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Athanasius: The Coherence of his Thought
In this volume, Khaled Anatolios presents a comprehensive study of Saint Athanasius, one of the most influential figures in the development of Christian doctrine. He analyzes the coherence of Athanasius' theology by relating the various aspects of his doctrine - God, creation, theological anthropology, Christology and redemption, and the life of grace - to a pervasive emphasis on the radical distinction, and simultaneous relation, between God and world. The Coherence of his Thought provides a systematic account of the overall inner logic of the Athanasian vision. It shows how the various aspects of his doctrine are mutually related and in so doing elucidates the complexities both of Athanasian thought and Christian doctrine in general.
258 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Khaled Anatolios
12 books18 followersKhaled Anatolios (PhD, Boston College) is professor of historical theology in the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He is the author of Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine and two volumes on Athanasius.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 8, 2020
Superb introduction to Athanasius life and theology. Excellent selection of lesser known, but representative texts.
February 24, 2022
It sometimes (often?) happens, when reading about a given father of the church, that one suspects a commentator’s reading of said father to be driven and directed more by the commentator’s interests and perspective than the father’s own. That is not the case with Anatolios and Athanasius. From beginning to end, Anatolios truly presents a “coherent” Athanasius, whose language can be understood within a single framework from CG/DI to CA to the festal letters, Life of Antony, and letter to Marcellinus. A helpful corrective to much previous Athanasian scholarship. Especially intriguing are Anatolios’ numerous and significant connections between Athanasius and Irenaeus. Moving the other direction chronologically, I am struck by the way the structure of Athanasius’ thought presented here appears to govern especially the early writings of Cyril of Alexandria. The relation between God and creation and the dynamic (and not analytical) Christology found in Athanasius had a deep impact upon the man who would later come to occupy the see of Alexandria.
March 13, 2023
A very meaty biographical with selections from Athanasius’ writings. I actually read sections of this book for both a Christology class and a class focused on Athanasius himself. An enjoyable read but the Orations are a particularly laborious read.
February 5, 2017
Substantial
February 17, 2014
Broader thesis: “My position is that Athanasius’s theological vision is Irenaean” (Anatolios 4; loc. 126). The distance and (convergence) between God and man: “The theme of the immediate presence of God to creation implies an anthropology that conceives human being in terms of receptivity to this presence of God (23; loc. 477). Further, “to say that creatures are “external” to God means in fact that they participate in God” (107; loc. 2230) This is interesting because his gloss of Irenaeus begins to sound a lot like the Sophiological project of Sergei Bulgakov.
On various Platonisms: He notes on a Scriptural view “there arises no need to set up a kind of buffer zone of mediation to protect divine transcendence” (15; loc. 314). This is a great statement that will eventually run counter to later Ps. Dionysian tendencies to see a hierarchy of mediation. “Athanasius wants to reiterate that the original purpose of creation included the overcoming, from the divine side, of the ontological chasm that separates God and creatures” (42; loc. 880). See Michael Horton’s essays on overcoming estrangement; foreign to a covenant ontology. Anatolios is careful to say that Athanasius doesn’t hold to the neo-Platonic chain of being ontology, otherwise he couldn’t maintain the thesis of continuity between Irenaeus and Athanasius. But on the other hand, Ath. certainly comes close: “For immediately after establishing that the Son’s participation of the Father constitutes an identity of essence, he goes on to establish a kind of chain of participation in which our participation of the Son amounts to a participation of the Father” (111; loc. 2318)
Indeed, while Athanasius rightly rejects the “chain of being” ontology explicitly, he seems to default back to some form of it at times. Anatolios notes, “Thus while it is intrinsic to the definition of created nature to relapse into the nothingness whence it came….” (167; loc. 3463). This is fully in line with the Eastern view’s seeing the problem as ontological, not ethical. Our problem on this gloss is finitude and the perpetual slide into non-being.
The Logos and the Body
Anatolios will take his thesis and apply it to the inter-relation of the Logos and the body. Broadly speaking, and Anatolios does not ultimately challenges this, the Alexandrian tradition saw the Logos as instrumentalizing the human nature. This is beyond dispute. (See Bruce McCormack’s various essays for a lucid discussion). Anatolios, however, cautions interpreters against interpreting this thesis in too literal and crude a fashion, pace Grillmeier. Rather, Anatolios argues that we should see such instrumentalization in an “active-passive” paradigm. Perhaps he is correct but I don’t see how this is really any different materially than the other theses.
Later on in the monograph, though, Anatolios does admit that “the interaction of passibility and impassibility in Christ is conceived not so much in terms of feeling and non-feeling, but of activity and passivity” (157; loc. 3292). If that’s true, and I think it is, then it is hard to see the material difference between his view and other interpreters’ (Grillmeier, Hanson).
Extra-calvinisticum: “in relation to both the world and the body, the Word is both in all and outside all...the Word is outside the cosmos and his human body insofar as his relation to it, while quite intrinsic, is one of activity, not passivity” (80; loc. 1684ff).
