Chapter 10: The Third Exile (356–62)
10
The Third Exile (356–62)
After hurriedly and secretly leaving Alexandria in the spring of 356, Athanasius took up residence among the monks of the Egyptian desert. If we are to judge this period of his life by his literary production, which is one of the few barometers available to us, then one must say that this was one of the most significant and productive periods of his life and ministry. While he was sequestered in the desert, however, events in the wider world went on without him. Emperor Constantius’s campaign against the Eastern bishops who supported the Nicene Creed continued, and even the Roman Pope Liberius and Hosius of Cordova were driven into exile. The Council of Sirmium (357) emphasized the subordination of the Son to the Father, but maintained the Son’s eternal existence. It developed a view that was called “Anomianism,” and stressed the Son was “unlike” (anomoios) the Father. Bishop Basil of Ancyra emerged as an opponent of this approach, and he called the Council of Ancyra, in 358, to affirm the “likeness” of the Father and the Son and to deny that the Son was a creature. This new, third option between Arianism and the Nicene party was termed homoiousian (“similar substance”) because it argued that the Son was of “similar substance” as the Father. There was an attempt to find common ground between the “similar substance” party and the Nicene supporters, but this too fell apart when the Western bishops refused to affirm anything other than the Nicene Creed.
Meanwhile, back in Alexandria, George the Cappadocian, who replaced Athanasius as bishop, strenuously persecuted Athanasius’s followers in the city and threw the church into conflict and turmoil:
For on a sudden the Church was surrounded by soldiers, and sounds of war took the place of prayers. Then George of Cappadocia who was sent by them, having arrived during the season of Lent, brought an increase of evils which they had taught him. For after Easter week, Virgins were thrown into prison; Bishops were led away in chains by soldiers; houses of orphans and widows were plundered, and their loaves taken away; attacks were made upon houses, and Christians thrust forth in the night, and their dwellings sealed up; brothers of clergymen were in danger of their lives on account of their brethren. These outrages were sufficiently dreadful, but more dreadful than these followed.501
It was probably during his “desert period” that Athanasius completed his Defense before Constantius, which he had begun as early as 353 and intended to deliver to the emperor in person, but events quickly eclipsed that hope. Now he also found himself writing a Defense of His Flight (Apologia de fuga [357]) to answer critics who charged him with cowardice for leaving the fray, and a Circular to Bishops of Egypt and Libya (Ad episcopos Aegypti) giving them instructions for how to conduct themselves in his absence.
His Flight (De Fuga) began by stating the problem, as Athanasius saw it: “I hear that Leontius, now at Antioch, and Narcissus of the city of Nero, and George, now at Laodicea, and the Arians who are with them, are spreading abroad many slanderous reports concerning me, charging me with cowardice, because forsooth, when I myself was sought by them, I did not surrender myself to their hands.”502 After arguing that the charge against him is based in “insincerity,” Athanasius presented his own persecution as being part of a larger conspiracy by the Arian party to rid themselves of bishops who supported the Nicene Creed. After detailing the persecutions, beatings, murders, and other atrocities perpetuated by George the Cappadocian against the orthodox believers of Alexandria, Athanasius implied that similar things—including death—were also meant for him. “They accuse me,” he wrote, “because I have been able to escape their murderous hands.”503
The exiled bishop’s first defense was a simple one: if it is wrong to flee, it is much worse to persecute. He wrote, “For if it be a bad thing to flee, it is much worse to persecute: for the one party hides himself to escape death, the other persecutes with a desire to kill; and it is written in the Scriptures that we ought to flee; but he that seeks to destroy transgresses the law, nay, and is himself the occasion of the other’s flight.”504 And so he concluded the real grievance that his accusers had against him was not that he was a coward but that he was alive and free; in this the bishop did not do more than what Jacob did when he fled the anger of Esau, or Moses when he withdrew to Midian in fear of Pharaoh’s revenge. In fact, the holy Scripture is replete with examples of saints who fled extreme danger in order to preserve their lives and ministries.505
Our Lord Jesus Christ, opined Athanasius, was himself an example of one who withdrew to avoid arrest and death, when “his hour had not yet come” (John 7:30). “He neither suffered Himself to be taken before the time came, nor did He hide Himself when it was come; but gave Himself up to them that had conspired against Him, that He might show to all men that the life and death of man depend upon the divine sentence; and that without our Father which is in heaven, neither a hair of man’s head can become white or black, nor a sparrow ever fall into the snare”506 (Matt 5:36; 10:29). And while there comes a “time and an hour” for all men to die, that time is in God’s hands, not the hands of his theological and ecclesiastical opponents. Thus, there is an appropriate time to flee and a time to stay; God alone helps one know when it is time to face death or martyrdom. For this reason, then, the saints (both then and now) who have fled persecution are not to be looked upon as cowards—for they too endured hardship, and they too have received the blessing and favor of God as a sort of verification of their righteousness in fleeing.507 In fact, those who fled did so for the sake of others, and for their ministry, and not because of cowardice and fear of death. In stark contrast to the selfless and holy spirit of the persecuted who flee is the diabolical attitude of those who persecute them. Hence, Athanasius wrote, “seeing. . . . that such is the conduct of the Saints, let these persons, to whom one cannot give a name suitable to their character—let them, I say, tell us, from whom they learnt to persecute? They cannot say, from the Saints. No, but from the Devil (that is the only answer which is left to them) . . .”508 And this realization should be of some comfort to those who are being persecuted.
