SOURCE: Hall, Christopher A. “The Four Doctors of the East: Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great & John Chrysostom.” In Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers, pp. 56-64. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

[In the following excerpt, Hall explains how Athanasius remained steadfast in his position regarding Christ's dual nature as God and man.]

In the four doctors of the East we encounter the preeminent teachers who exemplify the riches of Eastern patristic insight and exegesis. All four illustrate the fruitfulness of patristic biblical interpretation, although these fathers practiced their exegetical craft in response to different issues. Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus interpreted the Bible within the context of the Arian controversy. Their use of Scripture in resolving a tangled theological question demonstrates well their interpretive technique and the fruit it yields. As for Basil and John Chrysostom, both showed themselves to be gifted exegetes, but in a generally less heated and volatile setting. Here are two of the great pastors of the church, Basil serving as the head of a monastic community, John pastoring the church in Antioch and then in Constantinople. Both read and explained the Bible in light of their pastoral responsibilities and in doing so offer insights to pastors and parishioners, then and now.

ATHANASIUS (295-373)

There were no neutral responses to Athanasius. His friends would have willingly given their lives for him. His enemies longed to see him and his memory erased from the earth. Some mocked him as the “black dwarf.”

Within Athanasius burned a lively intelligence and a heart on fire for God, the God who had freely and miraculously entered human history to rescue humanity, becoming what we are to rescue us from what we had become. Robert Payne writes that

in the history of the early Church no one was ever so implacable, so urgent in his demands upon himself or so derisive of his enemies. There was something in him of the temper of the modern dogmatic revolutionary: nothing stopped him. The Emperor Julian called him “hardly a man, only a little manikin.” Gregory Nazianzen said he was “angelic in appearance, and still more angelic in mind.” In a sense both were speaking the truth.¹

Perhaps only a rough-edged personality like Athanasius could fight the theological, ecclesiastical and political battles that were waged for almost his entire lifetime. Gregory of Nazianzus described Athanasius simultaneously as the “pillar of the church” and as possessing “all the attributes of the heathen.” In some ways, Athanasius was a theological street fighter, courageous, cagy and cunning. He was not above running up to the Emperor Constantine as he rode through the street, grabbing the bridle of his horse and scolding him over his theological shortcomings.

Here was a man who wrote two significant works—An Oration Against the Heathen and On the Incarnation—before the age of twenty. By the age of thirty-three he was bishop of the church in Alexandria. It was not to be an easy job. Over the course of the next forty-five years Athanasius was exiled from his church in Alexandria five times, largely because of his staunch opposition to the ideas of the presbyter Arius. Arius argued that the Son of God was an exalted creature. Athanasius responded with a consistent defense of the proposition that true God had genuinely entered into union with human nature in Jesus Christ. The battle between the two and their adherents would wax and wane for years.

Hermeneutical sampler. The incarnation of the Son of God was the great mystery that Athanasius defended for all of his life. God the Son, true God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, had in great love willingly joined his divine nature to human nature in the wonder of the incarnation. Only such loving humiliation and ineffable grace could possibly save humanity and offer the opportunity of human reformation into the image of God. Only God could save. And God could do so only by becoming what we are.

The idea of a genuine incarnation, of God invading our world by becoming what we are, is an idea that makes little rational sense. The God described by biblical writers is uncreated, indivisible, omnipotent, omniscient, transcendent, infinite and immeasurable. These are only a few of the attributes that set an indelible, unmistakable, unbridgeable gap between the divine and the human, the creator and the created. Or so it would seem. And yet the gospel, at least as Athanasius understood it, proclaimed loudly and clearly that in Christ the line between divinity and humanity had been crossed. Indeed, Athanasius argued, it must be crossed if human beings were to be saved from the horrific effects of sin.

How an incarnation could actually occur or make theological sense was another matter. How could the uncreated become created? How could the infinite become finite? Could the immeasurable be measured in the thimble of human nature? What possible sense could one make out of such incomprehensible, seemingly irrational assertions? Not much at all, the presbyter Arius would assert.

Arius, representing the central theological antagonism in Athanasius's life for close to fifty years, founded his Christology on certain philosophical, theological, and biblical presuppositions. Arius contended, for example, that the divine essence was an indivisible unity. If this was true, it was rationally incoherent to believe that God could be divided in any way. For example, one could not divide God into parts: one part as the Father, a second the Son and a third the Holy Spirit. God could not “beget a divine Son,” at least if the word “beget” retained any semblance to its generally recognized meaning when applied to human procreation.

