Athanasius

Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality

by Peter J. Leithart

This volume by a respected theologian offers fresh consideration of the work of famous fourth-century church father Athanasius, giving specific attention to his use of Scripture, his deployment of metaphysical categories, and the intersection between the two. Peter Leithart not only introduces Athanasius and his biblical theology but also puts Athanasius into dialogue with contemporary theologians.

This volume launches the series Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality. Edited by Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering, the series critically recovers patristic exegesis and interpretation for contemporary theology and spirituality. Each volume covers a specific church father and illuminates the exegesis that undergirds the Nicene tradition. The series contributes to the growing area of theological interpretation and will appeal to both evangelical and Catholic readers.

Genres: Theology, History, Biography, Church History, Christian, Christianity, Biblical Studies

204 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2011

About the author

Peter Leithart received an A.B. in English and History from Hillsdale College in 1981, and a Master of Arts in Religion and a Master of Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1986 and 1987. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in England. He has served in two pastorates: He was pastor of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church (now Trinity Presbyterian Church), Birmingham, Alabama from 1989 to 1995, and was founding pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, Idaho, and served on the pastoral staff at Trinity from 2003-2013. From 1998 to 2013 he taught theology and literature at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho, where he continues to teach as an adjunct Senior Fellow. He now serves as President of Trinity House in Alabama, where is also resident Church Teacher at the local CREC church. He and his wife, Noel, have ten children and five grandchildren.

Reviews

[Joshua Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Athanasius is a true gift to the Church. One of the Church fathers worthy to be read. Leithart delves deeply into the theology of Athanasius, which at the heart is the Word made flesh. He has so much to teach us today, most prominently his Christo-Centric hermeneutic and interpretation of the world, and of man.

[Glenn Crouch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a good introduction to Athanasius. The Author gives us a brief biography and delves into the details of and reasons for the theology of Athanasius. Whilst the conflict with the Arians, and his strong argument for the Incarnation, take up a good chunk of this book, other areas are included - such as Athanasius' understanding of deification.

I did feel that the Author went a bit too far into Metaphysics and some of the philosophical background then was needed for an introductory book - thus I ended up finding the first few chapters a bit hard going - not that I was unfamiliar with this material, rather I wanted to get into Athanasius! However, in my limited understanding, I believe the Author does do justice to Athanasius views and gives us a good understanding for the motivation behind those views. What is also nice is that the Author allows us to see Athanasius compared to other theologians, both ancient and modern.

I also applaud the nice Bibliography.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was 12, I thought my hero among humans would be someone like Steve Jobs. If I had to fill that place today, it would probably be held by Athanasius. The best part about him is that he is not legendary. He's a real man that had the courage of legends and a spine of steel in this real world.

[John]

“Of making many books there is no end.” The writer of Ecclesiastes penned that line with the whole world and all its history in mind. I write it with Peter Leithart in mind. Leithart is unusually productive, a machine of literary output. Let’s take a snapshot of the last few years: Deep Exegesis, Solomon Among the Post-moderns, Jane Austen, Defending Constantine, The Four: A Survey of the Gospel, Athanasius, and Fyodor Dostoesvsky (forthcoming, October 2011). That’s seven books and, not being able to speak to his book on Austen nor his forthcoming on Dostoevsky, all have been significant contributions to their field—even, in the case of Defending Constantine, challenging status quo assumptions. Outside of the three-year snapshot, Leithart published 10 books between 2003 and 2006.

In an age of specialists, Leithart—minister and senior fellow of theology and literature at New Saint Andrews College—is as close to an example of a Renaissance man that we may have today. He is engaged in the world of ideas (history, literature, and theology), and he doesn’t shake this role in his new book, Athanasius. He does not write in the manner of an Athanasius specialist, who labors only in the world with other Athanasius specialists debating Athanasius ideas. Instead, he writes as an Athanasius expert who engages with Athanasius’s work and its surrounding literature, but also with a world of ideas and literature that have developed after or in consequence to Athanasius.

A Book in a Series

Athanasius is the inaugural book in the Foundation of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality series, which engages the theology and exegesis of the early church fathers for contemporary theology and spirituality. And the world and struggles of Athanasius, as foreign as they may seem, have many parallels to our current, evangelical one.

At the end of chapter 1—a short summary of Athanasius’s life—Leithart makes a brief comment on the differences between the Arians and Athanasius, in which he says, “Despite [the Arians'] professed adherence to Scripture, their real convictions come from elsewhere.” Surprisingly, this isn’t a commentary on the Enlightenment or its rebellious child, postmodernity. But much like we see in our own day, the challenges Athanasius faced had its foundation in epistemological struggles.

