Saint Athanasios the Great and Our Times
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
(Transcribed sermon delivered at the Sacred Metropolitan Church of Saint Athanasios in Ioannina, 18 January 2017)
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
(Transcribed sermon delivered at the Sacred Metropolitan Church of Saint Athanasios in Ioannina, 18 January 2017)
Your Eminence Metropolitan of Ioannina, dear brother Maximos, and my beloved brothers,
Today we celebrate two great Fathers of our Church, and indeed in this very Metropolitan Church of Ioannina which bears the name of one of these two great Fathers and Ecumenical Teachers of our Church, namely Saint Athanasios. Of course, we also celebrate the memory of Saint Cyril. Both were Patriarchs of Alexandria — great Fathers of our Church and great confessors of the faith, great theologians and at the same time great Fathers. For we know that in the Orthodox Church theology is very closely bound to pastoral care and the patristic tradition. That is, one who is a theologian, in the patristic sense, is also a spiritual father, meaning that he guides his spiritual children on the path of salvation. And one who is a spiritual father, in order to guide his spiritual children, must also be a theologian. Thus theology is inseparably linked with spiritual fatherhood.
Yesterday your Eminence, Metropolitan of Ioannina Maximos, analyzed in an excellent manner the historical and dogmatic context in which these two great luminaries and Fathers of our Church, Saint Athanasios the Great and Saint Cyril, both Archbishops and Patriarchs of Alexandria, lived and worked.
With your love’s permission, and in obedience to your beloved shepherd, I would like to dwell more on our great Father Saint Athanasios, whose memory the Church celebrates today and whom this wonderful and prayerful Metropolitan Church of Ioannina honors. Saint Athanasios the Great was a towering patristic figure. One need only consider that all the later great Fathers — the so-called Cappadocian Fathers, such as Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory the Theologian, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and Saint Amphilochios of Iconium — regarded him as their elder in matters of theology, to understand the immense stature of this man. The Fathers respected him and held him as a model of life and theology.
1. The Theological Work of Saint Athanasios the Great
I would like to emphasize two points from the theological work of this great Father, Saint Athanasios the Great.
The first point is that he expressed an empirical theology, not a speculative theology, not a theology related to philosophy, not an intellectual theology — a construct of human rational processing — but an empirical theology. In his time there were indeed two theological currents. One was philosophical, and those who belonged to it theologized on the basis of philosophy, especially Aristotelian philosophy. The other was ascetical, experiential, patristic, expressed by the desert hermits, among whom were Saint Anthony the Great and, of course, Saint Athanasios the Great.
It is well known that the heresy of Arius, which arose in Alexandria, originated in Syria, because there a theology developed that was based on Aristotelian philosophy. Paul of Samosata, Lucian, and Arius — who expressed their views — attempted to understand rationally who Christ is as God, what it means that He is the Second Person of the All-Holy Trinity. They had Aristotelian philosophy in mind and debated with Aristotelian philosophers.
These were not people who said foolish things, as unfortunately many heretics do today, who fall into heresy through absurdities. Rather, they fell into heresy through philosophy. They adopted certain principles from Aristotelian philosophy, such as the principle that “whatever is from nature exists by necessity,” that is, everything that comes from nature is necessary and therefore lacks freedom. Because of this, Paul of Samosata, Lucian, and especially their disciple Arius concluded that since everything from nature is by necessity, the Son came from the Father not by nature but by will. The Father “willed” to beget the Son.
But we know that there is a clear distinction between what is by nature and what is by will. What is by nature is consubstantial and has always existed with the Father — there was never a time when it did not exist — whereas what is by will implies that the Father might not have willed it, and in any case there was a time when it did not exist and was created. Thus they concluded that the Son and Word of God is a creature, the first creature of creation.