Once Arius had asserted God's indivisibility as effectively foreclosing the possibility of deeper complexity within the Godhead itself, he had to make theological sense out of the Son he clearly encountered in the pages of Scripture. What was he to do? He had already concluded that this Son could not be divine in the same sense as the Father, because divinity was not a substance that could be parcelled out like helpings of mashed potatoes. The divine essence was an indivisible reality. Hence, the Son in some way must have had a beginning. He could not be eternal in the same sense that the Father was eternal. As Arius was to express it, “There was a time when he was not.”

Now if this is the case, even if the Son is an exalted creature, he is still a creature, however elevated he may be. If one were to draw a line in the sand dividing deity from creation, the Son in his essence must be placed on the creation side of the line.² The deductions that Arius then made from this startling conclusion are jarring. If the Son is a creature, he must be inferior to God. He must be limited in his knowledge of God. He must be liable to change and even to sin.

On the more positive side, Arius insisted that the Son is the most elevated and exalted of all God's creation. He was created before time itself—he “was born outside of time.” The preeminence of the Son, Arius argued, could be recognized from the glorious titles given to him in the pages of Scripture. He was even called “the Son of God.” However, Arius adamantly believed that the titles given to the Son were metaphorical at best, honors pointing to his wondrous status as God's highest creation but misinterpreted if taken literally. As Arius phrased it, the Son “is called God not truly but in name only.”³

Consider the following sampler of texts that appeared to support the Arian position:

In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus experienced grief and fear (cf. Mt 26:38). Would a divine being experience and express these emotions and responses? What of the questions Jesus asked during his lifetime? At the feeding of the four thousand Jesus asks his disciples how many loaves they possess (Mt 15:34). At his crucifixion Jesus asks why his Father has forsaken him (Mt 27:46). Jesus seems to be ignorant of the time when all things will be “accomplished” (cf. Mk 13:4, 32). The Father's knowledge seems clearly to be greater than that of the Son. If so, how could Father and Son share the same divine essence? As the Arians expressed it:

If the Son were, according to your interpretation, eternally existent with God, He would not have been ignorant of the Day, but have known it as Word; nor would he have been forsaken if he was co-existent … nor have prayed at all. … [B]eing the Word, he would have needed nothing.⁴

Was Arian exegesis convincing? Were Arius's philosophical and theological presuppositions valid? Athanasius was horrified by the implications of Arius's teaching. Whereas Arius began with certain philosophical presuppositions concerning God's indivisibility, Athanasius started his exploration of the Son by studying Scripture's answer to the question, “What must God do if humanity is to be saved from sin?” While Arius searched for coherence and logical consistency in his understanding of Christ, Athanasius's focus was soteriological. If God was to save humanity, what would have to take place? And what did biblical writers insist had indeed actually happened?

Athansius's response to Arius can be summed up in two central assertions:

1. Only God can save. If the Father has sent the Son to save humanity through his death and resurrection, God has come to save. A mere creature can save no one. While Arius worked hard to preserve an exalted status for the Son, picturing him as elevated above all other creatures, his understanding of Christ faltered at this strategic juncture. The Arian Christ, Athanasius insisted, could save no one. No creature possessed the ability or prerogative to save from sin. Salvation was the prerogative, privilege and potential act of God alone. “The maker must be greater than what he makes … and the giver has to bestow what is in his possession.”⁵

Alvyn Pettersen writes that even if Christ were “the most sublime of creatures,” human beings would still find themselves “fought over” by two created beings, the “Logos and the Devil.” Final victory could not be guaranteed to either.⁶ Thus follows Athanasius's insistence that only God can rescue humanity and that God desires to do so. “What help then can creatures derive from a creature that itself needs salvation? … A creature could never be saved by a creature any more than the creatures were created by a creature.”⁷

The Son “alone is able … to suffer for all and is competent to be an advocate on behalf of all before the Father.”⁸ Only the infinite God, whose abilities, powers, love and grace remain unlimited, can save humanity. According to Pettersen, “He can relate to and act for all. Not one of those liable to mortal corruption is beyond the purview of the Highest.”⁹

Not only does God possess the necessary attributes to save, but God desires to do so, lovingly experiencing the incarnation on our behalf.