After recounting his providential and miraculous escape from the clutches of the military governor Syrianus (see the preceding chapter), Athanasius urged, “Now when Providence had delivered us in such an extraordinary manner, who can justly lay any blame upon me, because we did not give ourselves up into the hands of them, that sought after us, nor return and present ourselves before them? This would have been plainly to show ingratitude to the Lord, and to act against His commandment, and in contradiction to the practice of the Saints.”509 Therefore, in conclusion, those who oppose and persecute Athanasius and the other Alexandrian Christians are doing so because “they are enemies of Christ, and are no longer Christians, but Arians. They ought indeed to accuse each other of the sins they are guilty of, for they are contrary to the faith of Christ, but they rather conceal them [their sins] for their own sakes.”510 The treatise ended with a prayer: “May they continue to be injured in such sort, that they may lose the power of inflicting injuries, and that those whom they persecute may give thanks unto the Lord, and say in the words of the twenty-sixth Psalm, ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?”511
Athanasius’s letter To the Bishops of Egypt (Ad episcopos Aegypti) was written in 356, thirty-one years after the Council of Nicaea.512 It seems to have been composed soon after the bishop’s expulsion by the Roman governor Syrianus (February 8, 356) and before the arrival of George the Cappadocian as bishop. The encyclical letter had several purposes; the first and most obvious was to deliver the news of his own expulsion and exile, and beyond that, to give a strong warning against a new creed being circulated (perhaps the Sirmian Creed of 351) for the bishops’ acceptance on pain of imperial banishment. The creed was not, strictly speaking, Arian, but it was substandard from the standpoint of Nicene orthodoxy, and through its careful wording left room for Arianism. The long second part of the Letter amounts to another restatement and rebuttal of Arian theology. The letter concluded with a strong call to steadfastness in the face of persecution. Athanasius closed with the opinion that Emperor Constantius would ultimately put an end to these ecclesiastical disputes and outrages, once he became aware of the true facts of the matter: “when our gracious Emperor shall hear of it, he will put a stop to their wickedness, and they will not continue long . . .”513 In this latter hope, the Letter seems to breathe the same optimism as the opening of Athanasius’s Defense before Constantius—an optimism that was soon eroded by the passage of time and ongoing imperial persecution.
Athanasius’s argument against this “new” creed was very direct. He viewed it as wrong to take only part of the Holy Scriptures, and reject the other part, and that is what the Arians and the framers of this creed were doing. He viewed the party of Acacius as Arians in disguise who were trying to make room for “the Arian madness” within the pale of orthodoxy. In this they had become accomplices with “Eusebius and his fellows” in “advocating this Antichristian heresy . . .”514 Their words, though scriptural, were evil because they came from heretical intentions, and therefore became a cloak for false teaching. Hence, Athanasius wrote, “They disguise their real sentiments, and then make use of the language of Scripture for their own writings, which they hold forth as a bait for the ignorant, that they may inveigle them into their own wickedness.”515
Chapter 2 of the same epistle begins with a full paragraph (12) of Arian theological statements and phrases. Among these were the following:
God was not always a Father: The Son was not always: But whereas all things were made out of nothing, the Son of God also was made out of nothing: And since all things are creatures, He also is a creature and a thing made: And since all things once were not, but were afterwards made, there was a time when the Word of God Himself was not; and He was not before He was begotten, but He had a beginning of existence: For He has then originated when God has chosen to produce Him: For He also is one among the rest of His works.516
These assertions were all answered from Scripture in the next three long paragraphs (13–15). The writings of the Fourth Gospel and St. Paul figured largely in Athanasius’s rebuttal. The Arians imply and argue that the Son is not true God, and in the bishop’s opinion, “he who holds these opinions can no longer be even called a Christian.”517 They call Him a creature, Whom Scripture calls the Creator, “while they perceive not the absurdity of this.”518 Upon comparing the Christology of Arianism disfavorably with the adoptionism of the Manichees (16), Athanasius turned to rebuke both groups from the Scriptures (17). In the latter instance they err greatly in misunderstanding the Incarnation of the Word of God. He wrote, “These last are in error either concerning the body or the Incarnation of the Lord, falsifying the truth, some in one way and some in another, or else they deny that the Lord has sojourned here at all . . . But this one alone more madly than the rest has dared to assail the very Godhead, and to assert that the Word is not at all, and that the Father was not always a father; so that one might reasonably say that that Psalm was written against them; ‘The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God [Ps 53:1]. Corrupt are they, and become abominable in their doings.’”519
In paragraph 19, Arius’s ignoble death in a public latrine also was turned to apologetic value, since it evidenced divine retribution for his theological “perjury” and it was even seen as such by Emperor Constantine. Thus, Athanasius wrote, “It was shown too that the Arian madness was rejected from communion by our Savior both here and in the Church of the first-born in heaven.”520 In vain will the friends of Arius convince the orthodox with their more moderate words so long as they fail to renounce his sentiments, and in so doing they participate in his impiety and will receive his punishment (20). In perpetuating Arius’s heresy, they have become the “seducing spirits” against which the Scriptures warn us: “For we know that, as it is written, ‘in the latter times some shall depart from the sound faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils, that turn from the truth’ [1 Tim 4:11; Titus 1:14]; and ‘as many as will live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.’ But none of these things shall prevail over us, nor ‘separate us from the love of Christ’ [Rom 8:35], though the heretics threaten us with death. For we are Christians, not Arians . . .”521
