Voices and influences
Athanasius of Alexandria
Driven out of his own city five times for refusing to call the Son of God a creature — one man against an empire that kept changing its mind.
Summary
This site quotes Athanasius of Alexandria 210 times across 34 books, and lists 3 works.
- Lived 296 to 373, Egyptian.
- Quoted here most in Luke: 36 of 210.
Athanasius of Alexandria
- Lived
- 296 to 373
- Nation
- Egyptian
- Tradition
- Early Church
- Body
- Coptic Orthodox
5 of 210 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Athanasius of Alexandria died in 373 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
“If any of our own people also inquire, not from love of debate but from love of learning, why he suffered death in no other way except on the cross, let him also be told that no other way than this was good for us…”
The rest of the quotation
and that it was well that the Lord suffered this for our sakes. For if he himself came to bear the curse laid upon us, how else could he have "become a curse" unless he received the death set for a curse? And that is the cross.
Deuteronomy 21:23 you must not leave the body on the tree overnight, but you must be sure to bury him that day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse. You must not defile the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance. BSB
“This statement [about fools] is directly followed by one pointing out that their actions correspond with their thoughts: ‘They are corrupt, and their behavior is evil.’”
Festal Letters 9:8, 12:6, 373
The rest of the quotation
The unrighteous person corrupts his body in every possible way: stealing, committing adultery, cursing, getting drunk, and doing similar things.… Count on it: those who are fools in their thoughts will do wicked deeds. As the Lord said [to the Pharisees], "How can you speak good things when you are evil?" And they truly were evil, because their thoughts were wicked.
Psalms 14:1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt; their acts are vile. There is no one who does good. BSB
“People who cling to evil thoughts do not stand for truth but for falsehood. They do not stand for righteousness but for iniquity, because their tongue learns to speak lies. They have done evil, never pausing so that they could repent.”
Festal Letters 9:4, 373
The rest of the quotation
Persevering with delight in wicked actions, they run to them without even looking back. They even tread underfoot the commandment about neighbors, and instead of loving them, they plot evil against them. As the ancient saint testifies, "Those who plot evil against me have spoken lies and plan treachery all day long."
Psalms 38:12 Those who seek my life lay snares; those who wish me harm speak destruction, plotting deceit all day long. BSB
“Even before he became man, he was King and Lord everlasting, being image and word of the Father.”
Psalms 45:6 Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever, and justice is the scepter of Your kingdom. BSB
“But since there are poorly instructed people who, while resisting the doctrine of a Son, think little of the words ‘from the womb before the morning star I begat you,’ as if this referred to his relation to Mary, alleging that he was born of…”
The rest of the quotation
Mary "before the morning star." Since to say that "womb" could not refer to his relation toward God, we must address the issue briefly here. If then, because the "womb" is human, therefore it is foreign to God; "heart" too clearly has a human meaning, for that which has heart has womb also.
Psalms 110:3–4 Your people shall be willing on Your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn, to You belongs the dew of Your youth. The LORD has sworn and will not change His mind: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Athanasius of Alexandria 210 times across 34 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Athanasius was born in Egypt about 296, in the last generation of Christians who grew up expecting to be arrested. He was a boy in Alexandria when the Great Persecution under Diocletian broke over the city in 303. He came out of it holding one conviction he never once softened: the church had not held out for a good man or a great teacher. It had held out for God himself, come in a body. He wrote that down while he was still young. On the Incarnation, probably finished before he was thirty, argues that only God could undo what death had done to the human race, and that God did it by taking flesh and dying in it. Its most quoted line is a trade: he became man that we might become God. Athanasius meant that God's own life is handed to people who could never manufacture it themselves. In 325 he traveled to the Council of Nicaea as a deacon, secretary to his bishop Alexander. He was under thirty and had no vote. The council had been called to settle the teaching of Arius, an Alexandrian presbyter who held that the Son of God was the first and highest of creatures — made, not eternal. There was, Arius said, when he was not. Nicaea answered with one word: homoousios, of one substance with the Father. Nearly every bishop present signed it. Then the empire changed its mind, and went on changing it for the next fifty years. Alexander died in 328 and Athanasius was elected bishop of Alexandria at about thirty-three. He held the see for forty-five years. He spent seventeen of them in exile. The first removal came in 335. A synod at Tyre, stacked with his opponents, tried him on a heap of charges — including the murder of a bishop named Arsenius, whose severed hand was said to be in Athanasius's possession for magic. Athanasius produced Arsenius alive, with both hands. He was condemned anyway, and Constantine sent him to Trier on the Rhine to keep the peace in Egypt. The second exile ran from 339 to 346, most of it in Rome, where Bishop Julius took his side and the Western church began to grasp what was at stake. The third was the hardest. In February 356, soldiers surrounded the church of Theonas during a night vigil with the congregation inside. Athanasius later wrote that he refused to leave until the people were dismissed; in the confusion the monks and clergy got him out through the crowd. He vanished into the Egyptian desert for six years while the emperor Constantius installed a rival bishop by force. The fourth exile came under Julian, who had abandoned Christianity; the fifth, four months of it, under the Arian emperor Valens in 365. Somewhere in those years the phrase attached itself to him: Athanasius contra mundum — Athanasius against the world. For long stretches it was close to literal. Councils at Rimini and Seleucia in 359 produced formulas that dropped the Nicene word, and Jerome later said the whole world groaned to find itself Arian. Athanasius did not bend, did not negotiate the term, and did not go quiet. He wrote from hiding. The Orations against the Arians and the Defense of His Flight were composed by a fugitive. The desert kept him alive, and he paid it back. Out of those hidden years came the Life of Antony, his portrait of the old hermit he had known personally. It was translated into Latin almost at once and became the most widely read book in the ancient church after the Bible — the book that carried monasticism into Europe and, as Augustine records, helped push him toward his own conversion at Milan. One more document belongs on his account. Every Easter the bishop of Alexandria sent out a festal letter fixing the date of the feast. The thirty-ninth of these, written in 367, lists the books the church receives as Scripture. Its New Testament is the twenty-seven books, no more and no fewer — the earliest surviving list that matches the one in a reader's hands today. He came home for the last time in 366 and died in his own bed on 2 May 373, still bishop, having outlasted four emperors and a rival for his chair. He never held political power. He was short, dark, and easy to caricature, and his enemies did. What he left was the church's confession that Jesus of Nazareth is God of God, not a splendid creature standing between us and the Father — and the plain demonstration that one man refusing to sign can outlast an empire. Sources: Athanasius, On the Incarnation; Athanasius, Life of Antony; Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (367); Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History; Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 4.