Starting Points: The Bible and Jesus

Athanasius devoted much of his labors to starting points: what we think about Scripture and Jesus. However, I don’t say “starting points” to give the impression that Athanasius was entry-level reading. Arius and his cohorts had philosophical reasons for their conclusions about Jesus Christ, and Athanasius had to give sophisticated responses. Leithart does a good job at showing just how complex the situation was, without getting lost in the minutiae.

Athanasius and his contemporaries are commonly villainized for their allegorical reading of Scripture. However, Leithart is able to show Athanasius was largely “deductive” and “typological”—in the best sense of the word—and had a fairly sophisticated understanding of types and shadows. Athanasius labored to interpret Scripture on Scripture’s terms; that is, christocentrically.

Of course, much of the discussion about the Bible came in the context of debates of who Jesus was and is. And though Leithart, at times, makes Athanasius out to be the hero of contemporary discussions about Theological Interpretation Scripture (TIS), he is right to point out that Athanasius’s interpretation of Scripture depends upon an assumed christology and theology proper, as well as vice versa. So in the end, Athanasius is a theologian who keeps his finger in the text and a biblical interpreter who, thus, is compelled to say something about God.

The dependence Athanasius has on the Bible doesn’t make his arguments any less complex. Rather, he brings the Bible to bear upon difficult theological and philosophical categories—a concept that is, more often than not, lost among current trinitarian and analytical theological studies. In today’s pendulum swing between Social Trinitarianism, which often times majors on the plurality of God at the expense of his unity, and Relative Trinitarianism, which often errors on the side of modalism, we would be better served to pay close attention to Athanasius’s ability to hold to the biblical tensions of the plurality and unity of God. However, the ability to uphold the tensions of unity and plurality doesn’t disable Athasasius from speaking deeply into either one of them.

Leithart summarizes Athasasius’s trinitarianism quite aptly: “God is one as Trinity.” Or as the Cappadocian father, Gregory of Nazianzus, put it, “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illuminated by the splendor of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me.”

Jesus and Christian Spirituality

Athanasius has much to say about our contemporary discussions on sanctification and Christian spirituality. The popular phrase “sanctification is simply getting used to your justification” wouldn’t quite cut it with Athanasius. A quick response may be, “Well, Athanasius didn’t have a correct understanding of justification.” Without getting into whether the early church fathers misunderstood or just assumed a biblical understanding of justification, I think the response is missing the point.

For Athanasius, and many of his contemporaries, “contemplation” was central to being conformed to the image of Christ. In other words, part (and I stress part”) of our sanctifying work is contemplating what we’ve been given eyes to see. As Leithart explains it, “the contemplative gaze is a transforming gaze.” He explains further:

"By looking at Jesus, contemplating his unity with the Father, disciples are bound in charity with one another. When we gaze at the archetype, the archetype impresses himself upon us."

In other words, we become like Jesus by beholding and contemplating his deity and glory with the Father. And it’s not too difficult to find this instruction in the Bible:

"Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure" (1 John 3:2-3, emphasis mine).

Or:

"And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18, emphasis mine).

Sanctification is certainly not less than “getting used to our justification,” but we must say more. As Athanasius teaches—followed by Calvin and the best of the Puritans—to be like Jesus, we must behold, gaze upon, and contemplate his glory. And this contemplation is only found with our Bibles in hand. Want to see the glory of Christ? Athanasius would likely quote John 5:39, "Search the Scriptures, for they testify about me."

Retrieving Athanasius for Today

Leithart gives us direction for the future of evangelical Christianity by taking us back to the world of Athanasius. He is not a perfect guide. And Leithart might have served us better to show more explicitly where we would be wise to not follow Athanasius. But for those who have the ears to hear, Athanasius is a worthy hero to follow as he follows Christ.

[Cole Shiflet · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite book on Athanasius thus far. Leithart does a phenomenal job on not just focusing on Athanasius’ Christology, but his view of creation and the way that it affects his view of everything else. The god imagined by Arius is far inferior than the God that Athanasius reads of in the Old and New Testament.

[Darren Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, this book is extremely difficult to read compared to theological books that I read from Geerhardus Vos, Berkhof, Bavinck, Calvin, Erickson and Reymond. Perhaps this is due to my fault because I do not have much background in philosophy and historical theologies. While the author’s commentaries and explanations on Athanasian’s writings are helpful, I had trouble following the author’s train of thoughts most of the time. The destination was very hazy and it felt like I was being brought all over the place. What made this reading more challenging was that, many of the doctrine terminologies we used today such as eschatology, hypostatic union, penal substitution atonement, justification, sanctification, indwelling of the Spirit weren’t coined at Athanasius’ time.

