Athanasius, St

Athanasius, St (c.296–373), Bp. of Alexandria. He was secretary to Alexander, Bp. of Alexandria, and accompanied him to the Council of Nicaea (325), succeeding him as bishop in 328. He incurred the enmity of the powerful Arianizing party, who secured his exile from Alexandria on a number of occasions between 336 and 366.

In his De Incarnatione he expounds how God the Word (Logos), by His union with mankind, restored to fallen man the image of God, and by His death and resurrection overcame death. Many scholars date this work before c.318; others place it some 15–20 years later. As bishop Athanasius was the greatest and most consistent theological opponent of Arianism. Between 339 and 359 he wrote a series of works in defence of the true Divinity of the Son. From c.361 he worked to reconcile the Semiarian party to the Nicene term ‘homoousios’ (‘of one substance’). He also argued for the Divinity of the Holy Spirit in his Epistles to Serapion. As the friend of Pachomius and Serapion, and closely linked with (perhaps the biographer of) Antony, he aided the ascetic movement in Egypt and was the first to introduce knowledge of monasticism to the West. Feast day, 2 May.