The world had gone mad with a lie, and only one man seemed to notice or care. In the fourth century, a shadow fell over the professing church as the Arian heresy—the claim that Jesus Christ was a created being and not the eternal God—spread like a leaven through the halls of power. It was a “great falling away” in its own time, a cultural and political tide that swept up bishops and emperors alike. Standing against this deluge was a small man of North African descent, a “black dwarf” as his enemies called him, whose soul was forged in the fire of the Word. Athanasius of Alexandria knew that if the Savior was not God, then the cross was a failure and the hope of the Lord’s return was a hollow myth. He understood that “without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16), and upon this rock, he planted his feet.
Athanasius did not seek the path of least resistance or the “unity” of a compromised peace. He was a man of the “Ancient Paths,” one who recognized that the truth is not subject to a majority vote. Five times he was driven from his home and his flock, forced to hide in the tombs of the desert and among the monks of the wilderness while the world screamed for his head. When he was told that the whole world was against him, he replied with the holy audacity that defines the Remnant: “Then Athanasius is against the world.” He was a living embodiment of the command to “watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13). He saw through the sophisticated arguments of the heretics, identifying them as the “grievous wolves” Paul warned would enter in, not sparing the flock.
The name Athanasius, meaning “immortal,” was shared by others who stood in the gap when the foundations were shaken. History records Athanasius of Mount Athos, who in a later century sought the purity of a life separated unto God, refusing to allow the distractions of the world to dim his vision of the Holy. These men of the same name understood that to be “immortal” in the eyes of God is to die to the opinions of men. They lived as those who were “not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (Romans 1:16), even when that Gospel made them outcasts in their own land. Athanasius of Alexandria’s life was a forensic defense of the deity of the King, a man who lived as if he could hear the footsteps of the Lord at the door even while he was hiding in a dark cistern to escape the Emperor’s soldiers.