Contra and Pro Athanasius: Isaac Newton and John Henry Newman

Newton sought to show, not only that Athanasius was the author of “the whole fornication”—that is, of trinitarianism . . .—but also that Athanasius was a depraved man ready even to use murder to promote his ends.^[1]

For Newman, Athanasius was “the champion of the truth.”^[2]

Isaac Newton and John Henry Newman represent two diametrically opposed receptions of the teaching and figure of Athanasius. Newton, the great astronomer, kept his passionately critical views of Athanasius out of the public eye, but his private writings and personal conversations appear to have aided and abetted the English Arian movement of the eighteenth century. More than a century later, Newman, the great scholar and preacher, made no secret of his admiration for Athanasius. For the former, Athanasius represented all that went wrong in the church; he is the villain and arch-heretic in the story of the church’s downfall. For the latter, Athanasius was the great champion of the faith and the model for how current struggles were to be carried out.

This narrative, contra and pro Athanasius, concentrates on these two prominent figures, but each operated within a wider movement: Newton at the front end of the English Arian current and Newman within the Oxford movement. In both currents, Athanasius functions as a principal iconic figure; in a sense, he is “made present” in a striking way, stirring up passionate responses and functioning as an emblem around which contemporary struggles were fought out. In both currents, the teaching and character of Athanasius stand or fall together. In these contrasting positions, we possess a sketch of what will appear in the twentieth-century battles over the orthodoxy and the reputation of the embattled patriarch of Alexandria.

Isaac Newton and the British Arians

Despite the consistent testimony of biographers in the past two generations, it comes as a great surprise when people learn that Isaac Newton (1642–1727) spent nearly as much time reading and writing about “divinity” or “theology” as he did on mathematics, optics, and astronomy. A vast collection of Newton’s unpublished papers came to light only in the twentieth century; they reveal a man consumed with biblical, prophetic, and theological issues.^[3] Notably for our purposes, Athanasius figures prominently in Newton’s theological odyssey.

Around the age of thirty, while serving as a fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge and holding the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, Newton became passionately interested in biblical and theological questions. Biographer Richard Westfall identifies this as Newton’s “massive commitment” to theology.^[4] The requirement for fellows of the college to take orders in the Church of England probably spurred Newton to revisit his religious convictions. With the same independent and scrutinizing method he applied to science and mathematics, Newton began to scour biblical texts and to read works of early Christian writers. “[Newton] followed his established method. He studied the documentary evidence, analysed it, and then produced his own deductions in a notebook divided into headings.”^[5] Gathering up more than thirty translations  of  the  Bible  and  learning  basic  Hebrew,  Newton be- came a student  of  the  Scriptures.^[6]  “Almost  the  first  fruit  of  Newton’s theological study was doubt about the status of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity.”^[7] Newton quickly became convinced that the traditional Christian teaching on the full divinity of Christ and the Trinitarian understanding of God was deeply flawed, based as it was (in his view) on forged texts and misguided exegesis.

From his study of the Scriptures, Newton turned to the writings of the early church fathers. “Newton set himself the task of mastering the whole corpus of patristic literature. . . . There was no single patristic writer of importance whose works he did not devour. And always his eye was on the allied problems of the nature of Christ and the nature of God.”^[8] He read both the Latin and Greek fathers, but there is some doubt about Newton’s proficiency in Greek; he appears to have relied mainly on Latin translations of the Greek fathers.^[9] Still, his determination to examine the original sources shows an admirable determination to investigate theological questions with thoroughness.

From his readings in the church fathers, Newton adopted a clear and radical interpretation that lined up with his previous biblical study: Athanasius was wrong and Arius was fundamentally right. Newton

became fascinated with the man Athanasius and with the history of the church in the fourth century, when a passionate and bloody conflict raged between Athanasius and his followers, the founders of what became Christian orthodoxy, on the one hand, and Arius and his followers, who denied the trinity and the status of Christ in the Godhead, on the other.^[10]

