A Reader’s Guide to Athanasius of Alexandria

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. PSALM 119:105

Athanasius wrote a great deal, most of it in the heat of controversy: treatises, defences, histories, letters. All of it is in the public domain in its original Greek, and much is freely available in older English, above all in the fourth volume of the second series of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (1892), edited by Archibald Robertson. What follows is a short map.

Begin here

On the Incarnation. Begin here, and come back here. Fifty-seven short sections on why the Word became man, written in a clear, unhurried style. Robertson’s translation is in the Ochorus library. C. S. Lewis wrote an introduction to a 1944 translation, the essay that urges readers to read old books; it is worth reading for its own sake. John Behr’s modern translation (2011) is careful and readable.

The Life of Antony. The story of the Egyptian hermit, told by a man who knew him. It is in the Ochorus library in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers translation. Read it for Antony’s address to the monks and his counsels on prayer, discernment and humility; read its wonders with discernment. Robert C. Gregg’s translation (1980) sets it beside the Letter to Marcellinus.

The defence of the faith

Against the Heathen. The first half of the two-part work of which On the Incarnation is the second: an answer to idolatry and an argument for the one God. Read it after On the Incarnation.

Orations against the Arians. His longest and most important theological work, several discourses answering the Arian case text by text. Demanding, but the place to see how he read the hard sayings about Christ.

On the Decrees of the Nicene Synod. His defence of the council’s language, including the word homoousios. Shorter and more direct than the Orations.

Letters to Serapion. His defence of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, written from exile. Not in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers; C. R. B. Shapland’s translation (1951) is the classic English version.

Letters and histories

The Festal Letters. Annual Easter letters to the churches of Egypt. The thirty-ninth, of 367, contains his list of the books of Scripture.

The Letter to Marcellinus. A short, warm guide to praying the Psalms. The best thing he wrote for ordinary devotion.

History of the Arians, Apology against the Arians and Defence of his Flight. His own accounts of his struggles and exiles, written to justify himself. Vivid and valuable, but read them as the pleadings of one side.

About Athanasius

Gregory of Nazianzus preached an oration in his praise within a few years of his death; it is the portrait of a hero by a younger admirer. Khaled Anatolios’s Athanasius (2004) is a clear introduction with translated selections. Timothy D. Barnes’s Athanasius and Constantius (1993) is a searching modern history of his career, not afraid of the hard questions about his conduct. David Brakke’s Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (1995) studies his relations with the monks.

Approach with care

His polemical writings against the Arians, and the sections of On the Incarnation that argue against the Jews, should be read with the cautions raised in this book in mind: gratefully for their truth, sorrowfully for their tone. The Life of Antony’s demonology and its ascetic ideal should be weighed by Scripture, not simply copied.

Three counsels for reading him

Read him slowly. His arguments are simple, but they build, and the force of On the Incarnation lies in following them step by step.

Read him with the Bible open. He would insist on it. He called his own book a sketch and sent his reader to the Scriptures to fill it in.

Read him as worship. Behind every argument is a man astonished that the Word became flesh. Let his astonishment become yours, and let it lead you to the One he spent his life defending.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. JOHN 3:16