In his concluding sections Athanasius compared taking a stand for the true faith with a kind of martyrdom and urged the bishops of Egypt to remain faithful to the Nicene Creed. “I exhort you,” he wrote, “keeping in your hands the confession which was framed by the Fathers at Nicaea, and defending it with great zeal and confidence in the Lord, be examples to the brethren everywhere, and show them that a struggle is now before us in support of the Truth against heresy, and that the wiles of the enemy are various. For the proof of a martyr lies not only in refusing to burn incense to idols; but to refuse to deny the Faith is also an illustrious testimony of a good conscience.”522 Where their opponents follow the example of Judas and Jezebel, Athanasius urged his readers to follow the example of St. Paul, and the other orthodox Fathers, so that they shall be able to say, “We have ‘kept the Faith’; and ye shall receive the ‘crown of life,’ which God ‘hath promised to them that love Him’ [2 Tim 4:7; Jas 1:12].”523
Athanasius wrote the Life of Antony (Vita Antonii) soon after the saintly monk’s death in 356. He viewed Antony as an example, mentor and friend, so it was quite natural that Athanasius would receive inquiries about Antony’s life and death. The Life of Antony was composed, as a letter, in reply to one of these inquiries: “Since you have asked me about the career of the blessed Antony, hoping to learn how he began the discipline, who he was before this, and what sort of death he experienced, and if the things said concerning him are true—so that you might also lead yourselves in imitation of him—I received your directive with ready good will. For simply to remember Antony is a great profit and assistance for me also.”524 Seen through the eyes of Athanasius, the life of Antony becomes the ideal example of the redeemed Christian, and hence the Life of Antony provides the reader with Athanasius’s own understanding of what the life of grace looks like when it is lived out robustly and meaningfully.525
The Life of Antony quickly became Athanasius’s most popular work. It was composed in Greek and quickly translated into Latin (in at least two separate editions) and was widely circulated throughout the Eastern and Western churches. It was widely read by Christians everywhere, but the Life of Antony was particularly formative for those Christians interested in or drawn to the rigors of monasticism. At a time when monasticism was replacing martyrdom as the epitome of the Christian life of selflessness and sacrifice, the Life of Antony showed Christians like Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, and Augustine of Hippo how to follow the monastic path. In fact, Antony’s sudden and dramatic conversion to robust Christian faith was a model as well as a spur to Augustine’s own spiritual transformation.526
A middle-class Egyptian born to prosperous Christian parents, Antony lived a carefree early life, with few concerns about spiritual matters. But when he was in his late teens, his parents died suddenly, leaving him alone with his younger sister. Six months later he found himself, as was his custom, attending worship in the Lord’s house. On this occasion he found himself contemplating how the apostles of Christ had given up everything to follow the Savior, and how—in the book of Acts—the early believers sold what they possessed and took the proceeds and laid them at the feet of the apostles for distribution among those who were in need. As he went to church pondering these things, Antony heard the words of the gospel lesson with new ears: “He heard the Lord saying to the rich man, If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven [Matt 19:21]. It was as if by God’s design he held the saints in his recollection, and as if the passage were read on his account. Immediately Antony went out from the Lord’s house and gave to the townspeople the possessions he had from his forebears . . . And selling all the rest that was portable, when he had collected sufficient money, he donated it to the poor, keeping a few things for his sister.”527 Upon returning to church, when Antony “heard in the Gospel the Lord saying, Do not be anxious about tomorrow, he could not remain any longer, but going out he gave those remaining possessions also to the needy. Placing his sister in the charge of respected and trusted virgins, and giving her over to the convent for rearing, he devoted himself from then on to the discipline rather than the household, giving heed to himself and patiently training himself.”528
Antony received ascetical training (“the discipline”) from a monastic hermit in a neighboring village, and then continued to learn from others throughout the region. Athanasius wrote, “All the desire and all the energy he possessed concerned the exertion of the discipline. He worked with his hands, though, having heard that he who is idle, let him not eat [2 Thess 3:10]. And he spent what he made partly for bread, and partly on those in need. He prayed constantly, since he learned that it is necessary to pray unceasingly in private [1 Thess 5:17; Matt 6:7]. For he paid such close attention to what was read that nothing from Scripture did he fail to take in—rather he grasped everything, and in him the memory took the place of books.”529 Living in this manner bore significant spiritual fruit in Antony’s life; he “was loved by all. He was sincerely obedient to those men of zeal he visited, and he considered carefully the advantage in zeal and in ascetic living that each held in relation to him. He observed the graciousness of one, the eagerness for prayers in another; he took careful note of one’s freedom from anger, and the human concern of another . . . And having been filled in this manner, he returned to his only place of discipline, from that time gathering the attributes of each in himself, and striving to manifest in himself what was best from all.”530 Thus, in the life of Antony, the reader found exemplified many, if not all, of the virtues of desert monastics, distilled down into one exceptionally spiritually attuned life.
