The Life
Saint Athanasius the Great was the bishop who, more than any other single person, gave us the Nicene Creed we still recite at every Liturgy. When he was twenty-seven, he stood as a deacon at the Council of Nicaea and confronted a heretic named Arius who was teaching that Jesus Christ was a creature, not God. Athanasius would not back down. He spent the rest of his life defending the truth that the Son is fully God, of one essence with the Father. He was thrown out of his city five times by four different emperors. He never gave up. The Church remembers him by the Latin phrase "Athanasius Against the World" — because for years it really was just him.
When Athanasius was a little boy, he and the other Christian children were playing at the seashore. They decided to baptize their pagan friends. Little Athanasius was chosen to be the bishop. He carefully repeated the words he had heard the priest say in church, and baptized them in the sea. The Patriarch of Alexandria, watching from a window, saw the whole thing. He brought the children in, questioned them, and decided the baptism had been done correctly. He sealed it with chrismation. From that day, the Patriarch took young Athanasius under his wing.
In the year 325, the Emperor Constantine called all the bishops of the Christian world to a great council at Nicaea. The crisis was Arius, a popular preacher in Alexandria who was teaching that Jesus Christ was a created being, not eternal God. Patriarch Alexander brought his young deacon Athanasius with him. At the Council, Athanasius rose and refuted Arius point by point. He was twenty-seven. The bishops listened in amazement. The Council ended by giving the Church the Creed: We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, only-begotten, of one essence with the Father. That word — of one essence — was the word Athanasius would defend with his life.
Around the time of Nicaea, Athanasius wrote a small book called On the Incarnation. It is one of the most beautiful and important books ever written in the Christian tradition. He answered the question: why did the Son of God have to become man? His answer: because only God could repair what man had broken; because the Word had to become flesh in order to make our flesh fit for God. The book is short. C. S. Lewis called it "a masterpiece." Sixteen centuries later, every Orthodox theologian still reads it. Every catechumen should read it. It explains the whole Faith.
When Patriarch Alexander died in 328, the people of Alexandria demanded that Athanasius succeed him. He refused. He thought he was too young, too inexperienced, unworthy of such an office. The people insisted. The bishops insisted. He gave in and was consecrated. He was twenty-eight years old. He would hold that throne for forty-seven years. He would also spend more than seventeen of those years in exile.
Constantine exiled him. Constantine’s sons exiled him. Julian the Apostate exiled him. Valens exiled him. Each time, charges were trumped up against him — he had killed a man, he had cursed the emperor, he had stolen Church property. Each time, the charges fell apart. He hid in the desert with the monks. He was sheltered by Saint Anthony. He kept writing letters to his flock from his hiding places, telling them to hold fast to the Faith. He would slip back into Alexandria when he could. The people would mob him in the streets, weeping for joy, and then within a year or two, the next emperor would throw him out again. Through all of it, he never compromised one word of the Creed.
These are the most quoted words Athanasius ever wrote: "He became man that we might become god." He did not mean that we become God by nature — only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are God by nature. He meant that the whole point of the Incarnation was so that we, by grace, could share in God’s own life. The Lord came down to where we are so that we could go up to where he is. Every prayer, every Liturgy, every sacrament, every saint, every act of love — all of it is for this one purpose: that we might become god by grace. That is the whole Christian Faith.
These nine words contain the whole Christian Faith. Athanasius wrote them when he was a young man and they have been quoted ever since. They tell us why the Lord came, what he accomplished, and what we are made for.
This is the verse from Saint Paul that lies under everything Athanasius wrote. Christ took what was ours — our flesh, our weakness, even our sin — so that we could share in what was his. The exchange is at the heart of the Gospel. Athanasius spent his life defending this exchange against people who wanted to make Christ less than fully God, because if he was less than God, the exchange could not happen.
When Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor, tried to destroy Athanasius and bring back the old gods, the Lord struck Julian down on the battlefield. He was thirty-one years old. As he died from his wound, he is said to have cried out: "You have conquered, O Galilean!" After that, Athanasius came home and led his beloved Alexandria in peace for seven more years. He died in 373, at age seventy-six. He had spent forty-seven years as archbishop. He had been right all along.
You are confessing Athanasius every time you recite the Creed at Liturgy. The words "of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made" come from his fight at Nicaea. Every time you receive the Holy Mysteries and believe the Lord himself is in them, you are standing on what Athanasius taught. He gave us the language for what we believe. He was a real human being who suffered for it, was hated for it, was exiled for it, and would not back down. The whole Orthodox Church — sixteen centuries of it, every parish, every monastery, every prayer corner — stands on his shoulders.