The Fathers clarified these matters. Saint Athanasios was the first to confront this and declared that in the Christian and theological tradition it does not hold true that “whatever is by nature is by necessity.” Therefore the Son was begotten from the nature of the Father before all ages. There was no time when He did not exist. In reality, the Father communicated His nature — His essence — to the Son through begetting. Likewise, the Father communicated His nature — His essence — to the Holy Spirit through procession. Thus the Aristotelian principle does not apply, and consequently the Son is not a product of the divine will. The world was created by the will of God and is therefore created. For this reason Christ, as Son and Word of God, is uncreated and consubstantial with the Father.
That is why the term consubstantial (homoousios) prevailed at the First Ecumenical Synod, rather than any other term. This arose from experience. Why? Because the Fathers were not philosophizing, as I said earlier, but theologizing from their experience of the vision of God. When one reaches such a spiritual state — theoria, as we see in Saint Gregory the Theologian and later in Saint Symeon the New Theologian and other Fathers — one sees God as Light, and sees three Lights, one within the other. They expressed this experience using the terminology of their time.
Thus, in the era of Saint Athanasios there were two theological currents: the philosophical, represented by theologians who were otherwise Christians but lacked spiritual experience of God and reasoned logically, sometimes using Aristotelian philosophy, sometimes Platonic or Neoplatonic philosophy; and the empirical, represented by those who theologized from lived experience.
When we read the works of Saint Athanasios the Great, we see that he theologized from experience — the experience of the desert ascetics. He knew Saint Anthony the Great personally, visited him, received guidance from him, and felt ineffable joy and blessing in the desert, even pouring water so that Saint Anthony could wash his feet, and treasuring his sheepskin cloak as a precious relic. He also wrote the Life of Saint Anthony. Saint Anthony, for his part, loved Saint Athanasios deeply.
Saint Athanasius himself had spiritual experiences. When he theologized, he did not do so on the basis of Aristotle, but on the basis of the Prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles. If one carefully studies how he confronts Arius, one sees that he does not confront him philosophically, but through the experience of the God-seeing saints. That is why he used the words of Christ, the Prophets, and the Apostles, as well as his own personal experience. For it is not easy to read and interpret the Prophets and the Apostles unless one also possesses spiritual interpretive keys.
Just as one needs the proper key to open a house, so one needs the proper interpretive key to understand the writings of the Fathers — and that key is experience. One saint understands another saint, just as one scientist understands another scientist. A good physician can understand another good physician. And this happens through experimentation — that is, experience.
This is what Saint Gregory Palamas later expressed: “This is saving perfection in knowledge and dogma: to think in the same way as the prophets, apostles, and fathers, through whom the Holy Spirit has borne witness, speaking about God and His creatures.” And again Saint Gregory Palamas says that saints are “those who suffer theosis and do not merely speculate.” That is, saints experience deification; they participate in God, and do not merely reason intellectually. Through the purification of the heart — “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” — and the illumination of the nous, they experience God, and then, with the power of reason, they record this experience.
Thus Saint Athanasios the Great was an empirical theologian, grounded in the experiences of the Prophets, Apostles, and Fathers, which he interpreted through his own experience. For this reason he is a true successor of these great spiritual teachers and Fathers.
The second point is that he possessed theological discernment; he was not a fanatic in the way we understand fanaticism today. He was a confessor of the faith without fanaticism. He knew how to deal with people who did not accept the decision of the First Ecumenical Synod out of sincere misunderstanding.
We often place great emphasis on the presence of Saint Athanasios at the First Ecumenical Synod in Nicaea in 325 AD — and rightly so — but his greatness shone especially after the Synod. It was difficult for philosophically minded Arians to accept the Synod’s decisions. About fifty-five years passed, with many theological struggles, until the Second Ecumenical Synod in 381 AD affirmed the First Synod and completed the Creed. Further struggles followed concerning Christological issues in later Ecumenical Synods.
The period between the First and Second Ecumenical Synods was extremely critical for the Church of Christ. Saint Athanasios labored first, followed by the Cappadocian Fathers, to stabilize this dogma. He struggled, but with discernment, wisdom, and prudence — not fanaticism.
