Athanasius the Great

According to all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus, on the way to Caesarea Philippi, a few days before the end of His messianic ministry in Jerusalem, asked His disciples a question about their belief concerning His personal identity: “Who do you say that I am?” The answer came from Peter, declaring that Jesus was “the Messiah,”, or “the Son of the living God”. Various theological schools have given different interpretations to Peter’s answer, but all agree that the entire meaning of the Christian experience depended upon it. Indeed, whatever Jesus said, whatever He did, was in virtue of His messianic  ministry; whatever he experienced on the cross, whatever was the concrete reality of His resurrection – depended for its ultimate significance on His personal identity. This significance would be radically different whether He were Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, or an angel, or a passionless theophany, or a creature adopted by God, or one of the many created “intellects” who did not submit to fallenness, or whether, by meeting him, one met Yahweh Himself, so that Orthodox Jews would fall to the ground hearing His name pronounced.

In a sense, all the doctrinal debates of Christian history can be reduced to a debate on Christ’s identity. In the period between apostolic times and the high Middle Ages, various Christological positions were brilliantly expressed and passionately defended. However, if one envisages the fate of the historic catholic or orthodox Christian tradition, no Christological stand was as decisive, in terms of the nature of spirituality, as that of two eminent bishops of Alexandria in Egypt: Athanasius and Cyril.

The achievement of Athanasius (d. 373) is relatively well known. He led the struggle for the faith of        Nicaea which firmly proclaimed the divinity of Christ. Almost single handedly, he secured a Nicaean        triumph. But this victory was not only doctrinal, but also spiritual. The message of Athanasius was that only God Himself could properly be seen and adored as Savior. Thus, the divine identity of Jesus, equal to the Father, was not a matter of abstract or purely theological truth, but it indicated the condition of “mortal” humanity – which could neither save itself nor be saved by another creature.

I shall continue the argument of Athanasius in the next issue. It is critical, I believe, that we understand it.