ABSTRACT
If it could be argued that Athanasius’s Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione is construed as a catechetical work that does not refer to any particular historical context,1 the same certainly could not be said of Athanasius’s subsequent fierce polemic on behalf of the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit. Here, Athanasius found himself in a life and death struggle with the “Ariomaniacs.” While we cannot linger too much on the sometimes tortuously complicated details of the Arian crisis, we must give some account, in admittedly broad strokes, of the historical background that enveloped Athanasius throughout his ecclesiastical career.
