" so that he can get back home; he has no idea whatsoever that in a few weeks he will be the Pope!
But, speaking of epochal change, I am supposed to be introducing Saint Athanasius here. Let us therefore proceed to text which looks at a great figure who endured many "changes" but persevered through them all in his defense of the Divinity of Jesus Christ:
Less than five years after Constantine’s declaratiom of religious freedom in 313 a.d., the Church was plunged headlong into a new type of crisis. A popular, talented, and politically astute priest in Alexandria named Arius had developed a theory about the Trinity. Up until this time, most attempts by Christian thinkers to shed light on the unity and distinctness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had been provisional at best. For Arius, classical Catholic accounts of the Trinity were dissatisfying and ambiguous and seemed to involve the Church in irrational and contradictory affirmations about God. He proposed a simple solution, logically coherent, easy to understand, and—at first glance—seemingly consistent with the language of the New Testament.
Arius taught that the One Eternal God is the radically Unoriginate One in every respect. This meant that God is solely unoriginate "in Person" (this, in any case, is what his approach to the Trinity inescapable implied). It follows, that the Logos, the Word, is "God's" first and greatest creature. The Word is a reflection of the Divine Being, so perfect that he is called “Son” and God is his “Father” in a unique manner. Nevertheless, he is a creature. According to a famous slogan of Arius which he even set to music, “there was a time when he was not.” This first creature fashioned everything else in turn; therefore he is called “god” in relation to the rest of creation; however he is not divine by nature. The Holy Spirit, too, is a creature, the first and greatest creature of the Word who is himself the divine-like creature of God the Father.
What Arius proposed was ingenious and remarkable. It appeared to be nothing less than a translation into Christian terms of the “Divine Triad” of Neoplatonism, in which Universal Intelligence and Universal Soul were inferior reflections emanating from the Transcendent One and bringing forth the spiritual and material world in turn. It seemed as though Arius had reconciled Catholic faith and philosophical wisdom, giving a rationally satisfying explanation of the Trinity.
In fact, however, Arius had deconstructed the mystery of the Trinity, and he stubbornly refused all correction on the matter of what became known as the "great heresy" that bears his name. His theory was condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325, wherein the Only Son of the Father was proclaimed God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father. After this Council, however, the Arian party succeeded in gaining imperial favor by means of deception and intrigue. Enormous political pressure was brought to bear against orthodox bishops by Constantine’s successors, and imperially sponsored synods tried to construct and then impose compromise Trinitarian formulations that secretly favored the Arian position.
In the center of this storm was the singular figure of Saint Athanasius, the great bishop of Alexandria and fearless defender of Trinitarian orthodoxy. Athanasius was exiled from his see no less than five times during his tumultuous career, because he stubbornly opposed any and every politically engineered compromise with the Arian position.
Modern secular historians may often wonder why Athanasius was so passionate and so persistent about what might seem to be an abstract theological point. Yet we can appreciate the energy of his zeal if we realize that he perceived the deep connection between the mystery of the Trinity and the mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption. Athanasius’s conviction about the Trinity was inseparable from his conviction about the Christian event and its significance for the life of man. Through the incarnation and redemption, God has made it possible for us to share in His very life. Our union with the Word made flesh gives us a participation in the Divine life. This is the great patristic teaching on deification (“theosis”): God became man so that men might become “gods”—that is, adopted sons of the Father. Athanasius perceived the radical implications of Arius’s theories: if the one who became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary was not fully Divine, how could he possibly give us a participation in the Divine life? In the Arian system, the magnificent destiny of the Christian man comes crashing to the ground. The one who walked the earth, who became our friend, who gave us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink, was merely another creature like us. God has not shown us His face nor invited us into his friendship. He remains a stranger to us. Thus Athanasius declares: “the Son of God became Son of Man, so that the sons of man, that is, of Adam, might become sons of God. The Word begotten of the Father from on high, inexpressibly, inexplicably, incomprehensibly and eternally, is He that is born in time here below, of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, so that those who are in the first place born here below might have a second birth from on high, that is, of God.”
Moreover, if the Holy Spirit is not fully God, how can he possibly transform us into the likeness of God? “If the Holy Spirit were a creature, there could be no communion of God with us through Him. On the contrary, we would be joined to a creature, and we would be foreign to the divine nature, as having nothing in common with it…If by participation in the Spirit we are made partakers in the divine nature…it cannot be doubted that His is the nature of God.”
Thus for Athanasius, the full co-eternal divinity of the Word and the Holy Spirit was not only a truth about the mystery of God; it was also a matter of life or death for man—it was a truth decisive for the human vocation. Only the Divine Word made flesh divinizes His brothers in the flesh. If Christ is anything less than God, then the gates of heaven are closed and man is still in exile from his eternal home. The comfortable rationalism of Arius, in the end, robbed Christianity of its very heart.
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| First Council of Nicaea, 325 - from an ancient fresco in present day Turkiye. |