For Newton, the history of the church reached a crisis point in the fourth century. It was here that the more primitive and non-Trinitarian view of God and Christ that Newton discovered in the early second- and third-century fathers ran aground against the novelties of Athanasius and his supporters. “Newton concluded that Athanasius had perpetrated a fraud. He had interpolated key words into the sacred Scriptures to support his argument that Christ was God. In that endeavour he had been supported by the Church of Rome.”^[11] For Newton, the axis of error was Athanasius in league with Rome: “Newton held that the pope in Rome had aided and abetted Athanasius and that the idolatrous Roman church was the direct product of Athanasius’ corruption of doctrine.”^[12] In Newton’s view, the church that traces its descent from Athanasius and the Nicene Creed had it exactly backward. Rather than Arius being the arch-heretic and Athanasius the champion of Christian truth, Newton concluded that Athanasius was the arch-heretic and Arius the (largely) faithful expositor of an early and purer non-Trinitarian faith.^[13] Newton clarifies in his notes that the fundamental error in worshiping Christ as God is the sin of idolatry. It amounts to a charge of blasphemy against the church’s Nicene confession of faith. “To Newton a commitment to trinitarianism was tantamount to blasphemy.”^[14]

Newton did not stop just with a critique of Athanasius’s teaching; he sought to expose his flawed character as well in a treatise entitled “Paradoxical Questions Concerning the Morals and Actions of Athanasius and His Followers,” which appears in Newton’s unpublished papers. For Newton, “It is the character as well as the doctrine of Athanasius that was suspect.”^[15]

Newton virtually stood Athanasius in the dock and prosecuted him for a litany of sins. . . . Newton sought to show, not only that Athanasius was the author of “the whole fornication”—that is, of trinitarianism, “the cult of the three equal Gods”—but also that Athanasius was a depraved man ready even to use murder to promote his ends.^[16]

All this made Newton deeply uneasy with the prospect of taking orders in an Anglican Church that upheld the very Trinitarianism he rejected. In the judgment of Richard Westfall, “well before 1675, Newton had become an Arian in the original sense of the term. He recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and humankind, who was subordinate to the Father who created him.”^[17] Michael White concurs: “Sometime between 1672 and 1675, Newton set out twelve points of faith that formed the foundations of his Arianism.”^[18] Through the agency of friends, Newton sought an exemption from the requirements of orders, and to the evident surprise of himself and others, this exemption was granted in perpetuity for the office holder of the Lucasian Chair in Mathematics. In the end, Newton was able to retain his academic positions without being required to publicize his heterodox Christian views.

Newton was fascinated as well with biblical prophecy, demonstrated by the fact that he composed four separate commentaries on Daniel and Revelation.^[19] “He pored over the prophets, tracing the path of their utterance through symbols and hieroglyphs. He believed that in their words could be found hidden truths concerning the future history of the world.”^[20] Notably, he identified the “beast” in Revelation not only with the Roman Church (a common identification among Protestants in his day), but specifically with the figure of Athanasius and the promulgation of the Nicene Creed in 381. In Newton’s view, the false teaching propagated by Athanasius and others that reached its culmination in the Creed of 381 represents the opening of the seventh seal, unleashing the judgments of the seven trumpets to follow. The mystery of blasphemy written on the forehead of the Whore of Babylon is the doctrine of the Trinity, introduced by Athanasius as a new form of polytheism.^[21] For Newton, “the Great Apostasy was no longer Romanism; it was trinitarianism,”^[22] and this apostasy continued to his own day; even in the reformed churches, the specter of Trinitarianism remained. “The false religion and idolatry introduced during the fourth century had been perpetuated by the Catholic Church and survived even in the reformed Church of England of Newton’s day.”^[23] Newton’s reading and application of biblical prophecy not only confirmed his conclusions drawn from biblical and historical studies but also produced the conviction that he was part of a small, faithful remnant that held to the original truth. “There is no doubt that Newton placed himself among the select few.”^[24]

Isaac Newton’s fascination with religious questions was not limited to his young adulthood. He maintained interest in these questions and returned to them throughout his life. In the latter decades of the seventeenth century, Newton produced sketches of an overall historical narrative of the church. In a treatise called “The Philosophical Origins of Gentile Theology,” Newton theorized on the origins of religious belief and the fall from a pure knowledge of God possessed by Noah and his sons. “Much of Newton’s unpublished theological scholarship was devoted to elucidating the history of that Church, from its reestablishment by Noah to its most recent corruption by Athanasius and his papal successors.”^[25] In this narrative, the land of Egypt serves as the place of ultimate corruption. It is there that idolatry, the fundamental sin, grew and developed. Unsurprisingly, Newton links Egypt’s original corrupting role in his history of religion with the figure of Athanasius. In Athanasius, pagan idolatry arises once again: “Through Athanasius, Egypt  once  again  played  its  nefarious  role  as  the  corrupter  of  true religion.”^[26]

