Athanasius

Athanasius was a deacon at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and bishop of Alexandria for forty-five years, of which seventeen were spent in five exiles, as emperors and councils turned for and against the creed he defended. Against Arius he insisted that the Son is of one being with the Father, since only God could save; the phrase Athanasius against the world dates from these years. On the Incarnation, written in his twenties, is the classic statement of why God became man, and C. S. Lewis’s preface to it is the reason many modern readers begin here. He also wrote the Life of Antony that started monasticism in the West.