It was the year 313, and the bishop of Alexandria stood at his window and looked out upon the city he was responsible for.
Beyond the line of houses, Bishop Alexander could see the city’s port bustling with the activity that had made Egypt such a rich trading centre during the height of the Roman Empire. Beyond that, stretching as far into the distance as the eye could see, the bishop looked upon the waters of the Mediterranean.
Just as Bishop Alexander was about to turn away from the window and prepare for some guests he was expecting for Sunday dinner, his gaze caught something he hadn’t seen before. On the shore of the harbor a group of boys were playing.
In itself this was nothing unusual; what was unusually is what the boys were playing. They seemed to be reenacting a baptism service. One of the boys was actually baptizing the other boys.
Concerned that the boys were making light of weighty matters, the Bishop sent his servant to break up the mock service and bring the boys to himself.
When the boys arrived at his house, the bishop began by asking the boys what they had been playing.
“It wasn’t our fault,” put in one of the company. “It was the bishop’s fault.” As he said this, the boy pointed towards a tall slim lad with ruddy hair, the one whom Alexander had seen baptizing the other boys.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“My name is Athanasius,” the young boy replied, a little nervous to find the bishop taking such an interest in him. “We were just playing,” the boy continued. “I was pretending to be the bishop and these [pointing to his companions] are my catechumens who have been awaiting baptism.”
As Bishop Alexander continued to question the boy, his response turned from one of censure to wonder. It turned out that the child had performed the baptismal rites on his companions with remarkable accuracy, perfectly reciting in Greek the liturgical formula used in the baptism of catechumens.
“Are you a Christian?” Alexander asked.
“Yes.”
Bishop Alexander continued his inquiries. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I want to be a priest.”
The bishop stood silent for a moment eying the boy. “It is not an easy life,” he said softly, recalling the Diocletian persecution which had only just come to an end and in which many of his friends had been martyred for the faith. “Also, a priest must have learning.”
“I love to learn,” said the boy, “And I am not afraid of anything!”
Impressed by the boy’s enthusiasm, the bishop made inquiries into the names and whereabouts of his parents. Later that week Alexander paid Athanasius’ parents a visit and asked for permission to bring the boy up in order to train and educate him for the ministry. Athanasius’ parents, who always knew there was something special about their boy, gladly accepted the bishop’s offer.
Athanasius quickly grew to love the gentle bishop as a father. But Athanasius was not the only one blessed by the relationship. The busy bishop found his generosity to the boy repaid a hundredfold, as the lad became a most useful assistant. Together the two of them travelled around the vast diocese, strengthening local church leaders and ministering to the needs of the saints.
Six years later, when Athanasius was 23 years old, he was ordained as a deacon and continued to work closely with the aging Patriarch.
The Trouble Begins
In those days the church was expanding drastically under the new freedom afforded by Constantine’s Edict of Milan. The Edict, issued in the same year that Alexander had found Athanasius playing on the harbor shore, brought an end to centuries of persecution that Christians had faced under previous hostile emperors.
But this new freedom also gave new opportunities for the devil to sow seeds of disunity and heresy among the Lord’s flock, even as Paul had warned in Acts 20:29-30:
“I know this, that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also, men shall arise from your own selves and speak perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”
The trouble that would mark Athanasius’ career began one afternoon when Bishop Alexander was lecturing on the Trinity at a pastor’s conference. In the course of the talk, a pastor from Libya named Arius stood up and opposed Alexander’s view that Jesus was co-eternal with the Father.
Like modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses, Arius argued that if Jesus was God’ son, then by definition he must have had a beginning to his existence and could not also be eternal God. Alexander tried to reason with Arius, but to no avail. It wouldn’t be long before Arius gathered a whole retinue of local pastors around himself, chanting “There was a time when he was not, there was a time when he was not,” indicating their belief that Jesus was a creature with a beginning rather than the eternal Son of God.
Soon followers of Arius could be heard throughout the whole empire singing their catchy songs.
