Chapter 1: Athanasius of Alexandria
1
Athanasius of Alexandria
The Egyptian metropolis Alexandria was laid out and named by Alexander the Great sometime in 332 BC. Plutarch reports that the idea of Alexander’s new capital city came to him in a dream one night.1 He probably chose its location because, situated on the Nile Delta, it had access to the Mediterranean, the Nile River, and the Red Sea. It had two natural harbors, one on the eastern and one on the western side of the city. A third harbor, fed by a man-made canal on the landward side of the city, linked Alexandria to Lake Mariout and gave access to the Nile from the Mediterranean Sea, and hence also to upper Egypt and north central Africa. The harbor’s famous Pharos Lighthouse, which was built circa 280 BC, was esteemed as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It served as a guiding light for travelers and sailors, just as the city itself became a beacon for merchants, travelers, religious pilgrims, and the finest intellectual minds of the ancient world.
Alexandria was a wealthy and bustling mercantile city when Athanasius was born there around AD 296. It was the heart of the empire’s grain trade. Corn and grain, vital to the empire’s well-being, were grown up and down central Egypt because of the annual flooding and irrigation of the Nile River; Egyptian grain was the lifeblood of distant cities like Rome and Constantinople. And indeed, the political stability of those distant capitals often depended upon the arrival of the Alexandrian grain fleet. It is estimated that between four and a half million bushels of grain (a poor year) and eight and a half million bushels (a bounty year) flowed through Alexandria annually.2 Western merchants also found that going through Alexandria, down the Nile, and across the imperial roads that linked the Nile with the Egyptian ports on the southeastern coast gave them rapid access to the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and important trading centers in the East—without going through the arduous overland route and expensive Arab middlemen.
The city of Alexandria was divided into five wards, which were populated by various ethnic groups. One, called Rakotis, was made up predominantly of native Egyptians; another was almost exclusively Jewish; others were diversely populated by Egyptians, merchants, foreigners and dignitaries. Hence, Alexandria had a rich heritage of religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity. It was, in the finest sense of its Hellenistic founder’s ideal, a cosmopolitian place, which both represented and embraced the entire world.3
The city had a rich intellectual and religious history, reaching back to the pre-Christian era, when the expansive library of more than five hundred thousand volumes and legendary museum—where the muses disseminated learning through the efforts of poets, philosophers, and scientists—were the crown jewels of the ancient intellectual world. These were ultimately destroyed by fire in AD 31, but were symbols of the city’s proud and diverse intellectual history. Alexandria was also the undisputed religious center of Egypt during this same period. It was a haven of Hellenism, as well as of native Egyptian religion. Shrines to many pagan cults were located there, as were Jewish and Christian places of worship. Christianity was said (by Eusebius) to have come to Alexandria early, through the efforts of St. Mark, the evangelist.4 If so, that influence almost certainly was based in the thriving Jewish community there, which boasted the work of Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 50), a famous Jewish philosopher and biblical scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures. A Christian school was soon established in Alexandria under the direction of Pantaenus (about whom almost nothing is known). He was succeeded first by Clement (ca. 160–215) and then by the most famous of the Alexandrian theologians, Origen (ca. 185–ca. 251).5 The work of Clement and Origen, in particular, was richly textured by their appreciation for the Greek philosophy known as Platonism, which brought with it a spirit-body dualism and offered a predominantly spiritual understanding of the world as emanating directly from God.
Alexandrian Christian theology was christocentric (Christ-centered) and focused largely on the role of Jesus Christ as the Logos (Word) of God. It drew upon aesthetic and philosophical impulses, as well as Scripture—which was often interpreted symbolically through the means of allegory. Knowledge or gnosis was also an important feature of Alexandrian theology; God-given knowledge came through Christ, who both taught and empowered one to imitate the life of God. The holy life of believers was thought (as in much of Eastern Orthodox theology) to enable persons to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4). This process, called theosis (deification), focused upon the goal of Christian life as transformation, holiness, and sanctification; it longed for restoration of the Divine nature within humans (Gen 1:26) and not merely forgiveness or pardon.