Logos as Subject
Anatolios suggests that we see the relation of Word to “body” as one of a grammatical subject rather than an organic model. In a move that sounds almost word-for-word in line with the Westminster Confession of Faith, Anatolios notes that the “characteristics of both humanity and divinity, in Christ, are predicated of a single grammatical subject” (81; loc. 1708). He is not saying (although perhaps not ultimately denying, either) that the characteristics of one nature are predicated to the other nature.
I don’t think that Anatolios fully solves all the problems, and his quite lucid discussion merely highlights a tension in Christologies that operate off of classical metaphysics. On one hand he wants to show that the Word really did take on human suffering as “his own,” even as “His body’s own,” but does this really advance the discussion? There is still a “0” acting as a metaphysical placeholder between the two natures. I am not faulting either Anatolios of Athanasius for that. Impassibility must be maintained, but Anatolios’s reading isn’t as novel as he makes it to be. If he says suffering is “predicated” to the Word (147; loc 3074, and I agree), then one must ask if since there is a unity between the two natures, how does this “perturbation” not flow to the divine nature? To be fair, this wasn’t Athanasius’ main point so one can’t fault him too hard for not really answering it. However, it would be one of the main points in later Alexandrian and Cyrillene debates and it fully impacts the analogy of a fire and iron (in fact, it shows the analogy to be quite flawed).
Anatolios expands on this meaning by saying that the human attributes are “transformed” by the Word (151; loc. 3162). That’s fully in line with later Eastern theology but it does seem to jeopardize the humanity of Christ.
Athanasius and Barth
It is popular among recent interpreters of Athanasius to compare him favorably as the “proto-Barth” (pace Williams). Anatolios puts a stop to this, but he is not critiquing Barth on the lines where Reformed thinkers would. Anatolios notes that Athanasius held to a form of the analogia entis (211; loc. 4409). Barth did not; indeed, he called it an invention of the Antichrist. Anatolios then proceeds to give a fairly accurate exposition of Barth’s theology in contrast with Athanasius. Problematically, we cannot follow Athanasius on this particular point. Whatever Barth’s faults may be, he emphasized preaching, proclamation, and salvation as an “extra-nos” announcement. On Barth’s (and the Protestant’s) gloss, good news is first of all a proclamation. It is in fact, news. For Athanasius (and the later Orthodox) it is something God begins to do in us. True, Anatolios does affirm that God alone bridges the gap between created and Creator, but he doesn’t do it by a proclamation, but by a process of transformation.
Analysis and Conclusion
As a monograph of Athanasius, this is superb. It is well-written and interacts with the best scholarship. I do not think Anatolios’s reading of Athanasius, for whatever merits it may have, is really all that different from Hanson’s and Grillmeier’s. True, he does correct some of the cruder readings, but the fundamental point remains the same: Athanasius saw the Logos as instrumentalizing the human nature. He had to if he wanted to maintain deification soteriology. Further, this places a strain on just how much “activity” Athanasius could logically place on the human side (and eventually this paradigm would “snap” at the 6th Ecumenical Council). For he had earlier written, "The power of free choice (he proairesis) thus conditions the active-passive paradigm model, insofar as it is meant to lead humanity into an active clinging to the prior beneficent activity of the Word” (61; loc. 1287). This may very well be so, but one wonders how it could have been with regard to Christ's human nature.
On various Platonisms: He notes on a Scriptural view “there arises no need to set up a kind of buffer zone of mediation to protect divine transcendence” (15; loc. 314). This is a great statement that will eventually run counter to later Ps. Dionysian tendencies to see a hierarchy of mediation. “Athanasius wants to reiterate that the original purpose of creation included the overcoming, from the divine side, of the ontological chasm that separates God and creatures” (42; loc. 880). See Michael Horton’s essays on overcoming estrangement; foreign to a covenant ontology. Anatolios is careful to say that Athanasius doesn’t hold to the neo-Platonic chain of being ontology, otherwise he couldn’t maintain the thesis of continuity between Irenaeus and Athanasius. But on the other hand, Ath. certainly comes close: “For immediately after establishing that the Son’s participation of the Father constitutes an identity of essence, he goes on to establish a kind of chain of participation in which our participation of the Son amounts to a participation of the Father” (111; loc. 2318)
Indeed, while Athanasius rightly rejects the “chain of being” ontology explicitly, he seems to default back to some form of it at times. Anatolios notes, “Thus while it is intrinsic to the definition of created nature to relapse into the nothingness whence it came….” (167; loc. 3463). This is fully in line with the Eastern view’s seeing the problem as ontological, not ethical. Our problem on this gloss is finitude and the perpetual slide into non-being.
The Logos and the Body
Anatolios will take his thesis and apply it to the inter-relation of the Logos and the body. Broadly speaking, and Anatolios does not ultimately challenges this, the Alexandrian tradition saw the Logos as instrumentalizing the human nature. This is beyond dispute. (See Bruce McCormack’s various essays for a lucid discussion). Anatolios, however, cautions interpreters against interpreting this thesis in too literal and crude a fashion, pace Grillmeier. Rather, Anatolios argues that we should see such instrumentalization in an “active-passive” paradigm. Perhaps he is correct but I don’t see how this is really any different materially than the other theses.