[A]s it was right for him to wish to be of help to man, he came as man and took to himself a body like theirs, of humble origin … in order that [man] who [was] unwilling to know him by his providence and government of the universe, yet by the works done through his body might know the Logos of God who was in the body, and through him the Father. For as a good teacher, who cares for his pupils, always condescends to teach by simpler means those who cannot profit by more advanced things, so does the Logos of God.¹⁰

2. Christ is worshiped in Christian churches, including churches following the teaching of Arius. How could the church rightfully worship Christ if Christ was not God? Athanasius asked. Did the Arians not realize what they were doing in their worship services, at least if their theology was correct? To worship a creature was to commit terrible blasphemy. In fact, Athanasius would contend, Arius and his followers committed blasphemy on two counts: they worshiped a creature as God and called God incarnate a mere creature. Arius's desire for, as C. S. Lewis calls it, a “‘sensible,’ synthetic” religion had led him into a rationalistic cul-de-sac.¹¹

For a good many years it appeared that the position of Arius had won the day. Despite the affirmation at the Council of Nicea (325) that the Son was homoousios with the Father, that is, shared the identical divine essence with the Father, the church wavered toward the more comprehensible and deadly solution of Arius. It truly seemed for a time that it was Athanasius contra mundum, against the world. His steadfast example prompted this praise from C. S. Lewis:

We are proud that our own country has more than once stood against the world. Athanasius did the same. He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, “whole and undefiled,” when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius—into one of those “sensible” synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended to-day and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivated clergymen. It is his glory that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, as all times do, have moved away.¹²

The hermeneutical response of Athanasius. Athanasius's reading of Scripture is often inextricably linked to his battle against Arianism. His four Discourses Against the Arians provide us with many examples of how Athanasius read the Bible and applied its contents to a specific theological problem of great moment. In his introduction to texts from the Gospels dealing with the nature of the incarnation, Athanasius first lists the common Arian objections to the possibility of God genuinely becoming incarnate.

How could the Son be “the natural and true power of the Father” if in the hour of his passion in the garden of Gethsemane his soul was troubled and he asked to be rescued from this hour? How could he ask to be delivered from the cup of his suffering? Surely if the Son shared the same essence with the Father he would have possessed the power to overcome all such fears.¹³

How could Jesus increase “in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” if he were consubstantial with the Father? If he possessed all wisdom and knowledge, as surely deity does, why would he ask the disciples how many loaves they possessed at the time of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand? Why would Jesus cry out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Why, in response to the question of the disciples concerning the signs of the end times, did Jesus say, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”? (Mk 13:32) How could there possibly be this division of knowledge within the Godhead, the Father knowing all things and the Son only some things?

How could God become a human being? “How could the Immaterial bear a body?” Whereas Jesus' Jewish adversaries had asked, How can a human being be God? Arius asked, How could God become a human being? “How can He be Word or God who slept as man, and wept, and inquired?”¹⁴

Athanasius's response to these and other questions focused on the relationship between Christ's deity and humanity. He contended that the “scope and character” of Scripture contained a “double account of the Saviour.” The Bible, that is, affirmed both the deity and humanity of Jesus. As the Son, he existed as “the Father's Word and Radiance and Wisdom”; in the incarnation the Son willingly and lovingly took on human flesh “of a Virgin, Mary Bearer of God, and was made man.”¹⁵

Athanasius believed this double focus “is to be found throughout inspired Scripture,” and lists passage after passage that affirms either Christ's deity or humanity. He realizes that the crux of the problem is the relationship between Christ as God and Christ as human and centers his attention here. On the one hand, the Son has become what we are “for our sakes.” Because the Son has joined himself in a genuine union to our “flesh,” Athanasius expects the astute Bible reader will note that the “properties of the flesh” are realistically predicated of the Son because they are truly his in light of the incarnation. “[T]he properties of the flesh are said to be his, since He was in it, such as to hunger, to thirst, to suffer, to weary, and the like, of which the flesh is capable.”¹⁶

On the other hand, because the Son is both genuinely human and genuinely divine, students of Scripture should not be surprised to encounter texts that stress Christ's deity, “the works proper to the Word Himself, such as to raise the dead, to restore sight to the blind, and to cure the woman with an issue of blood,” wondrous works accomplished through the flesh that the Word had assumed. In a remarkable, ineffable sharing of properties, “the Word bore the infirmities of the flesh as His own, for His was the flesh; and the flesh ministered to the works of the Godhead, because the Godhead was in it, for the body was God's.”¹⁷

Here was Athanasius's response to the Arians' confusion over Christ's humanity and deity. The Word was “not external” to the humanity it had assumed. Rather, when the incarnate Son ministered, humanity and deity were both at work in an incomprehensible union.