But what was most typical of Alexandrian religion, perhaps, was the religious synthesis that occurred there. In a synthesis between the Egyptian gods Osiris and Apis, along with Greek Hellenistic influence, Emperor Ptolemy I (367–283 BC) invented a new god named Serapis. He was depicted as a bearded king upon a regal throne and called “the source of all things.” In a similar way, during the beginnings of Christianity, apostolic Christianity merged with Greek and Egyptian mystery religions to form various Gnostic-Christian sects, like those led by Valentinus and Basilides. These eclectic faiths included Jesus Christ in their pantheon but viewed him through the lens of the Greek spirit-body dualism. The spirit was seen as good and the body as evil. This meant that the Incarnation of Christ, when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), came to be reinterpreted in ways that deviated from traditional Christology. Two Gnostic christological options emerged: the one, called Docetism (from the Greek word for “appear”), held that Christ only appeared to have a physical, human body—really he was a being comprised entirely of spirit; the other, called Adoptionism, suggested that Jesus and Christ were actually two separate beings, Jesus having been a devout human who was taken over and possessed by a Divine Spirit named Christ. Noncanonical documents like the Gospel of the Egyptians and the Gospel of the Hebrews are thought to have stemmed from these Egyptian Gnostic communities.
The Christian church was well established in Alexandria by the time Athanasius was born there in the late third century AD. The city was the citadel of Christian Egypt, and the bishop of Alexandria was more like an archbishop or metropolitan who had responsibility for more than one hundred other bishops in Egypt, Libya, the Thebaid, and surrounding regions.6 The bishop of the city was called papa or “pope” some fifty years before that title of respect and authority was applied in the church of Rome.7
The Roman Empire was in the able hands of Diocletian, who had reorganized the administration and brought renewed economic and political stability to the empire. He put the government in the hands of a tetrarchy—a leadership team of four rulers, each of whom was responsible for a particular region. The empire was divided into East (Greek-speaking) and West (Latin-speaking) regions. Each region had a supreme ruler called Augustus, as well as a lieutenant-emperor called Caesar. Diocletian himself was Augustus of the East, with Galerius under him; Maximian was Augustus of the West, with Constantius Chlorus ruling as his Caesar. The genius of this division of labor was, in part, that it provided for a stable line of succession to the leadership role; each Caesar was, in fact, an Augustus in training.
Diocletian’s wife, Prisca, and their daughter, Valeria, were both Christians, and this development seemed as though it would provide the Christian church with a modicum of protection and peaceful development under his rule. But this was not to be the case. As Christians refused to serve in the Roman army, and soldiers who became Christians mutinied in the field (ca. 295), a series of significant tensions arose between the Christian church and Diocletian’s government. As these tensions escalated, Diocletian became convinced that the Christians were conspiring against him and his government. In retaliation, he decreed that church leaders should be arrested, and subsequently he demanded that all Christians must offer sacrifice to the traditional Roman gods. Following the strict monotheism (worshiping only one God) of the Judaic-Christian heritage, many Christians refused. This resulted in the government unleashing the most severe persecution the Christian church had ever experienced. Cruel punishments and tortures were used as inducements to try to force Christians to give up their scriptures, renounce their faith, and embrace the gods of Rome.
The Christian chronicler Eusebius described the suffering of the Egyptian Christians in this manner:
Thousands of men, women, and children, despising the present life for the sake of the teaching of our Savior, endured various deaths. Some of them, after scrapings and rackings and severest scourgings, and numberless other kinds of tortures, terrible even to hear of, were committed to the flames; some were drowned in the sea; some offered their heads bravely to those who cut them off; some died under their tortures, and others perished with hunger. And yet others were crucified; some according to the method commonly employed for malefactors; others yet more cruelly, being nailed to the cross with their heads downward, and being kept alive until they perished on the cross with hunger.8
The Great Persecution finally came to an end in 311 when Galerius—who was mortally ill—came to believe that his persecution of the Christians brought God’s judgment (in the form of his illness) upon him and that the prayers of the Christians would heal him.9
Athanasius was born during the dangerous days of the Great Persecution. No reliable record survives of his early years. A tenth-century Arabic account, entitled History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria and written long after these events, reports that his parents were not Christians and that he was “the son of an eminent woman who was a worshipper of idols and very rich.”10 The same source related that Athanasius was converted to Christianity and baptized as a youngster; he soon had a father-son-like relationship with Alexander, the Christian bishop of the city, who eventually ordained him as a deacon and made him his scribe and secretary.11 Information about Athanasius’s nationality comes entirely from circumstantial evidence; Athanasius spoke both Coptic and Greek, he was revered by the common people of Alexandria and by the monks of the Egyptian desert, and he was reviled by his theological opponents as “a black dwarf.”12 From these hints, it may be suggested that he was from the native Egyptian Coptic population, as opposed to the Greek upper class that made up the aristocracy of the city.
