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The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the `arian Controversy'
Author(s): David M. Gwynn (Author)
- Publisher: OUP Oxford
- Publication Date: 8 Feb. 2007
- Language: English
- Print length: 296 pages
- ISBN-10: 0199205558
- ISBN-13: 9780199205554
Book Description
A historical and theological re-evaluation of the polemical writings of Athanasius of Alexandria (bishop 328-73), who would become known to later Christian generations as a saint and a champion of orthodoxy, and as the defender of the original Nicene Creed of 325 against the `Arian heresy'. For much of his own lifetime, however, Athanasius was an extremely controversial figure, and his writings, although highly influential on modern interpretations of the fourth-century Church and the so-called `Arian Controversy', display bias and distortion . David M. Gwynn examines Athanasius' polemic in detail, and in particular his construction of those he condemns as `Arian' as a single `heretical party', 'the Eusebians'. Gwynn argues that Athanasius' image of the Church polarized between his own `orthodoxy' and the `Arianism' of the `Eusebians' is a polemical construct, which has seriously impaired our knowledge of the development of Christianity in the crucial period in which the Later Roman Empire became ever increasingly a Christian empire.
