SV - Atanasije Veliki
SV - Atanasije Veliki
SV - Atanasije Veliki
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The way of virtue is not measured by time - each day is a new beginning
And this tenet of (Antonys) was also truly wonderful, that neither the way of virtue nor separation from the world for its sake ought to be measured in terms of time spent, but by the aspirants desire and purposefulness. He, indeed, did not hold time passed in his memory, but day by day, as if making a beginning of his asceticism, increased his exertion for advance, saying continually to himself Pauls word about forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,2 and recalling also the passage in which Elijah the prophet says, the Lord ... lives, before whom I stand today.3 He observed that in saying today he was not counting the time passed, but as one always establishing a beginning, he endeavoured each day to present himself as the sort of person ready to appear before God - that is, pure of heart and prepared to obey his will, and no other. And he used to tell himself that from the career of the great Elijah, as from a mirror, the ascetic must always acquire knowledge of his own life.4
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Life of Antony 3-4 (Gregg, pp.32-3) Philippians 3:13 3 A paraphrase of 3 Kings 17:1 and 18:15 in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament 4 Life of Antony 7 (Gregg, pp.36-7)
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Luke 17:21 Life of Antony 20 (Gregg, p.46) 7 Life of Antony 72 (Gregg, pp.83-4) 8 Life of Antony 85 (Gregg, pp.92-3)
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DI 13 (Thomson, p.167) DI 9 (Thomson, p.155) 6 CA 2.68 (Anatolios, p.162) 7 CA 2.69 (Anatolios, p.162)
An act of reciprocity
He suffered to prepare freedom from suffering for those who suffer in him. He descended so that he may raise us up. He took upon himself the ordeal of being born that we might love him who is unbegotten; He went down to corruption that corruption might put on immortality. He became weak for us that we might rise with power. He descended to death that He might grant us immortality and give life to the dead. Finally he became human that we who die as human beings might live again and that death may no longer have sovereignty over us; for the apostolic word proclaims, Death shall not have dominion over us.8
The Incarnation was required to enable us to become children of God and to make humanity receptive of divinity
The love of God for humanity is such that by grace he becomes Father of those in relation to whom he had previously only been Maker. He becomes their Father when created human beings receive into their hearts the Spirit of the Son, crying out, Abba, Father (Gal 4:6), as the apostle says. These are the ones who, by receiving the Word, receive authority from him to become children of God (Jn 1:12). Being creatures by nature, they would not become sons except by receiving the Spirit of the natural and true Son. So it was in order to bring this about and to make humanity receptive of divinity that the Word became flesh (Jn 1:14).9
The Incarnation did not diminish the divinity of the Word but elevated humanity
For the flesh did not detract from the glory of the Word. Far from it! Rather, it is the flesh which was glorified by the Word. Nor was the Sons divinity diminished because he who is in the form of God received the form of a servant (cf. Phil 2:67). Rather, he became the Liberator of all flesh and of all creation (cf. Rom 8:21). And if God sent his Son born of a woman (cf. Gal 4:4), this is not a deed that brings shame but glory and great grace. He became a human being that we might be divinized in him; he came to be in a woman and was begotten of a virgin in order to transport our errant race into himself and in order that from then on we may become a holy race and partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), as the blessed Peter has written.10
Deification
He was made man that we might be made God.11
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Festal Letter 10.8 (Anatolios, p.70) CA 2.59 (Anatolios, p.153) 10 Letter to Adelphius 4 (Anatolios, p.238) 11 DI 54 (NPNF2, Vol.4, p.65b)
The Trinity
The incomprehensibility of God
The more I wanted to write, and forced myself to understand the divine nature of the Word, the further the knowledge drew away from me; and the more I thought I understood it, the more I knew I failed to do so. Furthermore, I could not express in writing what I seemed to understand; what I wrote was unequal to the foreshadowing of the truth that existed in my mind But lest I should cause you pain, or by my silence lead into godlessness the argumentative people who have consulted you, I forced myself to write the few things that I have now sent For although a perfect understanding of the truth is at present far away from us because of the infirmity of the flesh, yet it is possible, as the Preacher himself has said, to know the madness of the godless and, having found it, to say that it is more bitter than death (Eccles. 7:26) For though it is impossible to comprehend what God is, yet it is possible to say what he is not.1
The unity of action of the three persons indicates their shared nature
[Let us] consider the tradition and teaching and faith of the Catholic Church from the beginning, that which the Lord has given, the apostles preached, and the fathers guarded The Trinity is holy and perfect, confessed as God in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, having nothing foreign or extrinsic mingled with it, nor compounded of creator and created, but is wholly Creator and Maker. It is identical with itself and indivisible in nature, and its activity is one. For the Father does all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit. Thus the oneness of the Holy Trinity is preserved and thus is the one God who is over all and through all and in all (Eph 4:6) preached in the Church over all, as Father, who is beginning and fountain; through all, through the Son; and in all in the Holy Spirit.3
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First Letter to the Monks (Barnard, pp.10-11) ad Serap. 1.24 (Anatolios, p.223) 3 ad Serap. 1.28 (Anatolios, p.227)
References
Texts by St Athanasius
Abbreviation ad Serap. CA CG DI Full title Epistulae ad Serapion Contra Arianos Contra Gentes De Incarnatione English Letters to Serapion (Orations) against the Arians Against the Pagans On the Incarnation
Bibliography
K. Anatolios, Athanasius (London: Routledge, 2004) L.W. Barnard (trans), The Monastic Letters of Saint Athanasius the Great, (Oxford: SLG Press, 1994) R.C. Gregg (trans), The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus (New York: Paulist Press, 1980) R. W. Thomson (trans), Athanasius: Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) NPNF2 = The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series (P. Schaff & H. Wace, eds., 1890 ff.)