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
When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and gripped with fear. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard.
“(in vita Anton.) Whereby it is not difficult to discern between good and bad spirits, for if joy has succeeded to fear, we may know that relief has come from God, because the peace of the soul is a sign of the Divine Presence; but…”
“How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
“(Ep. ad Epictetum.) For we confess that which then was taken up from Mary to be of the nature of man and a most real body, the very same also according to nature with our own body.”
For He has looked with favor on the humble state of His servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed.
“For if as the Prophet says, Blessed are they who have seed in Sion, and kinsfolk in Jerusalem, (Isa. 31:9. apud LXX.)”
The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, which was just as the angel had told them.
“(non occ.) But every one rejoiced in the nativity of Christ, not with human feelings, as men are wont to rejoice when a son is born, but at the presence of Christ and the lustre of the Divine light.”
When the eight days until His circumcision had passed, He was named Jesus, the name the angel had given Him before He had been conceived.
“(De Sabbato et Circumcisione.) For circumcision expressed nothing else, but the stripping off of the old birth, seeing that part was circumcised which caused the birth of the body.”
And when the time of purification according to the Law of Moses was complete, His parents brought Him to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord
“But when was the Lord hid from His Father's eye, that He should not be seen by Him, or what place is excepted from His dominion, that by remaining there He should be separate from His Father, unless brought to Jerusalem and introduced into the…”
and to offer the sacrifice specified in the Law of the Lord: “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
“(ubi sup.) He ordered two things to be offered, because as man consists of both body and soul, the Lord requires a double return from us, chastity and meekness, not only of the body, but also of the soul.”
For my eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the sight of all people,
“(non occ.) That is to say, the salvation wrought by Christ for the whole world. How then was it said above that he was watching for the consolation of Israel, but because he truly perceived in the spirit that consolation would be to Israel at…”
a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Your people Israel.”
“(non occ.) For the Gentiles before the coming of Christ were lying in the deepest darkness, being without the knowledge of God.”
And the Child grew and became strong. He was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.
“(lib. de Incarn. Christi cont. Apollin.) But if as some say the flesh was changed into a Divine nature, how did it derive growth? for to attribute growth to an uncreated substance is impious.”
and the Holy Spirit descended on Him in a bodily form like a dove.
“(De Dec. Nic. Syn.) The holy Scriptures by the name of Son set forth two meanings; one similar to that spoken of in the Gospel, He gave to them power that they should become the sons of God; another according to which Isaac is the…”
“The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor.
“(Orat. 2. cont. Arian.) He says this to explain to us the cause of the revelation made to the world, and of His taking upon Him the human nature.”
“Ha! What do You want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!”
“(ad Epise. Æg. et Lib.) He spoke of Him not as a Holy One of God, as if He were like to the other saints, but as being in a remarkable manner the Holy One, with the addition of the article.”
Demons also came out of many people, shouting, “You are the Son of God!”
“Even when the demons spoke the truth, for they spoke the truth when they said, "Thou are the Son of God," the Lord himself silenced them and forbade them to speak.”
While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy.
“(Ep. ad Adelph. 3.) Now the leper worshipped the Lord God in His bodily form, and thought not the Word of God to be a creature because of His flesh, nor because He was the Word did he think lightly of the flesh which He…”
Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
“(Orat. 3. cont. Arian.) That is to say, that we beholding His mercies, what good things we do should do them not with regard to men, but to Him, that we may obtain our rewards from God, not from men.”
But Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus, “Do not be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.”
“(Orat. in Pass. et Crucem. Dom. 4.) Our Lord requires faith from those who invoke Him, not because He needs the assistance of others, (for He is both the Lord and Giver of faith,) but not to seem to bestow His gifts according to His…”
All things have been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the…
“1. This text refers not to the eternal Word but to the Incarnate. And from not perceiving this they of the sect of Arius, Eusebius and his fellows, indulge impiety against the Lord.”
So if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who…
“(Dial. 1. de Trin.) Now unless the Holy Spirit were of the substance of God, Who alone is good, He would by no means be called good, since our Lord refused to be called good, inasmuch as He was made man.”
But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
“(Orat. 2. con. Arian.) But at this time our Lord does not hesitate because of His humanity to speak of Himself as inferior to the Holy Spirit, saying, that He cast out devils by Him, as though the human nature was not sufficient for the…”
As a result, this generation will be charged with the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the foundation of the world,
“(Apol. 1. de fuga sua.) Now if they kill, the death of the slain will cry out the louder against them; if they pursue, they send forth memorials of their iniquity, for flight makes the pursuit of the sufferers to redound to the great disgrace…”
Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
“(pluris estis) Now I ask the Arians, if God, as if disdaining to make all other things, made only His Son, but deputed all things to His Son; how is it that He extends His providence even to such trifling things as our hair, and…”
And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
“(Ep. 4. ad Serap.) The ancients indeed, the learned Origen and the great Theognostus, describe this to be the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, when they who have been counted worthy of the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, fall back into sin.”
Then I will say to myself, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take it easy. Eat, drink, and be merry!”’
“(non occ.) Now if any one lives so as to die daily, seeing that our life is naturally uncertain, he will not sin, for the greater fear destroys very much pleasure, but the rich man on the contrary, promising to himself length of life, secks…”
When one of those reclining with Him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is everyone who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.”
“Oh, brothers and sisters, what a banquet that is! How great is the harmony and joy of those who eat at this heavenly table! They enjoy food that produces everlasting life, not that ordinary food which passes right on through the body.”