Later on in the monograph, though, Anatolios does admit that “the interaction of passibility and impassibility in Christ is conceived not so much in terms of feeling and non-feeling, but of activity and passivity” (157; loc. 3292). If that’s true, and I think it is, then it is hard to see the material difference between his view and other interpreters’ (Grillmeier, Hanson).
Extra-calvinisticum: “in relation to both the world and the body, the Word is both in all and outside all...the Word is outside the cosmos and his human body insofar as his relation to it, while quite intrinsic, is one of activity, not passivity” (80; loc. 1684ff).
Logos as Subject
Anatolios suggests that we see the relation of Word to “body” as one of a grammatical subject rather than an organic model. In a move that sounds almost word-for-word in line with the Westminster Confession of Faith, Anatolios notes that the “characteristics of both humanity and divinity, in Christ, are predicated of a single grammatical subject” (81; loc. 1708). He is not saying (although perhaps not ultimately denying, either) that the characteristics of one nature are predicated to the other nature.
I don’t think that Anatolios fully solves all the problems, and his quite lucid discussion merely highlights a tension in Christologies that operate off of classical metaphysics. On one hand he wants to show that the Word really did take on human suffering as “his own,” even as “His body’s own,” but does this really advance the discussion? There is still a “0” acting as a metaphysical placeholder between the two natures. I am not faulting either Anatolios of Athanasius for that. Impassibility must be maintained, but Anatolios’s reading isn’t as novel as he makes it to be. If he says suffering is “predicated” to the Word (147; loc 3074, and I agree), then one must ask if since there is a unity between the two natures, how does this “perturbation” not flow to the divine nature? To be fair, this wasn’t Athanasius’ main point so one can’t fault him too hard for not really answering it. However, it would be one of the main points in later Alexandrian and Cyrillene debates and it fully impacts the analogy of a fire and iron (in fact, it shows the analogy to be quite flawed).
Anatolios expands on this meaning by saying that the human attributes are “transformed” by the Word (151; loc. 3162). That’s fully in line with later Eastern theology but it does seem to jeopardize the humanity of Christ.
Athanasius and Barth
It is popular among recent interpreters of Athanasius to compare him favorably as the “proto-Barth” (pace Williams). Anatolios puts a stop to this, but he is not critiquing Barth on the lines where Reformed thinkers would. Anatolios notes that Athanasius held to a form of the analogia entis (211; loc. 4409). Barth did not; indeed, he called it an invention of the Antichrist. Anatolios then proceeds to give a fairly accurate exposition of Barth’s theology in contrast with Athanasius. Problematically, we cannot follow Athanasius on this particular point. Whatever Barth’s faults may be, he emphasized preaching, proclamation, and salvation as an “extra-nos” announcement. On Barth’s (and the Protestant’s) gloss, good news is first of all a proclamation. It is in fact, news. For Athanasius (and the later Orthodox) it is something God begins to do in us. True, Anatolios does affirm that God alone bridges the gap between created and Creator, but he doesn’t do it by a proclamation, but by a process of transformation.
Analysis and Conclusion
As a monograph of Athanasius, this is superb. It is well-written and interacts with the best scholarship. I do not think Anatolios’s reading of Athanasius, for whatever merits it may have, is really all that different from Hanson’s and Grillmeier’s. True, he does correct some of the cruder readings, but the fundamental point remains the same: Athanasius saw the Logos as instrumentalizing the human nature. He had to if he wanted to maintain deification soteriology. Further, this places a strain on just how much “activity” Athanasius could logically place on the human side (and eventually this paradigm would “snap” at the 6th Ecumenical Council). For he had earlier written, "The power of free choice (he proairesis) thus conditions the active-passive paradigm model, insofar as it is meant to lead humanity into an active clinging to the prior beneficent activity of the Word” (61; loc. 1287). This may very well be so, but one wonders how it could have been with regard to Christ's human nature.
June 29, 2020
Before writing this review I think it is necessary for me to give my credentials, which are essentially none. I am not an Athanasius scholar, nor a patristics scholar. I cannot read ancient (nor modern) Greek, nor can I read theological writings in French. I have read both On the Incarnation and Life of Antony several years ago, but I have not read any of Athanasius's other writings, and my recollection of those two writings is far from exemplary. I am an amateur who is interested in the writings, life, and thought of the church fathers, and I am approaching this review as an amateur. As such, I will be unable to provide any real insight into how this volume compares with other literature in the field, or how well he truly represented Athanasius's thought. Some of the discussions were above my head, and the untranslated bits of other languages I was unable to understand, though thankfully these were relatively few. I will be writing this review as I read the book: as a non-expert looking for guidance from an expert on the topic.
Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought has an introduction, 4 chapters, and a conclusion. Each of the chapters builds on each other, and they all contain several common themes. I will give an overview of each section and some of the themes covered in the chapter. Then I will summarize the book and give an evaluation of the book.
The introduction gives and overview of the book and what Khaled Anatolios is trying to accomplish with this book. As the subtitle reveals, this book is an attempt to offer a coherent reading of Athanasius's theology. Instead of reading modern categories and questions onto Athanasius, Anatolios is attempting to read Athanasius in light of his context, and by the coherence of his own work.
