athanasius

Direct access to India, uninterrupted by Arab

middlemen, and that the unreliable winds of the

northern end of the Red Sea might be avoided by

routing goods via the Nile, as far as Thebes, and then via the roads, built by the imperial administration, linking the Nile with the

ports on the Egyptian south-eastern seaboard.

Economic Troubles

• Climate, politics, tax• Rome and

Constantinople's tributary

• Growing deficit• Monetary collapse• Alexandrian mint.• Balanced Budget• Cost of collecting

taxes.

Not a heresy?

• 2nd Century Options• Deut 6:4• Sabellianism, (also known as modalism,

modalistic monarchianism, or modal monarchism) is the nontrinitarian belief that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son and Holy Spirit are different modes or aspects of one God, as perceived by the believer, rather than three distinct persons in God Himself.

All within the “Rule of Faith.”

• Or, the view that the Father is only “God” in the true sense

• Or the Word, as a subordinate, divine entity (Justin Martyr)

• Or Jesus as the voice of the Father (Paul of Samosata) Justin Martyr

Case in point.

• Apostle’s Creed• In the late second century converts at Rome

were asked in the baptismal rite, – “Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?” and – “Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God? • By the end of the third century the second phrase

probably read as we know it now, “his ONLY Son our Lord,” thus excluding any tendency to reduce Jesus to the rank of one among many.

Transcendent God

Wor

dousia and hypostasis.

Ousia individual or generic substance

Hypostasis a thing’s underlying reality, its commonality with other things or it’s perceptible individual reality.

1. Not surprisingly, confusion was rife amongst the church leaders, many of whom were not trained philosophers, when in 325 at Nicaea those who maintained that the Son was 'of another hypostasis or ousia' to the Father were anathematized.

Part 2: Rublev’s Trinity• "And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of

Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetcht a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hasted to dress it. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf that he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat" (KJV, Genesis, 18: 1-8 and passim).

Julian the Apostate (355--363)

1.Emperor Julian: "the military commander, the theosophist, the social reformer, and the man of letters".

2.The last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire. Desired to bring the empire back to its ancient Roman values.

3. Purged the top-heavy bureaucracy and attempted to revive traditional Roman religious practices at the cost of Christianity.

4.The last emperor of the Constantinian dynasty — the empire's first Christian dynasty.

Seth• Diversity in Egypt:– Alexandria (4th Century) • Christians, Jews, Greeks,

Coptics and Ancient Egyptian religion in the hinterland.• Related to crops.

Embodiment of evil and disorder

Persecutions

• Diocletian persecutions of 303• Dispu7te over the lapsed• Melitius of Lycopolis, the

rigorous line• Peter of Alexandria, lenient

views (martyred later under Maximum (311)

• The monks of upper Egypt, a conservative and rigorous view.

• Dispute with poorer Coptic Christians and Greek Christians.

Diversity

• Coptic Christians in upper Egypt

• Divisive, but not divisive

Constantine 324

• Constans (337-350), • Constantius II (337-

361) and • Consiantine II (337-

340),

Eusebius c. AD (263–339)

1.Emperor as the 'Image' of the divine Word, from whom the universe draws its ordered and rational structure.

2.Life in the city under the king, Constantine, -- the Lord's ordinance of making humanity fit for his eternal kingdom.

3. The peasants disagreed. 4. With this identification of imperial and

divine rule the hermits and monks disagreed

5. protest to a worldly Church at her myopic identification of Church and empire. The Father of Church History

Eusebius of Caesarea

Athanasius: On the Incarnation

• Studied as Christian• Press wisdom in service of the

Lord.• Dealing with mismatch

between sets or categories of ideas

• Christianity was itself developing.

• Greek concept of God as simple and immutable: contrast to a creative, loving Father

The Black Dwarf?

Bishop of Alexandria at age 30

• Born AD 295• Young secretary to

Alexander• Accompanied him

to Nicaea (325) as young deacon.

Arius of Alexander 256--336• Trained by Lucian, the presbyter

of Antioch• Non Trinitarian• Son was created, an inferior

deity, not unbegotten• Deposed at Egyptian synod in

323• Caused Constantine to summon

a council• Condemned at Nicaea• “homoousios” included to define

the Son’s relation to the father.

homoousios

• The various rigorist groups in Egypt, orthodox monks and Melitians, gnostics and Manichaeans, were rivals. • Yet they had much in common: they emphasized Christ's

divine nature, the wholeness of his manifestation of the Godhead, and the complete character of the salvation of the believer

Origen of Alexandria (185—254 CE)

• Mild form of subordination acceptable over a modalistic understanding of God.

• Homoousious could be termed, “as the same person”

Constantine, believing Arius no longer held the extreme views directed to readmit him to back to communion.Arius, could agree to the language.Athanasius refused the emperor!

Egyptian Grain

• November 335 Athanasius exiled to Trier in Gaul.

Constans at 340

• Nicene supporter• Roman papacy staking

claim to rule on Peter alone

• Eastern bishops seek councils

• Division in East, and between East and West

• TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Athanasius: Creation and Providence

• Originally Good• Not Independent• Properly dependent• Stars exist and are ordered• People are created, not

forced nor unwelcome, but free, in gratitude, in a blessed state.

• Love of God, worshipful recognition of God for who God is and for what God has magnanimously done, and faithfully keeping the divine will, not for God’s benefit but creation’s well being, are closely intertwined in Athanasius’ thinking.

Creator Transcendence

God is “simple” unchanging and free.

• Creation thus, has in its Creator an enduring basis for hope.