The Life of Antony was primarily a holy biography for Christian instruction, but be assured that the reader is being instructed in Athanasius’s own orthodox brand of Christianity. Without saying so, Athanasius’s depiction of the saintly monk shows him to be a supporter of the Nicene theology; for Antony, Jesus Christ is, in words of the Nicene Creed, “very God and very Man.” The moral life that Antony hungered and thirsted for, and that he exemplified, was for Athanasius part and parcel of the process of Christian sanctification. It was Christ at work in Christians by the Word and Spirit of God. Sanctification involved the process of deification, in which “He became what we are, in order to make us what He is.” This vision of moral transformation by the Incarnation of Christ within Christians, which was first lauded in his On the Incarnation, stood in stark contrast to the Arian approach to salvation through moral effort, in which the disciple strives to become increasingly moral and godly, and thereby participates in the life of God. Indeed, the saintly monk was enlisted as an ally in Athanasius’s own ecclesiastical and theological struggles. Antony was reported as saying, for example, “‘Be zealous in protecting the soul from foul thoughts, as I said before, and compete with the saints, but do not approach the Meletian schismatics, for you know their evil and profane reputation. Nor are you to have any fellowship with the Arians, for their impiety is evident to everyone.”531 Antony died as he lived: poor, penniless, and utterly dedicated to life in Jesus Christ. After distributing his clothing to the poor, two sheepskins upon which he slept were his sole remaining possessions, save the clothes in which he was buried, and the sheepskins he bequeathed to Athanasius and his Egyptian friend, Bishop Serapion.532
During this same period, Athanasius addressed a letter to Serapion concerning the death of Arius.533 Arius had died in 336, so the role of this particular letter was not so much to deliver “new news” as it was to put a new orthodox apologetic spin on old news. Athanasius reported that he was replying to an earlier letter from Serapion, in which the bishop had requested information about the “most impious heresy of the Arians, in consequence of which I have endured these sufferings, and also the manner of the death of Arius.”534 While Athanasius was not a firsthand observer of the events he narrated, he reported hearing this account from one Macarius, who had been at Constantinople.535
In his epistle Athanasius recounted the excommunication of Arius by Bishop Alexander and the appeal that Arius made to the emperor. Arius professed, in his Account of the Faith, that he held none of the views for which he was excommunicated. When Emperor Constantine ordered Alexander to reinstate Arius and to receive him into communion, the Alexandrian bishop refused, because he did not believe that Arius’s recantation was genuine. When he was about to receive communion in distant Constantinople, Alexander fervently prayed that Arius would be taken from the world prior to contaminating the church with his heresy and blasphemy. The Alexandrian bishop’s prayer was answered, as Arius was “urged by the necessities of nature” to withdraw to a public latrine where, as he tried to relieve himself, he “‘burst asunder in the midst’ [Acts 1:18], and immediately expired as he lay, and he was deprived both of communion and of his life together.”536 Intentionally paralleling Arius’s ignoble death with that of Judas in the Scriptures (Acts 1:18), Athanasius opined, “So the antichristian gang of the Arian madmen has been shown to be unpleasing to God and impious; and many of those who before were deceived by it changed their opinions.”537 Athanasius urged Serapion to share this letter with the monks who were with him, so that they might all strongly condemn the Arian heresy and not be led astray by the wickedness of the “Arian madmen.”
In his letter to Athanasius, Serapion requested three specific items: a history of recent events, an exposition of the Arian heresy, and an exact account of the death of Arius.538 The letter itself fulfilled the third request. Johannes Quasten suggested that the Alexandrian bishop sent copies of his Arian History and Orations Against the Arians to answer the other aspects of this request.539 There is considerable cogency to this assessment, and some scholars date the composition of all three works (the Letter, the Arian History, and the Orations) to this same exile.540 It is my feeling, however, that the Orations were composed earlier (hence they were treated in an earlier chapter), though they might have been employed at this time, as Quasten suggests. This leaves us with the consideration of Athanasius’s magnum opus, History of the Arians.
History of the Arians is an extensive (more than thirty double-column pages in translation) and comprehensive work. It presents the emergence and growth of Arianism in the Christian Roman Empire in an orderly and chronological format. It presents Athanasius’s own particular “slant” on this history, in that it views Arianism as a heinous and heretical belief system that became an international conspiracy against the Nicene faith in the hands of the Eusebians and Emperor Constantius. The work gives a cross-section of the years 335 (and the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea) up through recent actions by Constantius against Pope Liberius (358) and Hosius of Cordova. It ends by returning to Alexandria and chronicling the further persecution of the church in Egypt (357–58). A close examination of the contents of the work, therefore, suggests that it was composed around 358, during Athanasius’s third exile.