The first chapter, The theme of the relation between God and creation before Athanasius, gives a quick overview of several different views on how to reconcile divine transcedence and divine immanence. He first looks at several Greek philosophers, turns to the Jewish thinker Philo, then spends more time on Irenaeus's understanding. Divine immanence is “God’s positive involvement and engagement with the world.” [6] Examples of this abound in scripture. Christ’s healings, the ten plagues, the giving of the manna, miracles done by the prophets, etc. The list could go on and on. We see divine immanence anytime we see God actively involved in the world. Divine transcendence on the other hand is “God’s otherness to the world.” [6] We see this aspect of God in the latter chapters of Isaiah, in God’s response to Job, and in passages such as John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God” among others. Both divine immanence and divine transcendence have plenty of scriptural support for them. The Greeks and Philo had difficulty resolving these two aspects of God, but Irenaeus was able to find a point of convergence. Divine immanence and transcendence are “united in the conception of a God who paradoxically reveals his majestic greatness through his liberating and beneficent involvement in the world.” [6-7] For Irenaeus, God’s perfection is not opposed to immutablity, but is correlated with human progress towards the divine.
He is all light, all mind, all substance, and the source of all good things. But humanity receives growth and progress towards God. For as God is always the same, humanity, rooted in God, always progresses towards God. God will never cease to grant benefits and riches to humanity; nor will humanity ever cease from being benefited and enriched by God. For the reception of God’s benevolence, and the instrument of His glorification, is the human being who is grateful to the One that made him. [20]
God is transcendent in that he is all light, all mind, all substance, and the source of all good things. But this transcendence does not isolate God from the world. Instead, it allows humanity to progress towards God. This convergent relationship comes about because God is transcendent in his grandeur and majesty, but immanent in his love.
With respect to His grandeur, He is indeed unknown to all who have been made by Him (for no one has searched out His height, either among the ancients or those who are now living). But as to His love, He is always known through the One by whom He established all things. [23]
This question is incredibly important for Athanasius, and Anatolios puts forth the opinion that Athanasius is ultimately following and continuing in the Irenaean tradition in this matter.
The second chapter, The relation between God and creation in Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione, is a significant chapter. In this chapter, Anatolios surveys the relation between God and creation in several different categories in his most famous two works Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione. He looks at the doctrine of God, Cosmology, Theological Anthropology, and Christology and Redemption. Each of these deserves significant explanation and I won't attempt to summarize his argument for each of these areas. Instead, I want to look at Athanasius's understanding of the doctrine of God to show how his thought works. By looking at the doctrine of God, we should be able to see the importance of dialectic thought, apophatic reasoning, and the conclusion of De Incarnatione.
One of the most significant points of Athanasius’s doctrine of God is that it is articulated in relation to the incarnation and the cross. More specifically, “the incarnation is consistent with who God is, and with God’s general way of relating to creation at the beginning.” The incarnation not only makes sense, but it is the most sensible way to understand God’s immanence and transcendence.
Athanasius approaches the doctrine of God, as he does other aspects of theology, through a dialectical, rather than analytic mode of reasoning. This allows for the opposing of opposites and finding a convergent point. This differs from analytic which tends to try and find a pattern in all of the information given. The use of dialectical reasoning lets Athanasius take two strong seemingly opposing truths and reconcile them through the convergent point of the incarnation. This type of reasoning usually makes usage of apophatic theology, which is a way of thinking which only emphasizes what God is not. Cataphatic thinking is also used as well. This type of thinking is the opposite of apophatic thinking and only uses positive statements about what God is. Athanasius takes apophatic definitions of divine transcendence such as “invisible and incomprehensible and beyond all created being” and puts them with the cataphatic characterization of God as “good and the lover of humanity.” This convergence comes about in the Word, Jesus Christ.
We see this dialectic and convergence in several ways. We see it in the chasm which separates God and man. God is ruler over all things, and man, who has been made, is incapable of knowing the Creator on its own. However, since God is good, he did not leave man bereft of knowledge of himself, but instead God wanted to be known by them. God’s ontological difference from man means that man is separated from God by an uncrossable chasm, but because of God’s goodness, he provided a way for man to know of God.
This leads ultimately to the conclusion Athanasius is working to in the whole book of De Incarnatione, that “anything but the Incarnation of the Word would have been unworthy of God.” If sin had caused a rift between man and God, one that was unbridgeable naturally, then what was God to do? Was He to abandon man to corruption? No, for then what was the point of creating them in the first place? God’s goodness would not be made known then, but weakness. In short, it would have been unfitting and unworthy of God to abandon man to corruption. The Incarnation not only makes sense, but to not Incarnate and save man would have been unworthy of God.
The third chapter, The relation between God and creation in the anti-Arian writings, is the longest chapter and explores Athanasius's theology from his anti-Arian writings. After first giving a quick historical overview of the Arian controversy, Anatolious turns to analyzing the theology of Athanasius's anti-Arian writings. Similar to his previous chapter, Athanasius's anti-Arian writings contain a dialectical method and attempt to find convergence in the Incarnation. Unlike the previous chapters, this chapter spends more time on the unique nature of the Son. The Arians believed that Christ was a creature not the Creator. As such, a large portion of this chapter is devoted to showing how that claim is false. The chapter is too long to cover in detail, but I will look at an example of his reasoning to show how his thinking works.
