Pope of Alexandria from 328 to 373 (296–373)
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 297 – 373) was the twentieth bishop of Alexandria. He who was a Christian theologian, a Church Father, a Doctor of the Church for Roman Catholics, the chief defender of Trinitarianism against Arianism, and a noted Egyptian leader of the fourth century.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Native Name:
Ἀθανάσιος
Alternative Names:
Athanasius Alexandrinus
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Sint Atanaze d’ Alegzandreye
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Saint Athanasius
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Athanasius
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Athanasios of Alexandria
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Athanasius I of Alexandria
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Athanasius the Great
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Athanasius the Confessor
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Athanasius the Apostolic
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Athanasius Contra Mundum
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Athanasias
From Wikidata (CC0)
For what more is there for him whom they expect to do, when he has come? To call the heathen? But they are called already. To make prophecy, and king, and vision to cease? This too has already come to pass. To expose the godlessness of idolatry? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? He is already destroyed. 7. What then has not come to pass, that the Christ must do? What is left unfulfilled, that the Jews should now disbelieve with impunity? For if, I say — which is just what we actually see — there is no longer king nor prophet nor Jerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them, but even the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God, and Gentiles, leaving their godlessness, are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham, through the Word, even our Lord Jesus
firstly, all being held to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone (inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lord's body, and had no longer holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, secondly, whereas men had turned toward corruption, He might turn them again toward incorruption, and quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like straw from the fire. 9.
He gives them a share in His own Image, our Lord Jesus Christ, and makes them after His own Image and after His likeness: so that by such grace perceiving the Image, that is, the Word of the Father, they may be able through Him to get an idea of the Father, and knowing their Maker, live the happy and truly blessed life.
But when the human being had once been made, and necessity required the healing, not for the things that were not, but for the things that had come to be, it followed that the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created, to heal what existed. He became a human being for this, and used his body as a human instrument. For if it was not right to happen in this way, how should the Word appear, when he wished to use an instrument? Or whence was he to take it, if not from those who already existed and had need of his divinity through one like [themselves]? For it was not non-existent things that needed salvation, so that a command alone would have sufficed, but the human being, already in existence, who was corrupted and perishing. Whence it was reasonable and good that the Word should use a human instrument and unfold himself to all things.
the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation; for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.
His approach to the Miracles is badly needed today, for it is the final answer to those who object to them as “arbitrary and meaningless violations of the laws of Nature.” They are here shown to be rather the retelling in capital letters of the same message which Nature writes in her crabbed cursive hand; the very operations one would expect of Him who was so full of life that when He wished to die He had to “borrow death from others.” The