And thus when there was need to raise Peter's wife's mother, who was sick of a fever, He stretched forth His hand humanly, but He stopped the illness divinely. And in the case of the man blind from birth, human was the spittle which He gave forth from the flesh, but divinely did He open the eyes through the clay. And in the case of Lazarus, He gave forth a human voice, as man; but divinely, as God, did He raise Lazarus from the dead. These things were so done, were so manifested, because He had a body, not in appearance, but in truth; and it became the Lord, in putting on human flesh, to put it on whole with the affections proper to it; that, as we say that the body was His own, so also we may say that the affections of the body were proper to Him alone, though they did not touch Him according to His Godhead.¹⁸

In short, Athanasius concludes, the divine nature appropriates the human, hallowing Christ's human nature and that of all those who come to believe in him. In love the Son comes to us, becomes what we are apart from sin, and invites us to “transfer our origin into Himself.” Christ acts both divinely and humanly through his incarnate body. When he acts in power, healing the sick and raising the dead, we perceive his deity in action. When he becomes tired, asks questions, manifests fear, we see the manifestation of his genuine humanity.

The Arians had erred by reading Scripture poorly, seen in their failure to distinguish between what was proper to the Son's deity and to the Son's humanity. In their case, the failure to understand the relationship between the two had led them to deny the deity of the Son. Or, as Athanasius puts it, “looking at what is human in the Saviour, they have judged Him a creature.” Other heretics would make the opposite error and deny the genuineness of the Son's humanity. Both fail to grasp who Christ is because of a failure to read Scripture in line with what the gospel itself demands if salvation is to be accomplished.

For further investigation. Athanasius's exegesis is generally scattered throughout his theological works, and writings focused solely on biblical exegesis itself are relatively rare. The clearest example of a work devoted to exegesis available in English translation is The Letter of St. Athanasius to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms. It can be found attached to the St. Vladimir's Press translation of On the Incarnation.¹⁹ It is also available in The Classics of Western Spirituality series published by Paulist Press, where it is accompanied by Athanasius's Life of Antony.²⁰ Athanasius did write commentaries on the Psalms, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, and Genesis, but we only have fragments of these commentaries and they have yet to be translated into English. Athanasius's extensive work, Four Discourses Against the Arians, is a wonderful place to explore how Athanasius read the Bible and applied its teaching to a specific, extremely difficult theological question.²¹

Some might find Athanasius's thirty-ninth Festal Letter for the year 367 to be of interest. In this letter Athanasius critiques apocryphal works created by people “who have perfected themselves in a lying and contemptible science.” So that people might be able to distinguish between the canonical Scriptures and fabricated works, Athanasius sets before his reader “the books included in the Canon, and handed down, and accredited as Divine.”²² Athanasius lists the twenty-seven books of the New Testament—the first time they have been declared to be canonical.²³ …

Notes

1. Robert Payne, The Fathers of the Eastern Church (New York: Dorset Press, 1989), p. 67.

2. I believe I have borrowed this illustration from either Alister McGrath or Thomas Marsh, but I have been unable to find the reference.

3. Thomas Marsh, The Triune God: A Biblical, Historical and Theological Study (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1994), p. 104. I have found Marsh's discussion of the Arian controversy to be quite helpful and have drawn upon it in my discussion of the conflict between Athanasius and Arius. I have also found Alister McGrath's Studies in Doctrine (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1997) to be helpful.

4. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, Discourse 3, NPNF Second Series, vol. 4 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), p. 408.

5. Athanasius Contra Gentes 9, cited in Alvyn Pettersen, Athanasius (Harrisburg, Penn.: Morehouse Publishing, 1995), p. 91.

6. Pettersen, Athanasius p. 91.

7. Athanasius Ad Adelph. 8, cited in Pettersen, Athanasius, p. 91.

8. Athanasius De Incarnatione 7, cited in Pettersen, Athanasius, p. 91.

9. Pettersen, Athanasius, p. 91.

10. Athanasius De Incarnatione 14-15, cited in Pettersen, Athanasius, p. 68.

11. C. S. Lewis, “Introduction to St. Athanasius,” in Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982), p. 9.

12. Ibid.

13. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, p. 408.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., p. 409.

16. Ibid., p. 410.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., p. 411.

19. St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982).

20. Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (New York: Paulist Press, 1980).

21. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, pp. 306-447.

22. Letters of Athanasius, NPNF Second Series, vol. 4 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), p. 551.

23. Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. 3 The Golden Age of Greek Patristic Literature (Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1986), p. 54. …

Abbreviations

ACW: Ancient Christian Writers

ANF: Ante-Nicene Fathers

CSEL: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

FC: Fathers of the Church

NPNF: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers

PG: Patrologia Graeca

PL: Patrologia Latina

SC: Sources Chrétiennes