Athanasius of Alexandria by Peter Barnes 

The book is Athanasius of Alexandria by Peter Barnes. It was first published in 2019 by Christian Focus Publications. I read the 2019 paperback edition. I read it in December of 2023.  

The title is the subject of the biography, Athanasius. This is part of a series of books by the publisher on the early Christian church fathers.  

I read this book because I want to learn more about early Christianity and church history.  

This is a short biography. It touches on the highlights of Athanasius career mostly. I think all the books in this series are short and concise. They’re more of a springboard, a primer to prepare for further reading, which I plan to do.  

My main takeaway is that Athanasius approached these theological topics as a Christian first, and not a scholar or philosopher.  

“Athanasius considered himself inadequate as a theological writer,’ and unpracticed in speech. He never entered the fray as a detached academic philosopher. He was first and foremost a Christian, and his declared aim was that a right understanding of theology might strengthen faith in Christ, that you may have ever greater and stronger piety towards him.’” (p124) 

I appreciate that he was non-academic about it. He was genuinely striving to know God and believe in him rightly. That should be the aim for all of us. The point of theology is not about heady academic debate. It should be about knowing God and growing in our understanding of him. That’s what eternal life is. “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17: 3) 

This book made me think about how easy we have it today. You had to have real conviction back in the early days of Christianity. Not only conviction for being a Christian, but even in your theology and doctrine as well.  

Today many Christians believe very different things, but no one is getting exiled or burned at the stake for these differences. And I would bet that the vast majority of Christians cannot explain what they believe about the Trinity at all.  

I was surprised to learn that Athanasius placed more emphasis on Christ’s divine nature over his human nature, so much so that he believed that many of Jesus’ human traits were in some way fake or put on as a façade. He did not at all like the idea of Jesus not knowing the day or hour of the coming of the Son of Man in Matthew 24:36.  

Athanasius also believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. We have to remember that although faithful men of God, the early church fathers like Athanasius were not inspired. They did not believe perfectly. But then again neither did the inspired disciples.  

The only confusion from this book came from not knowing enough about church history. It was accessible and easy to read, but I wasn’t familiar with the historical context. Maybe a more thorough biography of Athanasius would help with that.  

I learned a lot. This was definitely a good starting point for further study and reading.  

I’d recommend this to church historians. This was  a short easy read. Christians are harmfully ignorant of history, especially their own Christian history.  

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Notable Quotables 

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What antagonized Diocletian about Christians was their exclusivism-their refusal to respect other people’s gods. (p26-27) 

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From 316 to 321, Constantine sought to coerce the Donatists. As A. H. M. Jones comments: ‘The Church had acquired a protector, but it had also acquired a master. ‘ (p32) 

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God is said to pre-exist the Son: ‘There was [a time] when he was not,” a view of Christ that Athanasius described as like “mud in a wallet.” 

Arius complained: “We are persecuted because we say that the Son had a beginning, but that God was without beginning.  The Son, he argued, is ‘a perfect creature of God, but not like other created objects.” The Word is subject to change; only by grace can He be called ‘God’.? Arius’s key text was the Septuagint version of Proverbs 8:22, The Lord created me at the beginning of his ways, for his works.’ To Athanasius, though, this verse described the creation of Jesus’s body.” One of the other texts that Arius pointed to was Colossians 1:15, which describes Christ as ‘the firstborn of all creation’. To Arius, this was understood not to mean that Christ is the ruler over all creation but was the first created being. To Athanasius, it was a title that indicated Christ’s universal authority. (p49) 

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his understanding of the Trinity was nuanced and balanced, without any trace of fanaticism. To Athanasius, ‘God is not as man, that we should dare to ask human questions about him.’ He knew that the finite stood before the infinite, and that ‘it is better in perplexity to be silent and believe, than to disbelieve on account of the perplexity.’ (p67) 

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Constantine died on 22 May 337, after receiving baptism from the Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia. The Eastern Church came to regard the first Christian emperor as a saint. Arius also died, about a year before the emperor. He had died suddenly, on the Sabbath (Saturday), the day before his proposed restoration ‘split into pieces in the public lavatory’ in Athanasius’s graphic but still elusive description. (p82) 

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Augustine of Hippo could write in this same spirit when he discussed the word ‘person’ (prosopon). Augustine stated that ‘when the question is asked, What three?, human language labours altogether under great poverty of speech. The answer, however, is given three “persons”, not that it might be (completely) spoken, but that it might not be left (wholly) unspoken.’ (p114) 

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Prospects seemed bright, but three days after Athanasius arrived back in Alexandria in February 364, Jovian accidentally died of asphyxiation and Valentinian 1 (364-375) assigned the East to his Arian brother Valens (364-378). Again, Athanasius was sentenced into exile, but the sentence could not immediately be carried out due to riots in Alexandria in favor of Athanasius. (p117) 

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Athanasius considered himself inadequate as a theological writer,’ and unpracticed in speech. He never entered the fray as a detached academic philosopher. He was first and foremost a Christian, and his declared aim was that a right understanding of theology might strengthen faith in Christ, that you may have ever greater and stronger piety towards him.’ (p124) 

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Athanasius asked: ‘Did he not hunger then?’ and he then proceeded to answer: Yes, he hungered because of the body’s nature. But he did not die of starvation because the Lord was wearing that body.’ There is a genuine tension here. The Bible presents Christ as having complete control over His death and resurrection (e.g., John 10:17-18), yet also describes His genuine agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:30-46). To Athanasius, the deeds of Christ on earth were more divine than human. Athanasius struggled with Jesus’s hunger, thirst, sleep, suffering, and death, and instead pointed to all the miracles. (p135) 

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In Athanasius’s view, Christ’s anguish and ignorance were, to some degree, feigned. The Son knows the Father and so knows the day of judgment, and ‘he, who speaks of the antecedents of the day, knows certainly the day also.’ There could be no real ignorance in Christ. (p136) 

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From John 19:26-27, Athanasius argued that Mary had no other children and so was perpetually a virgin, and from Luke 1:28-30 he “claimed that she was not familiar with the male voice. (p154)