While written as an historical account, History of the Arians should be viewed as an apology for the orthodox Nicene faith. Gone, now, was Athanasius’s early optimism, registered in his Defense before Constantius, that the Christian emperor meant well and was only trying to bring peace and unity to the Christian church. Now, Constantius is depicted as being “worse than Saul, Ahab, and Pilate”—all arch-villains of the Bible who vehemently opposed God and God’s people.541 In his History Athanasius even went so far as to describe the recent episcopal appointments made by Constantius as being “a mark of the Antichrist.”542 And a later section of the same document described the emperor as “the precursor of Antichrist.” If Constantius is not the forerunner of the Antichrist, “Else wherefore is he so mad against the godly? Wherefore does he contend for it as his own heresy, and call everyone his enemy who will not comply with the madness of Arius, and admit gladly the allegations of the enemies of Christ, and dishonor so many venerable Councils? Why did he command that the Churches should be given up to the Arians? Was it not that, when that other comes, he may thus find a way to enter into them, and may take to himself him who has prepared those places for him?”543 As the History came to a close, Athanasius urged the orthodox Christians to remain separate from the Arian heretics, and he mounted a call for a spirited protest against the ecclesiastical and political authorities who were perpetuating the Arian heresy.544
Timothy Barnes considers History of the Arians to be “a systematically deceptive work” that exaggerates the degree to which Constantius supported Arianism.545 Like David Gwynn,546 Barnes seems to suspect that Athanasius has linked his own ecclesiastical problems (which, in his mind, stemmed from abuse of his office) with opposition to the Arian theology, through efforts of self-justification and self-preservation. While it is helpful to read Athanasius’s work with a critical eye, the preponderance of the evidence (as it is given by the Christian church historians) seems to underscore the Alexandrian bishop’s presentation of the situation. Although one cannot conclusively know the emperor’s own beliefs from the distance of so many years, it is clear that he took strenuous steps to oppose Athanasius and his theology; seen from the standpoint of his deeds, Athanasius seemed justified in doubting Constantius’s theological orthodoxy as well as his good intentions toward the church. Where unity and religious harmony meant more to Constantius than theological precision, with respect to Arianism and the full deity and equality of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, Athanasius valued theological accuracy more than false harmony and theological unity with those whom he considered heretics. The struggle between Athanasius and the emperor clearly also involved questions of the extent of political authority with respect to the governance of the church and theological questions. Athanasius saw himself as being charged with the task of being a guardian of theological truth and ecclesiastical purity, and was for that reason willing to disobey and oppose the harmonizing efforts of Constantius.
In circa 358–60 Athanasius also addressed an open letter To the Monks (Ad Monachos I). It began in this fashion: “To those in every place who are living a monastic life, who are established in the faith of God, and sanctified in Christ, and who say, ‘Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed Thee’ [Matt 19:27], brethren dearly beloved and longed for, heartiest greeting in the Lord.”547 His allegiance and admiration for this faith community could hardly be more complete! Once again, the exiled bishop wrote in reply to a request for information—this time his recipients long to know about the sufferings of the church and those that are being endured by Athanasius himself for refuting, “according to my ability, the accursed heresy of the Arian madmen, and proving how entirely it is alien from the Truth.”548 Attempting to crystalize the debate between himself and the Arians, Athanasius wrote,
For although it be impossible to comprehend what God is, yet it is possible to say what He is not. And we know that He is not as man; and that it is not lawful to conceive of any originated nature as existing in Him. So also respecting the Son of God, although we are by nature very far from being able to comprehend Him; yet it is possible and easy to condemn the assertions of the heretics concerning Him, and to say, that the Son of God is not such; nor is it lawful even to conceive in our minds such things as they speak, concerning His Godhead; much less to utter them with the lips.549
With respect to the condemnation of Arius, Athanasius pointed once again to his ignoble death in a public latrine: “‘For what the Holy God hath purposed, who shall scatter [Isa 14:27]?’ and whom the Lord condemned who shall justify [Rom 8:33, 34]?”550 So dangerous were the sentiments he voiced in this letter that Athanasius asked his readers to make no copy of it, and to return it to him upon reading it as many times as they wished.
In late 359 or early 360 the bishop in exile continued his literary production through the composition of the Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit. These treatises clearly belong to the third exile, since in paragraph 33 their author mentioned “dwelling as I do in a desert place . . .”551 Athanasius wrote these epistles because a new heresy had arisen in the Egyptian church, and it was his duty as bishop and defender of the Nicene theology to expose and attack it. This new heresy was, as Shapland described it, “a crisis within a crisis.”552 The heretical group Athanasius called “the Tropici” because they invented new “tropes” or teachings.553 They had extended the Arian supposition that the Son of God was a creature and applied it instead to the Holy Spirit. Even though the Nicene Creed, at this time, affirmed only one meager statement about the Holy Spirit (“We believe . . . also in the Holy Spirit”), Athanasius realized that the Trinitarian theology that constituted orthodox faith required the full deity and equality of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. So in this sense, Athanasius’s insight about the Holy Spirit went much further than the formal words of the Nicene Creed of his day, and anticipated the addition to the Nicene Creed that was made at the Council of Constantinople in 381: “We believe . . . also in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.” While the writings of Basil the Great, the Cappadocian bishop, are generally considered to be the primary influence behind this expansion in the Nicene Creed, it is also clear that through his correspondence with Basil (which is not extant) and his Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit Athanasius anticipated and contributed to this important theological development.
Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit is comprised of four rather lengthy letters, but only the first three of these are considered to be authentic. The fourth letter, which may be the compilation of an original writing by Athanasius combined with another’s work, evidences a different concern and a variant theology, and hence is generally discounted.554 Shapland, for example, considered the first half of it as stemming from the pen of Athanasius, but looked upon it as “an independent work.”555 The occasion of these letters is the request from Bishop Serapion for instruction and direction about the teaching of the heretical Tropici. This group, which might have been limited to the locale of Egypt,556 accepted the full deity and full equality of the Father and Son, but refused to extend that equality to the person of the Holy Spirit.
The contents of the first three letters are rather direct. Letter I begins with a presentation of the view of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) advanced by the Tropici. Athanasius asserted that their teaching would utterly destroy the orthodox understanding of the Holy Trinity, and if one postulated that the Holy Spirit is merely a creature, then the obvious connection between the Son and the Holy Spirit would certainly lead to making a similar assertion about the Son—and that road leads directly back to Arianism. Hence, Athanasius described his opponents as “having forsaken the Arians on account of their blasphemy against the Son of God, yet [they] oppose the Holy Spirit, saying that He is not only a creature, but actually one of the ministering spirits, and differs from the angels only in degree.”557 Thus, employing a “slippery slope” argument, the exiled bishop urged, “For if they thought correctly of the Word, they would think soundly of the Spirit also, who proceeds from the Father, and, belonging to the Son, is from Him given to the disciples and all who believe in Him. Nor, erring thus, do they so much as keep sound their faith in the Father. For those who ‘resist the Spirit,’ as the great martyr Stephen said, deny also the Son. But those who deny the Son have not the Father.”558
Athanasius next examined the biblical exegesis that the Tropici used to support their position. This amounted to two main passages: Amos 4:13 (in the Septuagint reading) and 1 Timothy 5:21. The Amos 4:13 text reads, “For behold, I am he that strengthens the thunder, and creates spirit [or wind], and proclaims to man his Christ.”559 It was employed by the Tropici to assert that like the thunder and the other elements of nature, the Holy Spirit was “created” by God and therefore was not co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father. Marrying this insight to that of 1 Timothy 5:21 (“In the presence of God, and of Christ Jesus, and the elect angels, I charge you to keep these rules without favor . . .”) was said to provide new insight into the nature of the Trinity—as being constituted by God the Father, Christ Jesus, and the elect angels. The Tropici viewed 1 Timothy 5:21 as a new, alternative Trinitarian formula, to counterbalance the one in Matthew 28:19, which had long been used as the basis of orthodox Trinitarian theology.560
Bishop Athanasius attacked the heretical use of the Amos 4:13 passage because it presents “the spirit” without article or descriptive phrase, and every other time the Holy Spirit is referred to in the Scriptures, He/She is called “the Spirit,” “the Holy Spirit,” “the Spirit of God,” etc., and never simply “spirit.” As he wrote, “To sum up, unless the article is present, or the above-mentioned addition, it cannot refer to the Holy Spirit.”561 He attacked the heretical exegesis on 1 Timothy 5:21 in a similar manner: “The Tropici, true to their name, having made a compact with the Arians and portioned out with them the blasphemy against the Godhead, so that these may call the Son a creature, and those the Spirit—the Tropici, in their own words, have dared to devise for themselves tropes and to pervert also the saying of the Apostle that he blamelessly wrote to Timothy . . . They say that because he mentions God and Christ and then the angels, the Spirit must be counted with the angels, and belong himself to their category, and be an angel greater than the others.”562 Once again, their assertion is without scriptural basis: “Where in the Scriptures have they found the Spirit referred to as an angel?”563 After thoroughly surveying what the Scriptures do say about the nature of the Holy Spirit, Athanasius concluded, “For this reason too, it is madness to call Him a creature. If He were a creature, He could not be ranked with the Triad. For the whole Triad is one God. It is enough to know that the Spirit is not a creature, nor is He numbered with the things that are made. For nothing foreign is mixed with the Triad; it is indivisible and consistent. These things are sufficient for the faithful. Thus far human knowledge goes.”564 After a lengthy and full discussion, again from Scripture passages, that the Holy Spirit is not created but in fact shares in the full Divine nature of the Father and Son, Athanasius asserted, “The Spirit, therefore, is distinct from the creatures, and is shown rather to be proper to the Son and not alien from God.”565 His final significant argument was to assert that because of the Holy Spirit’s equality and shared nature, the three Persons of the Holy Trinity act completely in concert with one another. Hence “the activity of the Triad [Trinity] is one. The Apostle does not mean that the things which are given are given differently and separately by each Person, but that what is given is given in the Triad, and that all are from the one God.”566
Letters II and III are often taken together, as Shapland does in his edition, because they represent two halves of the same argument against the Tropici.567 Letter II is actually more about Jesus Christ than it is about the Holy Spirit; the burden of Athanasius’s argument there is to reiterate his attack upon the Arian notion that Jesus Christ, Son of God, is a creature (§§ 1–9). At the outset of Letter III, the bishop explained that he took his theological detour through Christology, in defense of the Holy Spirit, because “our Lord himself said that the Paraclete ‘shall not speak from himself but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak . . . for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you’; and, ‘having breathed on them,’ he gave the Spirit to the disciples out of himself, and in this way the Father poured him out ‘upon all flesh,’ as it is written. It is natural, therefore, that I should have spoken and written first concerning the Son, that from our knowledge of the Son we may be able to have true knowledge of the Spirit. For we shall find that the Spirit has to the Son the same proper relationship as we have known the Son to have with the Father.”568 After mounting another spirited defense of the Holy Spirit, as being fully God and not a creature, Athanasius concluded Letter III by writing, “Therefore the Spirit is not a creature. As it always was, so it now is; as it now is, so it always was. It is the Triad, and therein Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God is one, the Father, who is ‘overall and through all and in all,’ who is blessed forever. Amen.”569 The exiled bishop closed by apologizing for anything that might be lacking in his epistle, and urging his reader to read it “to them that are of the household of faith [Gal 6:10], and refute those who love contention and evil speech.”570