It is not surprising that Arius’ heresy found such a ready audience. For hundreds of years Mediterranean culture had revolved around the worship of the emperor and various other demigods. If Jesus was simply a great man or angel, then serving Him was compatible with the worship of these other deities. Arianism was thus found to be highly attractive to those in positions of power.
Contending for the Faith
As the Arian controversy continued to spread like wildfire throughout the empire, it eventually caught the attention of the emperor. Division in the church deeply troubled the Constantine, who considered such in-fighting to be worse than war. In an attempt to resolve the conflict and restore unity to the fledgling church, Constantine convened a council at Nicaea in 325.
An innumerable company of churchmen, including 1,800 bishops, congregated at Nicaea from all over the empire. For three months the pastors debated the Arian heresy and other subsidiary matters.
As the proceedings continued, Bishop Alexander was overshadowed by his young assistant, Athanasius, who used his scriptural knowledge and rhetorical skills to persuade the congregants that this was no small matter. If Jesus is a created being, Athanasius argued, then He is not God; but unless Jesus is both fully man and fully God, He could not save us from our sins. This is because only one who was fully human can atone for human sin, but only one who is fully divine has the power to save us.
Under the force of these and other arguments,
: “We believe… in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God…very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”
When he refused to say the creed, Arius was pronounced a heretic and exiled.
For Athanasius and Alexander, Nicaea was the beginning, not the end, of trouble.
Banishment
Only a few months after the council, trouble surfaced when the supporters of Arius urged the emperor to end Arius’s exile, persuading him that Arius had repented. Constantine responded by ordering Bishop Alexander to restore Arias to table fellowship. Alexander refused, pointing out that Arius had not actually retracted his view that Jesus wasn’t God.
Three years after the council of Nicaea, Alexander died, leaving Athanasius to become the next Bishop of Alexandria. The Arians in the city saw this as an opportunity to make a come-back, having greatly underestimated the strength of Alexander’s young successor.
When it became clear that Athanasius would not let anyone enter the church who refused to say the Nicean Creed, the Arian party started a mud-slinging campaign. They accused Athanasius of everything from murder to illegal taxation. When these false accusations reached the ears of Constantine, Athanasius was summoned to appear before representatives of the emperor to answer charges. The following account (from Book I of Theodoret’s Ecclesiastical History and adapted by Stuart Bryan for a 2008 edition of Saint Anne’s Public House) tells about some of the charges leveled against Athanasius.
One of these charges concerned a certain Arsenius, a bishop of the faction opposed to Athanasius. The men of his party put him in hiding, and charged him to remain there as long as possible. They then cut off the right hand of a corpse, embalmed it, placed it in a wooden case, and carried it about everywhere, declaring that it was the hand of Arsenius, who had been murdered by Athanasius. But the all-seeing eye did not permit Arsenius to remain long in concealment. The friends of Athanasius hunted Arsenius up, apprehended him and brought him to an inn in Tyre, where they kept him until the council was convened.
On the appointed day, early in the morning, the great Athanasius and his close friend Timotheus came to the council. His enemies first accused him of violating the chastity of a woman in whose house he had lodged. The woman herself was present as witness to the crime. She stood and reported (with loud tears and sighs) how she had invited Athanasius into her house only to be ravished by the unfeeling wretch. When she had finished, the court ordered Athanasius to reply, but Athanasius remained silent. Instead, Timotheus stepped forward, as though he were Athanasius, and addressed her, “Have I, O woman, ever conversed with you, or have I entered your house?” She replied with even greater effrontery, screaming aloud at Timotheus, and, pointing at him with her finger, exclaimed, “It was you who robbed me of my virginity; it was you who stripped me of my chastity.” The devisers of this calumny were put to shame, and all the bishops who were privy to it, blushed, while the woman herself (a local prostitute as it turned out) was dragged from the room still screaming and accusing “Athanasius” of violating her.
But Athanasius’ enemies were undeterred by this turn of events. This was not the only, nor the most serious charge against him. At this point the small, covered box containing the embalmed hand of the murdered Bishop Arsenius was produced. A gasp spread through the room when it was opened and all the spectators uttered a loud cry. Some believed the accusation to be true; the others had no doubt of the falsehood, and thought that Arsenius was lurking somewhere or other in hiding.