Furthermore these theological concepts weren’t distinguished and categorized at his time too. Thus it’s difficult to follow Athanasius’ theology when he’s trying to explain these concepts using different terminology and language while at the same time putting them in the same category. For instance, eschatology, incarnation and trinity can be combined under one topic. Athanasius and the author are not to be blamed for these because of the time gap we have and the development of theology weren’t as refined as what we have today, it’s not an easy endeavor for the author to bridge Athanasius to our modern mind.

That said, I have some feedback how this work can be improved better. Overall I wished this book would be a lot more structured. This book would be much better if the author examines and critiques Athanasius’ theology from a Presbyterian/Dutch/Evangelical reformed theological lens because the author rarely critique his theology especially when I read something that feels iffy from Athanasius.

I recommend Athanasius A Theological Introduction by Thomas G Weinandy, that book is much easier to understand and follow, and I think it goes much more in depth too.

[Drake Hyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

As part of a book series exploring the exegetical methods, dogmatic theology and metaphysics of the early church fathers, Athanasius provides a comprehensive look into the mind and context of one of the most key founders and proponents of the Nicene faith. Author Peter J. Leithart analyzes Athanasius’ understanding of Scripture and “the nature of things” (p. xv) as seen through a largely polemical anti-Arian lens, by which he advocated for the full divinity present in the human body of Jesus Christ. Leithart, president of the Theopolis Institute for Biblical, Liturgical and Cultural Studies in Birmingham, AL, has written extensively on theology, church history, literature, Christian living and politics over a thirty-year career. In Athanasius, Leithart’s skilled treatment of historical theology, as exhibited by his careful, exhaustive reading of Athanasius himself, as well as his relevant inclusion of important theologians and philosophers like Barth and Aquinas, results in a substantial resource for any seminary student seeking to delve further into the life and mind of Athanasius, the embattled early protector of the divine Trinity.

Leithart describes Athanasius in life as a “tough, skillful infighter, a community organizer and rabble-rouser…who wanted no part of a [church] not based on truth.” (p. 8) As a result of his theological convictions, Athanasius experienced rejection from the Roman Empire under Constantine and his hostile son Contantius II, as well as the leaders of Arianism like Eusebius of Caesarea. Spending many of the years of his bishopric in exile, he fought assiduously against this “philosophical speculation that had corrupted the church”, seeking to return it “to the simplicity of Scripture.” (p. 15)

To Athanasius, through whose writings much of Arian doctrine has been reconstructed, Arians viewed Christ as a created Son of God the Father, who they believed was eternally and ontologically “One”, not a triad like those of the Alexandrian school had supposed. He frequently compared Arians to Jewish nontrinitarian monotheists, accusing them of heresy for asserting that Christ was not “unoriginate” like the Father. For Athanasius, Arian theology was therefore insufficient to save mankind since a created Son was neither a true incarnation of the eternal Word and Wisdom of God, nor could he possibly share in true essence with the Father. Athanasius’ response to this heresy was, says Leithart, “conformity to Scripture…the touchstone of all theological truth.” (p. 33) He had accused Arians, like the devil, of interpreting Scripture in their own private sense for their own corrupt means. Leithart explores how Athanasius, in reaction, had led his followers to read the Bible in both a contextually-appropriate and Christocentric fashion.
Where Leithart’s book is limited in recapitulating the events of Athanasius’ life, it excels at condensing his vast array of writings into more narrow, manageable theological treatises. Of primary focus to Athanasius was the perichoretic Father-Son relationship. He defended the Nicene Creed’s usage of the extrabiblical term homoousios (“same essence”) against Arian criticism. To call God a Father means he must have a Son who shares with Him fully in his eternality, otherwise He cannot be called a Father at all. Although the Scriptures described the Son as begotten, He is not made since “divine begetting is not the same as human begetting.” (p. 48) In the same way, the eternality of the Father and the Son mean that no “succession of generation” is needed since the Father is “completely fulfilled” in his “single, eternal Son.” (p. 53)

Leithart’s elaboration on the concurrent human-divine nature of Christ also proves to be of crucial homiletic significance. According to Athanasius, “when the flesh suffered, the Word was not external to it…[for] the flesh is proper to the Son.” (p. 128) From Leithart’s view, he was arguing that since the Father partakes in essence with the Son, and since the Son partook in the flesh, so also was the “Father in the flesh.” (p. 129) This core Christian idea, which Leithart finds in Athanasius’ Discourses Against the Arians, carries great implications for evangelists seeking to communicate the immense suffering God the Father experienced in the torture, isolation and crucifixion of His Son.