Standing back and surveying Newton’s theological writings, we can recognize a striking triangulation that points to Athanasius as the chief antagonist. Whether from Newton’s doctrinal reading of Scripture and interpretation of biblical prophecy, his interpretation of the fathers, or his broader theory of religious development, all roads lead to the mischief caused by Athanasius and the tragic triumph of Trinitarianism. Athanasius functions in Newton’s fall narrative of the church as the epicenter and icon of all that went wrong. And Newton saw himself as part of the faithful remnant who were preserving the truth in an age of apostasy.

Why, then, did Newton not take a public stand in favor of an Arian view of Christian belief or seek to renew the church and purge it of Trinitarianism? Why is it that “in public Newton chose to disguise his heterodoxy” and “concealed his views so effectively that only in our day has full knowledge of them become available”?^[27] The dominant reason proposed is that Newton kept his theological views hidden because if he had revealed them, he would have lost his university appointments and place in society. “If Newton had admitted his faith he would have been stripped of his university appointments. . . . He reserved his theological conversations for fellow believers.”^[28] This was not an idle fear; several of Newton’s friends and colleagues published their Arian views and promptly lost their posts. In short, Newton hid his theological views to preserve his place in society.

Two other motives, however, may have played a role in Newton’s secrecy. On the one hand, he may have refrained from publishing his views not just to maintain his position in society but also because he thought the days of Trinitarianism were passing; the best strategy was to be patient and let it pass of its own accord.^[29] On the other hand, Newton believed that he belonged to a remnant singled out to preserve the truth for the church, but he also concluded that the prophecies in Daniel were yet to be fulfilled and the time had not yet come for the overturning of heresy in the church. For either or both of these reasons, Newton may have judged the time inexpedient for publicizing his theological commitments.

Isaac Newton was not the lone Arian adherent in his day. In his study of Arianism through the ages, Maurice Wiles dedicates the larger part of the volume to “the rise and fall of British Arianism” in the eighteenth century.^[30] Notably, for this select group, “the archetypal heresy was Athanasian orthodoxy, and what the fourth-century fathers called ‘Arianism’ was the true embodiment of ‘primitive Christianity.’”^[31] After identifying strands of Arianism in the early seventeenth century, Wiles offers his own account of what he calls “the secret Arianism of Isaac Newton.”^[32] For Wiles, it is conceptually important to distinguish Arian views of Christ from those termed Socinian or Unitarian. All share a rejection of Trinitarianism, but the crucial feature of the Arian view is the conviction that the Son is preexistent and, though a creature, participates to an eminent degree in divinity. In Wiles’s view, Newton went further than his distinguished contemporary John Locke by affirming “the pre-existent Christ as a distinct being of a secondary divine nature.”^[33] Nonetheless, Wiles concludes that “Newton’s attitude emerges as passionately anti-Athanasian rather than pro-Arian. Arius is a figure of no great importance to him.”^[34]

Two leading figures in the British Arian movement, William Whiston and Samuel Clarke, were students and close confidants of Isaac Newton. Both probably gained (or were strengthened in) their commitments to an Arian view of Christ through their contact with Newton.^[35] William Whiston (1677–1752) succeeded Newton—at Newton’s own recommendation—to the Lucasian Chair in Mathematics in 1703. In contrast to Newton, he publicized his adherence to an Arian form of belief, resulting in his dismissal from his academic posts in 1710. He never again enjoyed gainful employment.