Rufinus related a story, which some consider a legend,13 of how Athanasius first came to the attention of Bishop Alexander. One day, the eminent bishop was gazing out of his window and observed a group of young boys playing on the beach at some distance away.14 After watching them absent-mindedly for a short time, Alexander became aware that the boys were playing church: “mimicking a bishop and things which were customarily done in the church.”15 After watching for some time, the bishop sent for the boys and had them ushered into his presence. He discovered that many of the boys had been playing the part of catechumens, who were being instructed for church membership and prepared for baptism. One of the boys, young Athanasius, was playing the role of the bishop who taught, examined, and baptized the others. After a lengthy interview, Alexander told the boys that they need not be baptized again. He sent for their parents and put them under an oath to raise the children in the church. “A short time later, after Athanasius had been thoroughly educated by a scribe and received adequate instruction from a teacher of literature, he was at once given back to the priest [Bishop Alexander] by his parents, like a deposit from the Lord kept faithfully, and like another Samuel16 was brought up in the Lord’s temple.”17 Rufinus implied that the bishop became like a father in the faith to young Athanasius, serving as mentor and teacher until the time came for Athanasius to replace him. Sozomen, recalling a report by Apolinarius the Syrian, mentioned that at this time Athanasius was at Alexander’s side as “an assistant, and behaved as a son would to his father.”18
Gregory Nazianzen, in his oration “On the Great Athanasius,” corroborated some of the assertions of Rufinus when he reported, “He [Athanasius] was brought up, from the first, in religious habits and practices, after a brief study of literature and philosophy, so that he might not be utterly unskilled in such subjects, or ignorant of matters which he had determined to despise.”19 That Athanasius was well educated in ancient literature and philosophy is clear from his written works, which occasionally quote Plato and Aristotle. Gregory’s eulogy, however, seems to contradict the Arabic report that Athanasius was born to non-Christian parents. Gregory also indicated that Athanasius came to despise the study of literature and philosophy, because he spent the rest of his life “meditating on every book of the Old and New Testament, with a depth such as none else has applied even to one of them . . .”20
Meanwhile, the tetrarchy, which Diocletian had invented to provide stable leadership and a line of succession to power, proved to be rather unstable; the Caesars soon vied for power among themselves, and against the Augusti. In the West, Constantius had died, and his legions chose his popular son, Constantine, to succeed him. After a brief period of political stability, Constantine began to march on Rome, in an attempt to unify the empire under his sole rule. As he marched upon Rome, Eusebius reported, Constantine paused to pray, and while he prayed he saw a vision of the letters chi and rho (the first two letters of the word “Christ” in Greek) emblazoned upon the sun; he was told “by this sign you shall conquer.” So the soon-to-be emperor had these letters (called the labarum) emblazoned upon the shields of his troops. They did indeed conquer, winning a crushing victory over their opposition at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Constantine received religious instruction and became a Christian, though the depth of his personal faith is frequently questioned because of the many inconsistencies harbored within it.21
The Edict of Milan, which was issued by Constantine in 313, marked the end of persecution (in the West), and religious toleration for the Christian church. Constantine continued to extend his power and the scope of his rule, and by 324 the entire eastern half of the Roman Empire was in his sole possession as well. With the extension of his rule, Constantine also extended his growing favoritism towards Christianity. Where former Roman emperors had claimed to be divine, in order to demand allegiance from their subjects, Constantine was to be viewed as godly but not divine. He decided to use Christian faith as the glue to hold Roman society and his vast empire together. In this way, and to this end, Christianity gradually became established as the official religion in the new Christian Roman Empire.