One of the Arian's criticisms of Athanasius's belief was that God did not need to become incarnate because God could redeem humanity by a mere word. Against this, Athanasius will respond that God did create the entire cosmos, including humanity, with a mere word. This was appropriate and good. However, once creation had come into being, it was fitting that God should redeem creation by a direct interaction with it. Creation from nothing dealt with the non-existent, but once humanity had been made, “the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created to cure what existed.” God’s redemption of creation is not ex nihilo. He will not “create” redemption from nothing but instead requires a new kind of relation.
In addition to the argument from creation ex nihilo, Athanasius also gives another argument for the need for the Incarnation. Because corruption is inside the body, any healing must occur inside the body as well. For life to come, we need for life to cling to the body, but this could not occur from outside. What is outside cannot heal what is on the inside. The Incarnation allowed for God to bring healing on the inside instead of acting outside of the body. The corruption which was inside the body was able to be healed and life was able to be given.
Athanasius’s logic is typically subtle, but I have here given two examples of his logic for the reasons why the Incarnation was needed. Humanity had already been made, and redemption would not come from nothing, but needed a new kind of relationship. And death and corruption were inside the person, and any healing which was going to be effective at bringing life would also need to be able to get inside the body to cast out the inner corruption.
The final chapter, The relation between God and creation in the context of grace, turns away from God and looks at the relation from man's perspective. In this chapter Anatolios expounds more on what salvation means for Athanasius, and attempts to make clear what Athanasius's famous statement "God became man that man might become god" means.
Salvation for Athanasius is the divinization of man. This means that man partakes in the divine nature with Christ because of the Incarnation. As in previous chapters, Athanasius takes considerable care to respect the tension and honor the Creator/creature divide. Man does not become God in the same way that Christ is God, but man shares in the divinity of God because Christ joins us to God by our adoption as sons.
This chapter also discusses the relation between divine action and man's responsibility. As in my overviews of previous chapters, rather than giving a full description of the chapter, I will go over an example I think is enlightening for the chapter. I will look at Athanasius's biography of the early Christian monk, Antony.
We are given a biography of St. Antony to show how sharing in Christ's divinity looks in practice. Athanasius wants to keep the tension between our human striving and God's divine action alive and honor both. In Antony, he will stress the grace of God who acts by saying that all of "Antony's triumphs are rather the triumph of the Savior in Antony." All of his miracles are done by Christ who dwells within him. However, this is balanced by Athanasius's concern to show that just because the Lord was working with and in Antony does not mean Antony himself does not have to work. Divine aid does not remove the need for human effort, but instead "divine aid is seen to be an inducement to greater human effort, with the confidence that comes from trusting that this effort is guaranteed success through the victory of the Incarnate Word." Again we see that a paradoxical tension is resolved through the convergence of the Incarnation.
The conclusion then gives a summary of the arguments of the book and calls for Athanasius to become a theological dialog partner for us today. His great triumph was his ability to honor and keep both sides of the relationship between God and creation. This makes him worth engaging with still today.
While I have not covered nearly everything in this book (I have left alone the trinity and the Holy Spirit for example), but I have given what I believe is a fair summary of the book above. As I said in my introduction paragraph, this book is above my head in many ways. Even if I am not the primary audience for this book, I was still able to understand a fair amount of the book. That speaks to the skill of both Athanasius and Anatolios. While I wouldn't go as far as the cover blurb and say this book was very readable, Khaled Anatolios strives to make his points clearly and explains what is meant by relevant important words well.
I believe that this study of Athanasius gives us a theologian who is indeed coherent in his thought. The excellent scholarship by Anatolios reveals the paradoxical and dialectic thought that drives Athanasius's thinking. This thought helped pave the way for the Orthodox understanding of Christ we have today, and Athanasius's thought is more coherent than many (if not all) modern thinkers on the relationship between God and creation. I believe that Anatolios has managed to pull of what he intended to. Athanasius's thought is indeed coherent.
Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought has an introduction, 4 chapters, and a conclusion. Each of the chapters builds on each other, and they all contain several common themes. I will give an overview of each section and some of the themes covered in the chapter. Then I will summarize the book and give an evaluation of the book.
The introduction gives and overview of the book and what Khaled Anatolios is trying to accomplish with this book. As the subtitle reveals, this book is an attempt to offer a coherent reading of Athanasius's theology. Instead of reading modern categories and questions onto Athanasius, Anatolios is attempting to read Athanasius in light of his context, and by the coherence of his own work.