Whiston believed that primitive Christianity, before its corruption, was basically Arian in belief: “I am abundantly satisfied that the Arian doctrines are those delivered by our Saviour and his Apostles and all the first Christians.”^[36] Whiston traces the turn away from this primitive faith to Tertullian, but the true villain of his fall narrative is the later Athanasius, who blurred the distinction of the Father and Son and failed to uphold that the Father alone is really and truly God. Interestingly, the hero of Whiston’s narrative is not Arius himself, but Eunomius, the chief theological expositor of so-called neo-Arianism in the second half of the fourth century. Whiston labelled the Athanasian Creed “the most heretical creed now extant in the world,” preferring instead the longer Creed of Eunomius, which for Whiston was “full, plain, distinct, judicious, and agreeable to the original doctrines of Christianity.”^[37] Following in the steps of Newton, his mentor, Whiston published a list of seventeen Suspicions Concerning Athanasius, describing him as an “ignorant and pernicious heretic” and “a notorious forger and liar.”^[38] Once again, Athanasius serves as the archvillain in the story of the corruption of the Christian faith.

Samuel Clarke provided a scholarly grounding for the British Arian movement through the publication of the Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (1712). He studiously recommended a moderate form of Arianism, offering conclusions less radical and abrasive than Whiston but tending in the same direction. “What Newton had cogitated in his inner chamber and Whiston had shouted from the house-tops, Clarke was now promulgating in the measured tones of reasoned exposition.”^[39] He was  so  bold  as  to  attempt  to  show  that  the  Athanasian  Creed  itself, a  regular  part  of  the  Anglican  liturgy,  was  compatible  with  his moderate form of Arianism. His efforts mainly had the effect of encouraging other Arian-sympathizers to jettison the Athanasian Creed altogether.^[40] Clarke was formally charged with anti-Trinitarian heresy by the lower house of the Anglican clergy in 1714, but due to support by several bishops and his own partial retraction of his views, the case was dismissed.^[41]

The story of Isaac Newton and the British Arian movement furnishes a fascinating window onto the reception of Athanasius. The tables are turned, the terms are reversed. Arius and Eunomius are vindicated as authentic representatives of primitive Christian faith. Athanasius functions as the icon of all that went wrong: his teaching and character are equally vilified and repudiated. The great champion of orthodoxy becomes the arch-heretic and epicenter of the church’s fall from truth. In Isaac Newton, we encounter a forerunner of the anti-Athanasian sentiment of the twentieth century and an apt foil for the pro-Athanasian reception by John Henry Newman.

John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement

If, as a general assessment, the Western Christian tradition did not have a wide acquaintance with the actual writings of Athanasius, the same cannot be said of John Henry Newman (1801–90). “There was perhaps no one in any country who, in the first half of the nineteenth century, had a greater knowledge of Athanasius than Newman.”^[42] Tracing the history of his own religious development, Newman recounts that at the age of fifteen he “drew up a series of texts in support of each verse of the Athanasian Creed.”^[43] This early attachment to the Athanasian Creed suffered a relapse during Newman’s early years as a tutor at Oriel College in Oxford. As Rowan Williams observes, “Newman himself says . . . that he was at first cool towards the language of post-Nicene theology, not enthusiastic for the Athanasian Creed, and disposed to prefer the ante-Nicene authorities.”^[44] Newman admits that in 1827 he was “drifting in the direction of liberalism” and found the Athanasian Creed “unnecessarily scientific.” “I was just then very strong for that ante-Nicene view of the Trinitarian doctrine, which some writers, both Catholic and non-Catholic, have accused of wearing a sort of Arian exterior.”^[45] This posture would soon change dramatically, in part because in the following year Newman began a thorough, chronological reading of the church fathers, beginning with Ignatius of Antioch and Justin Martyr. Newman describes this as the return to “my early devotion towards the Fathers.”^[46]

The role that Athanasius and the fathers of the church played in Newman’s thought and imagination cannot be grasped apart from the sense of mission that Newman himself so powerfully describes in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Provoked by what he saw as the interference by the State in the life of the Anglican Church, and animated by the ideas and convictions of associates such as John Keble and Hurrell Froude, Newman believed himself to be caught up in the defense of the church and of the faith in his time. Notably, the Arian controversy of the fourth century—and especially the figure of Athanasius—became the primary lens through which he viewed and interpreted the fight for the truth in his own day.