World politics and ecclesiastical intrigue did not come to a standstill while Athanasius was in exile among the monks of the Egyptian desert. Emperor Constantius continued in his pursuit of a unified Christian church, and to that end continued to call church councils that were designed to develop a consensus theology around the Arian doctrines that he seemed to favor. In May 359 the Fourth Council of Sirmium was convened, and it produced a compromise creed (called the Dated Creed) that was written in nontechnical terms and was designed to please all parties enmeshed in the christological debate. The result, however, was that the Dated Creed was so theologically innocuous that none of the warring parties could embrace it fervently. Later in the same year the emperor summoned two additional councils, each with the goal of completing what Nicaea had started in 325—that is, developing a unifying creed for all Christians. The Synod of Ariminum (Rimini) was held in the West during the same May, and was attended by more than four hundred bishops. The Synod of Seleucia was held in the East in October, and was attended by more than 160 bishops. Both councils developed what have been termed, over time, “semi-Arian” creeds, which affirmed that the Son, Jesus Christ, is “like the Father” (homoi) in substance (ousia); thus, homoiousia (“similar substance”) was set forth as an alternative to the more divisive “same substance” (homoousia) language of the Nicene Creed. It was these developments and the decisions of the councils of Ariminum and Seleucia, which rejected the Nicene Creed and its terminology, that caused St. Jerome to pen these memorable lines: “The Nicene Faith stood condemned by acclamation. The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian.”571
These events drew forth from Athanasius’s pen still another important document in his attack upon Arianism and apologetic campaign for the Nicene Creed: the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia (De Synodis). It was written in 359, after the October 1 adjournment of the Council of Seleucia. Two sections of the lengthy treatise, sections 30–31, were subsequently added after the death of Constantius, in 361, and inserted into the document. The treatise is comprised of three main parts and fifty-five sections. The first part reported the background and events that led up to the two councils in question, including letters, creeds, and supporting documents. The second lengthy part surveyed the history of the Arian creeds—beginning with the Thalia running through the Dated Creed and the creed published by the Council of Antioch (361). In the final part, “An Appeal to the Semi-Arians,” Athanasius examined the terms used in the debate, especially those that described the Son as “like the Father,” and therefore “coessential” (§ 34). The Arian objection regarding the use of non-scriptural language in the creed was addressed (§ 36) and laid aside, as was the objection that the Nicene Creed was obscure and liable to misunderstanding (§ 40). The balance of the third part of De Synodis took an apologetic posture toward those who affirmed that the Son is “of similar substance” or “like” the Father in that Athanasius sought to win over those who affirmed that both the Father and Son were “unoriginated” (§§ 46–47) and shared “like” attributes (§ 48). In short, then, “the Son is all that the Father is, except being Father” (§ 49), and if the Son is not affirmed as being “coessential” (homoousia) with the Father, then the fundamental unity of the Godhead is lost (§ 50).572
Once again, the argument about Christology and shared Divine essence was linked by Athanasius to the process of salvation (soteriology), as he argued that the Son cannot communicate to us what He does not possess within Himself—for example, the Divine essence by which we believers become “partakers of the Divine nature” through justification and sanctification. He explained, “It follows that He, being the deifying and enlightening power of the Father, in that all things are deified and quickened, is not alien in essence to the Father, but coessential. For by partaking of Him, we partake of the Father; because that the Word is the Father’s own.”573 Based on this argumentation, Athanasius concluded that “coessential” was a term much more suited for correct affirmation of the relationship of the Father and the Son (§ 53), and therefore that “this is why the Nicene Council was correct in writing, what it was becoming to say, that the Son, begotten from the Father’s essence, is coessential with Him.”574 If those who affirm the “likeness” (homoiousia) of the Father and Son are really affirming the same doctrine as those who assert that they are “coessential” (homoousia), then they should not scruple in using the more appropriate terms of the Nicene Creed to affirm their “coessential” unity.575
About this same period of time, Athanasius penned a second letter to the monks, “to those who practice a solitary life, and are settled in faith in God, most beloved brethren . . .”576 In this brief epistle he continued his attack against Arianism by warning the monks against the doctrine of Arian evangelists who go about among the monasteries to try to win them over to their own point of view. Furthermore, they should be careful not to worship with the Arians, so that others are not led astray by their example: “For when any sees you, the faithful in Christ, associate and communicate with such people . . . certainly they will think it is a matter of indifference and will fall into the mire of irreligion.”577 Therefore, the monks must have no fellowship or communion with the heretics, and they should admonish those among themselves who do; if such a person persists in their wrongdoing, then they should separate themselves from him as well.578
Athanasius’s “third exile,” in the Egyptian desert, was one of his most productive periods from a literary and theological standpoint. He kept well abreast of events in the Egyptian church and directed the orthodox community from afar through his various friends and associates there. Given his own monastic proclivities, his four years away from his post in the city might have actually been more like a lengthy sabbatical that rekindled his own spiritual strength and was a tonic to his resolve. In his monastic seclusion Athanasius not only produced some of his most important and popular theological works, but he also contributed significantly to the theological reflection upon the full divinity and equality of the Holy Spirit—a conversation that was absolutely necessary for the subsequent affirmation of the Nicene doctrine of the Holy Trinity, at the Council of Constantinople, in 381.