The first chapter, The theme of the relation between God and creation before Athanasius, gives a quick overview of several different views on how to reconcile divine transcedence and divine immanence. He first looks at several Greek philosophers, turns to the Jewish thinker Philo, then spends more time on Irenaeus's understanding. Divine immanence is “God’s positive involvement and engagement with the world.” [6] Examples of this abound in scripture. Christ’s healings, the ten plagues, the giving of the manna, miracles done by the prophets, etc. The list could go on and on. We see divine immanence anytime we see God actively involved in the world. Divine transcendence on the other hand is “God’s otherness to the world.” [6] We see this aspect of God in the latter chapters of Isaiah, in God’s response to Job, and in passages such as John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God” among others. Both divine immanence and divine transcendence have plenty of scriptural support for them. The Greeks and Philo had difficulty resolving these two aspects of God, but Irenaeus was able to find a point of convergence. Divine immanence and transcendence are “united in the conception of a God who paradoxically reveals his majestic greatness through his liberating and beneficent involvement in the world.” [6-7] For Irenaeus, God’s perfection is not opposed to immutablity, but is correlated with human progress towards the divine.
He is all light, all mind, all substance, and the source of all good things. But humanity receives growth and progress towards God. For as God is always the same, humanity, rooted in God, always progresses towards God. God will never cease to grant benefits and riches to humanity; nor will humanity ever cease from being benefited and enriched by God. For the reception of God’s benevolence, and the instrument of His glorification, is the human being who is grateful to the One that made him. [20]
God is transcendent in that he is all light, all mind, all substance, and the source of all good things. But this transcendence does not isolate God from the world. Instead, it allows humanity to progress towards God. This convergent relationship comes about because God is transcendent in his grandeur and majesty, but immanent in his love.
With respect to His grandeur, He is indeed unknown to all who have been made by Him (for no one has searched out His height, either among the ancients or those who are now living). But as to His love, He is always known through the One by whom He established all things. [23]
This question is incredibly important for Athanasius, and Anatolios puts forth the opinion that Athanasius is ultimately following and continuing in the Irenaean tradition in this matter.
The second chapter, The relation between God and creation in Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione, is a significant chapter. In this chapter, Anatolios surveys the relation between God and creation in several different categories in his most famous two works Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione. He looks at the doctrine of God, Cosmology, Theological Anthropology, and Christology and Redemption. Each of these deserves significant explanation and I won't attempt to summarize his argument for each of these areas. Instead, I want to look at Athanasius's understanding of the doctrine of God to show how his thought works. By looking at the doctrine of God, we should be able to see the importance of dialectic thought, apophatic reasoning, and the conclusion of De Incarnatione.
One of the most significant points of Athanasius’s doctrine of God is that it is articulated in relation to the incarnation and the cross. More specifically, “the incarnation is consistent with who God is, and with God’s general way of relating to creation at the beginning.” The incarnation not only makes sense, but it is the most sensible way to understand God’s immanence and transcendence.
Athanasius approaches the doctrine of God, as he does other aspects of theology, through a dialectical, rather than analytic mode of reasoning. This allows for the opposing of opposites and finding a convergent point. This differs from analytic which tends to try and find a pattern in all of the information given. The use of dialectical reasoning lets Athanasius take two strong seemingly opposing truths and reconcile them through the convergent point of the incarnation. This type of reasoning usually makes usage of apophatic theology, which is a way of thinking which only emphasizes what God is not. Cataphatic thinking is also used as well. This type of thinking is the opposite of apophatic thinking and only uses positive statements about what God is. Athanasius takes apophatic definitions of divine transcendence such as “invisible and incomprehensible and beyond all created being” and puts them with the cataphatic characterization of God as “good and the lover of humanity.” This convergence comes about in the Word, Jesus Christ.
We see this dialectic and convergence in several ways. We see it in the chasm which separates God and man. God is ruler over all things, and man, who has been made, is incapable of knowing the Creator on its own. However, since God is good, he did not leave man bereft of knowledge of himself, but instead God wanted to be known by them. God’s ontological difference from man means that man is separated from God by an uncrossable chasm, but because of God’s goodness, he provided a way for man to know of God.
This leads ultimately to the conclusion Athanasius is working to in the whole book of De Incarnatione, that “anything but the Incarnation of the Word would have been unworthy of God.” If sin had caused a rift between man and God, one that was unbridgeable naturally, then what was God to do? Was He to abandon man to corruption? No, for then what was the point of creating them in the first place? God’s goodness would not be made known then, but weakness. In short, it would have been unfitting and unworthy of God to abandon man to corruption. The Incarnation not only makes sense, but to not Incarnate and save man would have been unworthy of God.
The third chapter, The relation between God and creation in the anti-Arian writings, is the longest chapter and explores Athanasius's theology from his anti-Arian writings. After first giving a quick historical overview of the Arian controversy, Anatolious turns to analyzing the theology of Athanasius's anti-Arian writings. Similar to his previous chapter, Athanasius's anti-Arian writings contain a dialectical method and attempt to find convergence in the Incarnation. Unlike the previous chapters, this chapter spends more time on the unique nature of the Son. The Arians believed that Christ was a creature not the Creator. As such, a large portion of this chapter is devoted to showing how that claim is false. The chapter is too long to cover in detail, but I will look at an example of his reasoning to show how his thinking works.