In 1830, Newman received a commission to write a short work on the Council of Nicaea. This launched him on a study of the entire period, resulting in a volume of 422 pages entitled The Arians of the Fourth Century that appeared in 1833. In the introduction, Newman argues that Antioch, not Alexandria, is the originator of Arian doctrine. His nuanced and critical defense of Alexandrian theology and its key figures (Clement, Origen, Dionysius) reveals his attachment to Alexandrian theology.^[47] Newman’s description of Athanasius in Arians reads very much like that in Nazianzen’s oration of old. Athanasius is depicted as “the great Egyptian prelate,” calmly prosecuting the work for which he was raised up.^[48] The character and virtue of Athanasius receive special notice: “While he punished, he spared, and restored in the spirit of meekness, while he rebuked and rejected with power.” “It is this union of opposite excellences, firmness with discrimination and discretion, which is the characteristic praise of Athanasius.”^[49] What so many have found to be incompatible traits in Athanasius—his fierceness and his kindness—Newman combines into one integrated mindset and character: “Deliberate apostasy and systematic heresy were the objects of his implacable opposition; but in his behavior towards individuals, and in his judgment of the inconsistent, whether in conduct or creed, he evinces an admirable tenderness and forbearance.”^[50]

For Newman, however, Athanasius and the early fathers were more than just models to praise and admire. They provided inspiration for what was needed in Newman’s time; they served as “icons” for how Newman and others should act in their own struggles against similar opponents and heterodoxies. The final page of Arians reveals this typological role, this “making-present” of the heroes of old:

And so of the present perils, with which our branch of the Church is beset, as they bear a marked resemblance to those of the fourth century, so are the lessons, which we gain from that ancient time, especially cheering and edifying to Christians of the present day. . . . We . . . may rest in the confidence, that, should the hand of Satan press us sore, our Athanasius and Basil will be given us in their destined season, to break the bonds of the Oppressor, and let the captives go free.^[51]

In a letter written in the same year, Newman wrote in exasperation: “If only we had one Athanasius, or Basil, we could bear with 20 Eusebiuses.”^[52] And in verses written in honor of Athanasius (in 1832), Newman calls for a champion like Athanasius to appear in the north:

When shall our northern Church her champion see,

Raised by high heaven’s decree,

To shield the ancient faith at his own harm?^[53]

Stephen Thomas suggests that in regard to the final sentence in Newman’s Arians, “it is tempting to conclude that he saw himself as such an Athanasius or Basil redivivus.”^[54] Perhaps—but at the very least Newman derived intense inspiration from Athanasius and others, specifically for how they conducted themselves with firmness and charity in a time of great apostasy in the church.

For Newman, the typological role of Athanasius (and the fathers) shifted as his own religious views developed.^[55] The first phase occurred in the earliest days of the Oxford movement. The Arians of the fourth century corresponded to the nineteenth-century liberals in the Church of England, “tamperers and accommodators, whose purpose [was] to modify the Christian tradition in the direction of infidelity.”^[56] Athanasius and the other fathers represented the dogmatic principle in Christianity, faithful to the tradition’s reading of Scripture as recognizing the full divinity of the Son. The second phase emerged with the Oxford movement in full swing, as Newman read more thoroughly in the fathers and began to identify Anglicanism as the via media between Protestantism and Rome. The true middle way was sketched by the path of orthodoxy that Athanasius and others charted between the twin errors of Sabellianism and Apollinarianism. In a third phase, as Newman’s hopes for the via media crashed to the ground in the late 1830s, two distinct typologies appeared that yielded the same conclusion. The first emerged through Newman’s study of the Monophysites of the fifth century: “I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite. The Church of the Via Media was in the position of the Oriental communion, Rome was, where she now is; and the Protestants were the Eutychians.”^[57]

The second typology appeared shortly afterward, while Newman was translating Athanasius for the Library of the Fathers series: “I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was. The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but in what was called “the extreme party.”^[58]

In his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, completed in 1845, the year he left the Anglican Church for Rome, Newman found guidance from Athanasius (among others) for where to locate the true church:

On the whole, all parties will agree that, of all existing systems, the present communion of Rome is the nearest approximation in fact to the Church of the Fathers, possible though some may think it, to be nearer still to that Church on paper. Did St. Athanasius or St. Ambrose come suddenly to life, it cannot be doubted what communion he would take to be his own.^[59]

Lecturing five years later to the Catholic University in Ireland, Newman offers an even more comprehensive typology drawn from the figures of the fourth and fifth centuries:

It is impossible to resist the conclusion, which the actual inspection of the history in detail forces upon us, that what the See of Rome was then such is it now; that what Arius, Nestorius, or Eutyches were then, such are Luther and Calvin now; what the Eusebians or Monophysites then, such the Anglican hierarchy now; what the Byzantine Court then, such is now the Government of England. . . . That ancient history is not dead, it lives; it prophesies of what passes before our eyes; it is founded in the nature of things; we see ourselves in it, as in a glass.^[60]

The last sentence is deeply revealing of Newman’s manner of applying the controversies in the time of the fathers to the present. Athanasius, Arius, and the others function like prophets to his own day; they are a living mirror in which he can view the figures and controversies of his time.

Rowan Williams points to the dangers of making the controversies of the past the lens through which we interpret the present, and he finds fault with Newman’s historical analysis of the Arian conflict and with the way Newman applies fourth-century categories to his own day. But Williams then proceeds to make just such an application of Athanasius to the twentieth century: “Newman’s essay on Arianism demonstrates how fatally easy it is to settle on misleading contemporary parallels for the fourth-century crisis; but the risk is still worth taking.”^[61] Williams then proceeds to draw a correspondence between the fourth century and the German church struggle during the Nazi era in the twentieth century, with Karl Barth playing the figure of Athanasius.^[62] For Williams, there is “a certain irresistible parallel between Athanasius and Barth.”^[63] The temptation to view Athanasius as a paradigmatic, iconic figure and to “apply him” to one’s own day seems difficult to resist, even for those who profess dangers and problems with this kind of typological reading of history.

Such is Newman’s typological reading of Athanasius and the fourth century. But Newman also drew crucial elements from Athanasius’s teaching that became fundamental building blocks of his own theology, three of which I will draw attention to here. The first is what Newman identifies as Athanasius’s method of reading Scripture within an authoritative tradition. Toward the end of his life, while working on a new translation of Athanasius’s anti-Arian orations, Newman offers extended commentary on the Alexandrian and, in the following selection, draws attention to the interplay of Scripture and tradition:

The fundamental idea with which [Athanasius] starts in the controversy is a deep sense of the authority of Tradition, which he considers to have a definitive jurisdiction even in the interpretation of Scripture, though at the same time he seems to consider that Scripture, thus interpreted, is a document of final appeal in inquiry and in disputation.^[64]

The principle of antiquity always weighed heavily with Newman; it was the primary principle on which he originally fixed his hope for justifying the catholicity of the Anglican communion. But in the end, antiquity alone did not suffice; Newman recognized the need for an authoritative tradition and seems to have learned from Athanasius how such a tradition functions in controversy, enabling Scripture to stand as the final appeal while at the same time providing the context for grasping the true sense of the Scripture.

Second, Newman gained foundational insight and inspiration from Athanasius—and from the Athanasian Creed—for his understanding of the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. In Newman’s eyes, Athanasius’s teaching on the Trinity remains the standard for the church. “This renowned Father is in ecclesiastical history the special doctor of the sacred truth which Arius denied, bringing it out into shape and system so fully and luminously that he may be said to have exhausted his subject, as far as it lies open to the human intellect.”^[65] Elsewhere, Newman distinguishes between expositing the doctrine of the Trinity and working out its aspects in technical language. He believes Athanasius’s achievement was primarily in exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity: “Thus St. Athanasius himself is more powerful in statement and exposition than in proof.”^[66] In a similar way, Newman drew on both Athanasius and Cyril for undergirding the teaching of Chalcedon and upholding the full divinity of Christ. “[Newman] emphasized Christ’s divinity because he judged that to be at risk. For that reason, he turned to Athanasius and Cyril and the Alexandrian school, whom he found so congenial, to expound a Christology in which the divinity of Christ could never be in doubt.”^[67]

The bedrock of Newman’s thought is what he terms the “dogmatic principle” and he sees the struggle for this principle as one of the main continuities of his thought:

I have changed in many things: in this I have not. From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery.^[68]