There was at this same time a serious schism underway in the Alexandrian church. It reached back into the late third and early fourth century, when Peter the Martyr was bishop in that city, during the Great Persecution. The issue under debate had to do with the problem of the “lapsed” (those who had renounced Christian faith under threat of torture). Those who had faced torture and seen loved ones endure martyrdom advocated for the church to take a hard line with those who had renounced their Christian faith and offered sacrifice to idols in order to save their lives. In his Panarion, Epiphanius explained, “This caused a great commotion and disturbance among the martyrs, with some saying that those who had once lapsed, denied the faith, and not persevered in courage and in the contest ought not to be granted a chance to repent, lest those still left, having less concern about punishment on account of the swift permission to return given to the others, be turned aside to the denial of God and pagan worship.”22 This approach was advocated for by Alexandrian priests Meletius, Peleus, and others.23
The saintly bishop of Alexandria, Peter, took a more conciliatory approach. He “begged and beseeched them, saying: Let us accept them who repent and assign them a period of repentance that they may hold fast by the church, and let us not reject them even from the clergy . . .”24 It was an honest disagreement and a genuine dilemma for the Alexandrian church, because there were merits to both sides of the argument. Epiphanius recalled, “Peter’s words were on the side of mercy and kindness, and those of Melitius and his party on that of truth and zeal.”25 Soon the two parties had separated from one another, holding separate worship services and prayers. Both parties were severely persecuted for their Christian faith, and yet they kept separate prayer services even in prison. Peter, the Alexandrian bishop, was martyred for his faith. Meletius and many others were exiled to the mines of Phaeno. When persecution of the Christians ended in the east, following AD 311, the two separate factions each established separate churches. Peter’s faction called itself the “Catholic Church,” while the Meletians called themselves the “Martyrs’ Church.” Alexander succeeded the martyred bishop, Peter, to the episcopal office and tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the two feuding groups in the Alexandrian church.26
1. Plutarch, Age of Alexander, 281.
2. Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus, 33.
3. The word cosmopolitan is made up of the Greek words for “world” and “city.” It describes a city or a person that is worldly, and embraces the diversity that both represents and makes up the larger world.
4. Eusebius, Church History II.16, NPNF, vol. I, 116.
5. Eusebius, Church History VI.6, NPNF, vol. I, 253.
6. Theodoret, Church History I.1, NPNF, vol. III, 34.
7. Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexanria, 22.
8. Eusebius, Church History VIII.1, NPNF, vol. I, 329.
9. Cf. González, Story of Christianity, 1:118–26.
10. Anatolios, Athanasius, 3.
11. Ibid.
12. González, Story of Christianity, 1:200. González wrote, “Though mocked as ‘the black dwarf,’ Athanasius was a theological giant.”
13. Duane Arnold considers this story “apocryphal.” See Arnold, Early Episcopal Career, 29.
14. The same report is, however, corroborated by Sozomen in his Church History II.17, NPNF, vol. II, 269.
15. Rufinus, Church History X.15, 26.
16. Cf. 1 Sam 2.
17. Rufinus, Church History X.15, 27.
18. Sozomen, Church History II.17, NPNF, vol. II, 269.
19. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 21.6, NPNF, vol. VII, 270.
20. Ibid.
21. Eusebius, Life of Constantine I.28–32, NPNF, vol. I, 490–91. Cf. González, Story of Christianity, 1:124–26.
22. Epiphanius, Panarion 68.2, 248.
23. The question of what to do about the “lapsed” was a burning issue in the church at this time. In the West it was at the heart of the schism brought about by Novatian (ca. 200–258) during the persecution of Decius (249–50). Novatian viewed Pope Cornelius’s policy towards reconciling the lapsed to the church as being too lenient and rejected it. In North Africa, a similar scenario was played out during the Donatist controversy (ca. 311–12 and thereafter) in Carthage.
24. Epiphanius, Panarion 68.3.1, 248.
25. Epiphanius, Panarion 68.3.2, 248.
26. Cf. Socrates, Church History I.6, NPNF, vol. II, 5, and Theodoret, Church History I.8, NPNF, vol. III, 46–47. See also “Documents Concerning the Meletian Schism,” at www.fourthcentury.com.