WHY CHRIST MUST ALSO BE GOD: ATHANASIUS, BISHOP OF ALEXANDRIA

Abstract

Does it make sense to celebrate jubilees like Two thousand years of Christianity, Seventeen hundred years Edict of Milan or Five hundred years of Reformation in Europe and the World in times like ours, when Christian traditions are open to doubt and wide-spread suspicion, even in the formerly Christian Occident? No doubt, the critique must be taken seriously, if it proves to be valid. If not, Christians are free or, what is more, obliged to criticize the critics, e.g. as far as one of the principal items of the Christian tradition is concerned, the Christology, interpreted by one of the major Church Fathers, Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 294-373), who was convinced, that Jesus Christ must be no less than God himself (αὐτὸς ὁ θεός) in order to be our Saviour.