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By Archibald Robertson.
St Athanasius the Great Resources Online and in Print
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76 Pages (Part II)
Page 6
During the last decade of his life the attention of Athanasius was drawn to the questions raised by the Arian controversy as to the human nature of our Lord. The Arian doctrine on this subject was apparently as old as Lucian, but the whole subject received little or no attention in the earlier stages of the controversy, and it was only with the rise of the Anomoean school that the questions came into formal discussion. In the later letters of Athanasius we see the traces of wide-spread controversy on the matter (especially in that to Epictetus, No. 59), and Apollinarius, bishop of the Syrian Laodicea, and a former close friend of Athanasius, whose legates in 362 had joined in condemning the Arian Christology, broached a peculiar theory on the subject, viz., that while Christ took a human soul along with His Body, the Word took the place of the human spirit, pneuma (1 Thess. v. 23). The details of the system do not belong to our subject (an excellent sketch in Gwatkin's Arian Controversy, pp. 136-141); in fact it was two years after the death of Athanasius when Apollinarius definitely founded a sect by consecrating a schismatic bishop for the already distracted Church of Antioch. But Athanasius marked with alarm the tendency of his friend, and in the very last years of his life wrote a tract against his tenet in two short books, in which, as in writing against Marcellus and Photinus 15 years before, he refrains from mentioning Apollinarius by name. It may be observed that at the close of the second book he brings himself for the first time to censure by name 'him they call Photinus,' classing him along with Paul of Samosata.
Athanasius was active to the last; spiritually (we are not able to say physically) 'his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.' In his seventy-fifth year he entered (Ruf. ii. 3) upon the forty-sixth year of his episcopate. Feeling that his end was near, he followed the example of his revered predecessor Alexander, and named Peter as the man whom he judged fittest to succeed him; then 'on the seventh of Pachon [87] (May 2, 373) he departed this life in a wonderful manner.'
[87] Fest. Ind. xlv. The Hist. Aceph. give May 3; probably he died after midnight; but May 2 is kept as his feast by the Copts and by the Western Church.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athanasius/athanasius-life-arianism-2.asp?pg=6