When at length, after some difficulty, a little silence was obtained, Athanasius asked his judges whether any of them knew Arsenius. Several of them replying, “Why, yes, of course we knew him!”, Athanasius gave orders that a man who had hitherto stood outside in a long cloak be brought before them. Then Athanasius again asked them, “Is this the right Arsenius? Is this the man I murdered? Is this the man those people mutilated after his murder by cutting off his right hand?” When they had acknowledged that it was the same individual, Athanasius pulled off Arsenius’ cloak, and exhibited two hands, both the right and the left, and said, “Let no one seek for a third hand, for man has received two hands from the Creator and no more.”
When Athanasius’ accusers found that their tricks had backfired, they attempted to murder him. He would surely have been killed had not the emperor’s soldiers stepped in and installed Athanasius safety on board a ship.
Not long after this Athanasius reported to the emperor the unjust treatment he had undergone at the council. The emperor commanded the men Athanasius had complained about to appear before him. Instead of urging any of the former accusations (which had been so easily refuted) they switched their tactics and told Constantine that Athanasius had threatened to prevent the exportation of corn from Alexandria. Believing what they said, Constantine banished Athanasius to a city of Gaul called Treves.
It was only when Constantine died two years later in 337 that Athanasius was able to return to Alexandria. However, upon his homecoming Athanasius found that Arianism had seeped into the city like a poison. This time it was the church leaders who plotted how they might get rid of Athanasius because of his continuing commitment to the deity of Christ. The opportunity presented itself the following year when Constantine’s son, the new Roman Emperor Constantius II, renewed the order for Athanasius’s banishment, even issuing orders that Athanasius should be put to death if he entered his home church.
In 346 Athanasius was finally allowed to return, only to be exiled on three more occasions by the next two Roman emperors (Julian, noted for his opposition to Christianity, and Valens, noted for his Arianism). In 366 Athanasius was able to resume his bishopric for the last and final time, holding it until his death in 373 at the age of 78.
He did not move with the times
Athanasius’ life stands out as one of the most remarkable in the entire history of the church. Rejecting the life of ease that would later come to characterize so many bishops, Athanasius was prepared to live in constant turmoil and suspense rather than compromise on the deity of Christ. Though he would not live to see it, his battle against Arianism was successful, as seen by the fact that the modern descendents of Arius (the Jehovah’s Witnesses) are now exiled from the true church.
Although Athanasius’ enemies had hoped to silence him by removing him, the result was actually the opposite. During the seventeen years that he spent in exile, Athanasius had a chance to visit Christians in far off places, spreading his influence as a learned teacher and opening up wider and wider ministry opportunities. These periods of exile also gave him a chance to write and enabled him to leave behind a rich legacy of books.
Athanasius’ most influential work, On the Incarnation, continues to help Christians to this day in understanding the importance of Jesus’ divinity and humanity. In other works Athanasius distinguished himself as a leading apologist, defending Christianity not only against the Ariun threat but also against pagan and Jewish opposition. Other influential works include his Easter or Festal Letter of 367 which is often credited as being the earliest surviving statement of the New Testament canon.
“The whole world is against you!” a colleague once exclaimed to Athanasius when it looked like the entire Roman empire was lapsing into Arianism. Unperturbed, Athanasius replied, “Then it is Athanasius against the world.” These words (usually known in Latin: Athanasius contra mundum) have rung out down the halls of history as an inspiration to all those who have held fast to the truth against powerful opposition. Reflecting on this in his introduction to a translation of On the Incarnation, C.S. Lewis commented:
He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, ‘whole and undefiled,’ when it looked as if all the civilized world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius – into one of those ‘sensible’ synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times…
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The above article first appeared in Christian Voice’s March and April 2010 newsletter. Each month our newsletter has a biography of a different Christian hero, only interrupted occasionally to tell the story of a bad guy. Those who join Christian voice receive our monthly newsletter. Instructions on how to join are given below:
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