When we read his letters and the decisions of the local synods he guided, we see that there were two groups that rejected the decisions of the First Ecumenical Synod. One was the radical Arians, the so-called Anomoeans, who rejected the Synod’s declaration that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, insisting that He was of a different essence. The other group was the moderate Arians, the so-called Homoiousians, who rejected the extreme Arian view but also could not accept the term homoousios, since it was not a biblical term and seemed to come from philosophy. They said instead that the Son was homoiousios — of similar essence — to the Father.
Saint Athanasios understood that some of these moderate theologians could remain in the Church through dialogue marked by discernment and wisdom. Thus he wrote letters, arguing that even if one could not accept the exact wording, one should at least accept the meaning, while anathematizing those condemned by the Synod. He distinguished between nature and words, writing: “It is not words that abolish nature, but rather nature that draws words to itself and transforms them.” That is, words do not precede essence; essence precedes words.
For this reason, the Fathers of the Second Ecumenical Synod did not use the term homoousios for the Holy Spirit, so as not to provoke new controversies, but instead expressed the Spirit’s equality and consubstantiality with other terms: “the Lord, the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.”
Later the Fathers clarified that uncreated words differ from created words, concepts, and images. When the Apostle Paul was caught up to the third heaven, he heard “ineffable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter” (2 Cor. 12:4). These ineffable words are the experience of God, the revelatory experience. When one partakes of the uncreated Grace of God beyond mind and sense, one sees and participates, rather than speculates. Later, one uses created words, concepts, and images to convey what was seen. As Saint Maximus the Confessor clearly stated: “The mind sees realities, and the trained word brings what was seen before the eyes.”
2. Contemporary Reality
What do all these things mean, my beloved brethren? They mean that Saint Athanasios the Great was a great Father of our Church, endowed with spiritual experience and deep respect for the experience of other God-seeing saints. His theology was the fruit of the vision of God. At the same time, he was not a fanatic. When he saw that truth could be reached, he was willing to make concessions — not in faith, but in names, words, and terms — in order to preserve the unity of the Church. This principle was later followed by Saint Basil the Great and Saint Gregory the Theologian, who preserved the Church’s unity.
All this must be applied to our own time, because similar problems exist today. Just as Saint Athanasios engaged in theological dialogue for forty to forty-five years after the First Ecumenical Synod, striving both to secure acceptance of its decision and to find ways for moderate theologians troubled by the term homoousios to remain in the Church, so today we also need discernment, sobriety, and unwavering faith in the truth.
Theological discussion conducted with sobriety and fidelity to tradition does not harm the Church; it benefits her. Today, as then, there are two major theological currents.
The first seeks to understand faith and God through scholastic theology, modern theology, and various philosophical perspectives, leading to a secularized faith. According to this view, the patristic era ended in the eighth century, and scholastic theology — or later Russian theology — is considered superior. This approach dominates much of Europe today, drawing from existential philosophy and psychology, and revisiting issues long settled by the Ecumenical Synods. The real tragedy is not Western theology itself, but that Orthodox hierarchs and theologians adopt this Western framework and reopen theological questions already resolved by the Fathers.
The second current is rooted in the hesychastic and Philokalic tradition of the Church — the true method of knowing God — confirmed synodally during the time of Saint Gregory Palamas. If we truly wish to honor our saints — Saint Athanasios, Saint Cyril, and all the saints — we must remain faithful to their teaching and the lived experience of the Church, as expressed in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy. We theologize “according to the God-inspired theology of the saints and the pious mind of the Church.”
We remain within a theology that is the fruit of experience, not speculation — a theology that heals people, transforms self-love into love of God and love of neighbor, and leads to participation in the uncreated Light, to deification. This theology is expressed in the hymns of the Church, in the prayers of the Holy Mysteries, and in the teaching of the Holy Fathers.
If we wish to be disciples and imitators of the Holy Fathers, especially of Saint Athanasios the Great whom we celebrate today, we must remain within this living tradition of the Church. We must express, live, and confess the empirical theology of the Holy Fathers, not the speculative theology of philosophical theologians. We must be “those who suffer deification and do not merely speculate.” Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