One of the Arian's criticisms of Athanasius's belief was that God did not need to become incarnate because God could redeem humanity by a mere word. Against this, Athanasius will respond that God did create the entire cosmos, including humanity, with a mere word. This was appropriate and good. However, once creation had come into being, it was fitting that God should redeem creation by a direct interaction with it. Creation from nothing dealt with the non-existent, but once humanity had been made, “the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created to cure what existed.” God’s redemption of creation is not ex nihilo. He will not “create” redemption from nothing but instead requires a new kind of relation.
In addition to the argument from creation ex nihilo, Athanasius also gives another argument for the need for the Incarnation. Because corruption is inside the body, any healing must occur inside the body as well. For life to come, we need for life to cling to the body, but this could not occur from outside. What is outside cannot heal what is on the inside. The Incarnation allowed for God to bring healing on the inside instead of acting outside of the body. The corruption which was inside the body was able to be healed and life was able to be given.
Athanasius’s logic is typically subtle, but I have here given two examples of his logic for the reasons why the Incarnation was needed. Humanity had already been made, and redemption would not come from nothing, but needed a new kind of relationship. And death and corruption were inside the person, and any healing which was going to be effective at bringing life would also need to be able to get inside the body to cast out the inner corruption.
The final chapter, The relation between God and creation in the context of grace, turns away from God and looks at the relation from man's perspective. In this chapter Anatolios expounds more on what salvation means for Athanasius, and attempts to make clear what Athanasius's famous statement "God became man that man might become god" means.
Salvation for Athanasius is the divinization of man. This means that man partakes in the divine nature with Christ because of the Incarnation. As in previous chapters, Athanasius takes considerable care to respect the tension and honor the Creator/creature divide. Man does not become God in the same way that Christ is God, but man shares in the divinity of God because Christ joins us to God by our adoption as sons.
This chapter also discusses the relation between divine action and man's responsibility. As in my overviews of previous chapters, rather than giving a full description of the chapter, I will go over an example I think is enlightening for the chapter. I will look at Athanasius's biography of the early Christian monk, Antony.
We are given a biography of St. Antony to show how sharing in Christ's divinity looks in practice. Athanasius wants to keep the tension between our human striving and God's divine action alive and honor both. In Antony, he will stress the grace of God who acts by saying that all of "Antony's triumphs are rather the triumph of the Savior in Antony." All of his miracles are done by Christ who dwells within him. However, this is balanced by Athanasius's concern to show that just because the Lord was working with and in Antony does not mean Antony himself does not have to work. Divine aid does not remove the need for human effort, but instead "divine aid is seen to be an inducement to greater human effort, with the confidence that comes from trusting that this effort is guaranteed success through the victory of the Incarnate Word." Again we see that a paradoxical tension is resolved through the convergence of the Incarnation.
The conclusion then gives a summary of the arguments of the book and calls for Athanasius to become a theological dialog partner for us today. His great triumph was his ability to honor and keep both sides of the relationship between God and creation. This makes him worth engaging with still today.
While I have not covered nearly everything in this book (I have left alone the trinity and the Holy Spirit for example), but I have given what I believe is a fair summary of the book above. As I said in my introduction paragraph, this book is above my head in many ways. Even if I am not the primary audience for this book, I was still able to understand a fair amount of the book. That speaks to the skill of both Athanasius and Anatolios. While I wouldn't go as far as the cover blurb and say this book was very readable, Khaled Anatolios strives to make his points clearly and explains what is meant by relevant important words well.
I believe that this study of Athanasius gives us a theologian who is indeed coherent in his thought. The excellent scholarship by Anatolios reveals the paradoxical and dialectic thought that drives Athanasius's thinking. This thought helped pave the way for the Orthodox understanding of Christ we have today, and Athanasius's thought is more coherent than many (if not all) modern thinkers on the relationship between God and creation. I believe that Anatolios has managed to pull of what he intended to. Athanasius's thought is indeed coherent.
May 17, 2013
This is a fantastic little book,* and it's going to be hard for me to not get overly enthusiastic about it. It begins with a very large (and very worthwhile) introduction which includes a brief biography of Athanasius and the main points in his thinking. It then has four large selections of Athanasius' writing with a brief, helpful introduction before each one.
What this means is that Athanasius is mostly allowed to speak for himself. The author thoroughly places him within his historical context, explaining his position in the Arian controversy well. This is great because Athanasius' life is a wonderful portrait of Christian courage in the face of intense opposition. He became bishop of Alexandria at the young age of 30, and was exiled from his bishopric five times due to political circumstances from within and without the church. Throughout, he fought the Arians like mad, and was completely unwilling to compromise with them. This book also contains a selection from a letter in which Athanasius creatively and persuasively defends the divinity of the Spirit. A fantastic (if sometimes a bit arduous) read. May God give us more men like Athanasius!
*Okay, okay. It isn't really that little.
What this means is that Athanasius is mostly allowed to speak for himself. The author thoroughly places him within his historical context, explaining his position in the Arian controversy well. This is great because Athanasius' life is a wonderful portrait of Christian courage in the face of intense opposition. He became bishop of Alexandria at the young age of 30, and was exiled from his bishopric five times due to political circumstances from within and without the church. Throughout, he fought the Arians like mad, and was completely unwilling to compromise with them. This book also contains a selection from a letter in which Athanasius creatively and persuasively defends the divinity of the Spirit. A fantastic (if sometimes a bit arduous) read. May God give us more men like Athanasius!