501. Athanasius, Defense of His Flight 6, NPNF, vol. IV, 257.
502. Defense of His Flight 1, NPNF, vol. IV, 255.
503. Defense of His Flight 8, NPNF, vol. IV, 257.
504. Ibid.
505. Defense of His Flight 10, NPNF, vol. IV, 258.
506. Defense of His Flight 15, NPNF, vol. IV, 260.
507. Defense of His Flight 18–19, NPNF, vol. IV, 261–62.
508. Defense of His Flight 23, NPNF, vol. IV, 263.
509. Defense of His Flight 25, NPNF, vol. IV, 264.
510. Defense of His Flight 27, NPNF, vol. IV, 264–65.
511. Ibid., 265.
512. To the Bishops of Egypt 22, NPNF, vol. IV, 234.
513. To the Bishops of Egypt 23, NPNF, vol. IV, 235.
514. To the Bishops of Egypt 7, NPNF, vol. IV, 226.
515. To the Bishops of Egypt 9, NPNF, vol. IV, 228.
516. To the Bishops of Egypt 12, NPNF, vol. IV, 229.
517. To the Bishops of Egypt 13, NPNF, vol. IV, 230.
518. Ibid.
519. To the Bishops of Egypt 17, NPNF, vol. IV, 232.
520. To the Bishops of Egypt 19, NPNF, vol. IV, 233.
521. To the Bishops of Egypt 20, NPNF, vol. IV, 233.
522. To the Bishops of Egypt 21, NPNF, vol. IV, 234.
523. To the Bishops of Egypt 23, NPNF, vol. IV, 235.
524. Gregg, Life of Antony, 9.
525. Anatolios, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought, 166.
526. Cf. Augustine’s Confessions VIII.28, NPNF, first series, vol. I, 127.
527. Gregg, Life of Antony, 31.
528. Ibid., 31–32.
529. Ibid., 32.
530. Ibid., 33.
531. Ibid., 95.
532. Ibid., 97.
533. Letter 54, To Serapion, Concerning the Death of Arius, NPNF, vol. IV, 564–66.
534. Ibid., 564–65.
535. Ibid., 565.
536. Ibid.
537. Ibid.
538. Ibid., 564.
539. Quasten, Patrology, 3:27.
540. Robertson, introduction to Against the Arians, NPNF, vol. IV, 303.
541. History of the Arians 68, NPNF, vol. IV, 295.
542. History of the Arians 74, NPNF, vol. IV, 297.
543. History of the Arians 77, NPNF, vol. IV, 299.
544. History of the Arians 80–81, NPNF, vol. IV, 300–302.
545. Barnes, Athanasius and Constantius, 128–29.
546. Cf. Gwynn, The Eusebians.
547. Athanasius, Letter 52, NPNF, vol. IV, 563.
548. Ibid.
549. Ibid.
550. Ibid.
551. Shapland, Letters of Saint Athanasius, 141.
552. Ibid., 36.
553. Ibid., 85.
554. For this reason we will treat only the first three letters here.
555. Shapland, Letters of Saint Athanasius, 13.
556. Ibid., 27, and Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 212.
557. Shapland, Letters of Saint Athanasius, 59–60.
558. Ibid., 64–65.
559. In the RSV, this passage reads, “For lo, he who forms the mountains, and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought . . .”
560. Matt 28:19: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit . . .”
561. Shapland, Letters of Saint Athanasius, 69–70.
562. Ibid., 86.
563. Ibid., 87.
564. Ibid., 103–4.
565. Ibid., 128.
566. Ibid., 142.
567. Ibid., 52–53.
568. Ibid., 169–70.
569. Ibid., 177.
570. Ibid., 178.
571. Jerome, Dialogue Against the Luciferians, NPNF, vol. VI, 329.
572. See NPNF, vol. IV, 449–77.
573. Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 51, NPNF, vol. IV, 477.
574. Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 54, NPNF, vol. IV, 479.
575. Ibid.
576. Letter 53, NPNF, vol. IV, 564.
577. Ibid.
578. Ibid.