In terms of pneumatology, Leithart documents how Athanasius explored the relationship between the Spirit, the Son, his human body and humanity in general. According to Leithart, “Jesus himself is a human temple, bearing the indwelling Spirit, and so prepares our flesh also to be a temple of the Spirit.” As Athanasius put it, “It is very plain that the Spirit’s descent on Him in Jordan was a descent upon us, because of His bearing our body.” (p. 158) In other words, when the Son became flesh and received the Spirit, he made the human body capable of being the new temple of the Holy Spirit, thus ushering in a new Messianic age beginning with its advent at Pentecost.

Rich Christological truths like these, arrived at after decades of persecution and opposition, are what make Athanasius so rewarding to study. For those unfamiliar with this bastion of patristic orthodoxy or intimidated by the archaisms and anachronisms associated with reading early church fathers, Leithart’s book proves to be a thorough, albeit somewhat acritical and heady, survey of Athanasian theology. For that reason, it is highly recommended, yet it leaves one with a desire for a more narrative, biographical account of the captivating fiery “Black Dwarf” of Alexandria.

[Justin Leitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Athanasius was a bishop in Alexandria in the early church and played the leading role in defeating the Arian heresy. This was a controversy that claimed that Jesus was created. Their refrain was "There was a time when the Word was not". This book takes a deep dive into Athanasius' theology - much of it is in relation to the Arians, but the scope of the book is larger. He defends the deity of the Word, Jesus Christ.

This is a very deep dive into his theology. The writing is dense and difficult - particularly the length excerpts from Athanasius' writings that have been translated from Greek. It is a tough read - hard to stay engaged and paying attention for me because of the density.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scholarly overview of the life and theology of Athanasius, interacting with scholars who disagree with him (particularly showing the errors of the "athanasius was an despicable authoritarian hated by those under him" theory), and hightlighting what we can and can't know, and the strengths and weaknesses of Athanasius. An encouraging read, particularly in reflecting on the chaos through which God led his church to a proper understanding of who he is.

[Joe Hyink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very excellent work. A noteworthy and deep insight on every page. Leithart's knowledge of Bible helps him show the thoroughly Biblical saturation of Athanasius. Lots of theology.

It might have been nice to hear some (more?) critique of Athanasius's thought. It's almost as if Leithart agrees with everything.

[Grant Van Brimmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leithart makes you love Athanasius and helps you understand the incredibly deep details of theological discussion surrounding the Council of Nicea. Had to reread many parts of this book, but the theological gold found is well worth the tough work of mining.

[Rob Markley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard going to say the least. I had hoped to bring a (the!) key church father to life, but this is academic analysis better found in a thesis than a book

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic! Hits a lot of different things and brings the theology of Athanasius to hear on modern theological debates... Unexpected but good!

[Amy Hughes · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I was not a fan of how Leithart positioned Athanasius almost entirely within the polemical context of Arianism, this book has some really strong points. There are several excellent summaries of early Christian doctrines such as theopoeisis (deification) and impassibility. Leithart also structures his book so as position Athanasius in such a way to engage him directly in the context of contemporary systematic theology. It is obvious that Leithart is writing from a strongly pro-orthodox position, thus, his depiction of Arianism is much more "us versus them" than I would have liked. The merits of the book, however, make it worth the read.

[Lonnie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unexpectedly heavier read than I have experienced with this author previously. I enjoyed it but needed to take it VERY slow to get it to sink in.
Athanasius, the hero of the early Church, tackled issues that common men nowadays wouldn't even stumble upon if it weren't for his work. His defense against arianism and views on Christology are still in use today by the main Christian sects.

A worthy read if you are willing to invest a lot of brain power!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a in-depth study of the Logocentrism of Athanasius' theology. The prose is very meditative and full of quotable and thought provoking passages. It often reads more like a prose poem about the glory and splendor or Jesus Christ. This was a very edifying book.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bookended with Augustinian pro and epilogue, Leithart writes a pastorally technical account of Athanasius' theology and conflict with Arius. He gets more done in 175 pages than most authors do in 300. Dense in the best sense.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this, having read Athanasius in the past. Lots to think about on trinitarian theology and the incarnation.

[Michael Kenan Baldwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tolerable offering from Leithart, but he doesn’t come close to Anatolios, Behr, etc.

[Andrew Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great intro on Athanasius.