It cannot be said that Athanasius taught this dogmatic principle to Newman; Newman brought this conviction to his reading of Athanasius and probably found Athanasius specially attractive because of his commitment to the dogmas of the faith. Yet, Athanasius’s untiring defense of dogmatic truth against such formidable opponents strengthened Newman’s own resolve and taught him the fundamental features of the Trinitarian doctrine. Nowhere does Newman ascribe the Athanasian Creed to Athanasius, but he strongly supports the teaching of the Creed and views it as entirely consistent with the faith that Athanasius defended. In a sermon preached on Trinity Sunday during his Anglican period, Newman holds forth on the excellences of the Athanasian Creed as a precise summary of Trinitarian faith and a profound hymn of praise:

It is in the same spirit that the most precise and systematic of all the Creeds, the Athanasian, is rather, as the form of it shows, a hymn of praise to the Eternal Trinity; it being meet and right at festive seasons to bring forth before our God every jewel of the Mysteries entrusted to us, to show that those of which He gave us we have lost none.^[69]

A third element that Newman drew from Athanasius is the doctrine of deification. Many commentators have noted Newman’s great attraction to the Greek fathers and his assimilation of aspects of Greek patristic theology.^[70] Newman himself praises Athanasius for this teaching on deification and makes his own the notion that the goal of salvation is the deification of the human race:

The sanctification, or rather the deification of the nature of man, is one main subject of St. Athanasius’s theology. Christ, in rising, raises His Saints with Him to the right hand of power. They become instinct with His life, of one body with His flesh, divine sons, immortal kings, gods. He is in them, because He is in human nature; and He communicates to them that nature, deified by becoming His, that them It may deify. He is in them by the Presence of His Spirit, and in them He is seen. . . . For the Word did not suffer loss in receiving a body, that He should seek to receive a grace, but rather He deified that which He put on, nay, gave it graciously to the race of man.^[71]

Though Newman does not employ the terminology of deification frequently, his treatises and sermons are suffused with the idea of the indwelling of God through Christ and the Spirit in the lives of Christians. It is a peculiar mark of his writing and preaching.^[72]

John Henry Newman identified broadly with the church of the fathers, finding inspiration, wisdom, and solace in many figures. Still, Athanasius may be said to have held pride of place among them. Ian Ker names Athanasius as Newman’s “favorite early Father.”^[73] George Dragas believes that “Athanasius’ habits are assimilated by Newman more decisively than the habits of any other Father.”^[74] It is probably no coincidence that Newman began and ended his career with efforts to translate Athanasius’s works. According to Ker, “[Newman] intended the new translation of Athanasius to complete the uniform edition and to be his last published work. The study of St. Athanasius had been his first and was now his last ‘passion.’”^[75] It is ironic that Newman was unhappy with both his former and latter efforts to bring Athanasius into translation. His first attempt in the early 1840s was adversely affected by his own painful wrestling with his place in the Anglican Church; his last effort was interrupted by the invitation to Rome to receive the cardinal’s red hat, which, in his words, “spoilt the revision.”^[76] In the end, Newman was disappointed with his effort to bring Athanasius into fresh translation.

As a young man, Newman entered the fray of theological controversy, by all indications looking to Athanasius as his model and guide. As a much older man, when invited to attend the first Vatican Council, he pleaded his old age, identifying himself with that set of church fathers who did not participate in ecclesiastical councils: “I am too old to learn the ways of other great Saints, as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Ambrose, whom I admire, but cannot run with. They are race-horses—I am a broken-kneed poney.”^[77] Whether stepping forward to emulate Athanasius or standing back in admiration, Newman never lost his high regard for the patriarch who stood in the breach for the faith of the church: “There has been a time in the history of Christianity, when it had been Athanasius against the world, and the world against Athanasius. The need and straitness of the Church had been great, and one man was raised up for her deliverance.”^[78]

Isaac Newton and John Henry Newman present us with strikingly opposite receptions of the figure of Athanasius. For Newton, Athanasius represented the fundamental disfiguration of Christian doctrine: a deeply unethical man who caused great harm to the church. Newton saw himself standing among those few who recognized this truth and who were waiting for the redemption of the church. For Newman, Athanasius represented a man who stood for the truth against all odds: a profoundly pious man, to be praised for his virtuous conduct. Newman saw himself standing in Athanasius’s wake, serving the same ends in his own time, waiting for the emergence of a “northern” Athanasius to turn the tide. These conflicting readings of Athanasius, though often adopted with less personal investment, characterize the reception of Athanasius from Newman’s day to our own.

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