Athanasius of Alexandria

Athanasius was patriarch of Alexandria and the great champion of Christ’s divinity in the age of the Arian crisis. As a young deacon he had stood at the Council of Nicaea in 325; as bishop he spent the next half-century defending its creed — that the Son is of one being (homoousios) with the Father — against emperors and fellow bishops alike. His constancy cost him more than seventeen years in five exiles, and gave the Church the phrase Athanasius contra mundum, “Athanasius against the world.” His short book On the Incarnation remains a classic of Christian thought.