3 works
How to read this voice
On the Incarnation
318
17 quotations on this site
Four Discourses Against the Arians
360
6 quotations on this site
Life of Anthony
360
Not quoted on this site yet
Their whole shelf sits at Athanasius (CCEL) and New Advent - Athanasius.
210 quotations across 34 books
Where this voice is quoted
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
“[The Arians] whisper, "How can the Son be Word or the Word be God's image? For a human word is composed of syllables, and only signifies the speaker's will and then is over and done with."”
But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God—
“But this is God's kindness to man, that of whom He is Maker, of them according to grace He afterwards becomes Father also; becomes, that is, when men, His creatures, receive into their hearts, as the Apostle says, "the Spirit of His Son, crying, Abba…”
The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and…
“For the Word perceived that death was the only way that the corruption of people could be undone. However, it was impossible for the Word to suffer death, being immortal and Son of the Father.”
Jesus replied, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”
“Once the likeness painted on a panel has been effaced by stains from outside itself, the one whose likeness it is needs to come once more to enable the portrait to be renewed on the same wood.”
The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in His hands.
“This passage does not demonstrate that the Son, at one time, did not have these prerogatives [that were given him by the Father]. For he who is the only Word and Wisdom of the Father in essence has eternally what the Father has.”
But Jesus answered them, “To this very day My Father is at His work, and I too am working.”
“The word still shows [the Son's] eternal existence in the Father as the Word.”
nor does His word abide in you, because you do not believe the One He sent.
“It is most appropriate that he joins the "Word" to the "form" here to show that the Word of God is himself the image and expression and form of his Father.”
I am the bread of life.
“God by his living Word enlivens everyone and gives his Word as food and life to the saints, as the Lord declares, "I am the bread of life."”
“Never has anyone spoken like this man!” the officers answered.
“They perceived that this was not a mere man like themselves, but that this was he who gave water to the saints and that it was he who was announced by the prophet Isaiah.”
No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.
“To be troubled was proper to the flesh, and to have power to lay down his life and take it again when he wanted was no property of people but of the Word's power.”
If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken—
“Christ was not man [first], and then became God. Rather, he was [first] God, and then he became man, and that to deify us.”
But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me…
“By the works he did in the body [he] showed himself to be not man but God the Word. But these things are said about him because the actual body that ate, was born and suffered belonged to none other but the Lord.”
Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? If anyone walks in the daytime, he will not stumble, because he sees by the light of this world.
“Consider what I have said, that the Light is Christ. Everyone who will walk in his commandments will not be laid hold of by evil. These twelve hours that are in the day are the twelve apostles. The devil … is compared with the night.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies.
“I am the voice of life that wakens the dead. I am the good odor that takes away the foul odor. I am the voice of joy that takes away sorrow and grief.… I am the comfort of those who are in grief.”
So they took away the stone. Then Jesus lifted His eyes upward and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.
“They took, then, the stone there from the mouth of the tomb. The whole crowd marveled, witnessing the smell of pus of Lazarus, who was decayed.”
After Jesus had said this, He called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
“"Come forth." See, I am standing by you. I am your Lord. You are the work of my hands. Why have you not known me, because in the beginning I myself formed Adam from the earth and gave him breath?”
So they hosted a dinner for Jesus there. Martha served, and Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with Him.
“Martha herself was taking great care with the service and was ministering to Christ with all her heart.”
They took palm branches and went out to meet Him, shouting: “Hosanna!” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the King of Israel!”
“When the crowd took the palm branches from the date palms and went before Christ as he was about to go up to the feast, all of them bore witness that he had called Lazarus forth from the grave and had raised him from the…”
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw everyone to Myself.”
“For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. And so it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out his hands, that with the one he might draw the ancient people and…”
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I say to you, I do not speak on My own.
“Let us proceed then to consider the attributes of the Father, and we shall come to know whether this Image is really his. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator and Maker.”
the Spirit of truth. The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.
“The Lord called the Spirit "Spirit of truth" and "Paraclete," showing that the Triad is complete in him. In him the Word makes glorious the creation and, by bestowing on it divine life and sonship, draws it to the Father.”
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
“Christ is the true Son, and so when we receive the Spirit, we are made sons. For it says; 'you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading you back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adopted sonship' [Romans 8:15].”
Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.
“We are made sons through Christ by adoption and grace, partaking of his Spirit. For "as many as received him," he says, "to them he gave power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name."”
that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You.
“The Saviour, then, saying of us, "As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they too may be one in Us," does not signify that we were to have identity with Him; for this was shewn from the instance of Jonah; but…”
When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
“What is there to wonder at, what to disbelieve, if the Lord who gives the Spirit, is here said Himself to be anointed with the Spirit, at a time when, necessity requiring it, He did not refuse in respect of His manhood to call Himself…”