*Okay, okay. It isn't really that little.
July 1, 2019
His introduction is really good, but the selections from Athanasius' work aren't the best. For example, he cites Against the Gentiles--On the Incarnation far more than any other of Athanasius' works, but doesn't include any of it.
October 26, 2020
Anatolios was helpful in helping me understand the context and thinking of Athanasius. However, I was disappointed in the frequent spelling errors of the Kindle edition which my professor did not like when I put certain quotes in my essay.
October 23, 2018
Outstanding introduction to Athanasius from the foremost Athanasian scholar in the world.
Anatolios' scholarship is simply fantastic!
Anatolios' scholarship is simply fantastic!
June 1, 2014
I once heard it put that the Greeks built great systems of philosophy, while the Latin Romans built greats roads and systems of Law. Most of us are more the intellectual heirs of Rome than Athens, and so the metaphysical hair-splitting in the Trinitarian and Christological debates of the 4th and 5th centuries - even when we see it as important - makes our eyes glaze over. And Athanasius was in the middle of these debates, fighting it out with the best of them for over forty years... This makes it hard for many of us to get a handle on what Athanasius was saying - in spite of his clarity in his era.
Khaled Anatolios, who has written elsewhere on the theology of Athanasius and Nicea, offers us here a relatively brief introduction to Athanasius' world and thought, and then offers us clear translations with extensive end notes of significant extracts of significant works of Athanasius - letting him speak for himself.
A long time ago I had read On the Incarnation and The Life of Antony, but had read little other Athanasius. And so when reading Hanson's The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God I got a bit bogged down, and decided to return to an important primary source a bit before going back to a history of the whole controversy. I am quite glad I did this, since this let me see a bit how Athanasius developed, as well as see what he saw was so vital in the debates.
The translations are about as clear as can be. The selections are from key works. The introductions are short and to the point. The binding is solid. My only complaint is that the extensive notes are hidden as endnotes - which means you need two bookmarks and will be constantly flipping across this book.
Yes, the ideas and arguments are a bit complicated. But the debate then and the scholarly understanding of these works is also complicated, and in my opinion, Anatolios is to be commended on the clarity and even-handedness he brings to this.
This can be recommended without reservation to anyone wanting to know a bit more about what we Christians mean when we say that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. (2 Cor 5.19)
Khaled Anatolios, who has written elsewhere on the theology of Athanasius and Nicea, offers us here a relatively brief introduction to Athanasius' world and thought, and then offers us clear translations with extensive end notes of significant extracts of significant works of Athanasius - letting him speak for himself.
A long time ago I had read On the Incarnation and The Life of Antony, but had read little other Athanasius. And so when reading Hanson's The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God I got a bit bogged down, and decided to return to an important primary source a bit before going back to a history of the whole controversy. I am quite glad I did this, since this let me see a bit how Athanasius developed, as well as see what he saw was so vital in the debates.
The translations are about as clear as can be. The selections are from key works. The introductions are short and to the point. The binding is solid. My only complaint is that the extensive notes are hidden as endnotes - which means you need two bookmarks and will be constantly flipping across this book.
Yes, the ideas and arguments are a bit complicated. But the debate then and the scholarly understanding of these works is also complicated, and in my opinion, Anatolios is to be commended on the clarity and even-handedness he brings to this.
This can be recommended without reservation to anyone wanting to know a bit more about what we Christians mean when we say that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. (2 Cor 5.19)
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August 4, 2011Khaled Anatolios does a good job outlining Athanasius' Christology. The first 80 pages are an intro to his life and thought. Very crucial. But he adds one twist: you cannot make sense out of Athanasius's christology if you do not hold to the doctrine of theosis. For Athanasius, the whole point of Christ remaning both God and man was so that man could be divinized.
The rest of the book consists in systematic excerpts from Athanasius' works.
The rest of the book consists in systematic excerpts from Athanasius' works.
March 12, 2012
This is a clear, crisp translation of some of the best works of Athanasius (Orations Against the Arians [portions of Book 1 and Book 2], On the Council of Nicaea, Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit, and To Adelphius). I highly recommend this to anyone researching Athanasius or just wanting to read more of his primary works.
July 14, 2012
One of the best overall biographies I've read of Athanasius. Athanasius was a primary architect, champion and defender of what would become the Nicene Creed. That said, there are several other works that provide a good summary and overview of his life, many of which are easier to read and less technically oriented. One such example is John Piper's Contending of Our All.
April 14, 2013
Not finished yet, but though the Introduction be pointless, Athanasius was just great and made me feel guilty again about not having read any church fathers. Easy to see why this fiery red-headed guy went contra mundum and won. Also, I am sorry he had to get beat up by a mistranslation. Happens to the best of us.
August 23, 2007
nonfiction,theology,history
May 10, 2011
Just read the chapter on Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione while researching for a paper and was duly impressed. Will be one of my go-to books if I do any further work on Athanasius.
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