Read. Reflect. Write.

Last week my daughter felt compelled to reach out to my mother to ask her a few questions about her views on the Trinity. My mother is a Jehovah’s Witness, so she has different views on many things pertaining to Scripture and God. When my daughter reads her Bible and she comes across passages that demonstrate the deity of Christ and the Trinity, she highlights them and then asks me: “Dad, have you talked about this one with nana Bessie? (My mom’s name is Leslie, but my daughter has called her Bessie from the time she could first say her name). Or, she will look at me in bewilderment, wondering why my mom cannot see that the Bible teaches that Jesus is God. I used to have theological conversations with my mother, but they would quickly get heated, and it got to the point that we wouldn’t talk. So, I have kept a theological distance from her, which she also wanted. I always want the door to be open to my mom if/when the time comes, by the Lord’s grace, that she finally sees him as God’

Early Church Father, Athanasius (c. 296–373) Bishop of Alexandria (Egypt) was a giant figure in the advancement and preservation of orthodox Christianity. He labored more than anyone to bring about the triumph of the orthodox Nicene faith over Arianism, which promoted the view that Christ, though glorious and supreme, was a created being. Athanasius’ consistent tenacity in defending the full deity of Christ spanned forty-five years over which he was exiled five times. But his efforts kept the Orthodox faith from being eclipsed by Arian cohorts. As I have been reading through his works, in preparation for a class on the essence and attributes of God, I have been paying close attention the doctrine of divine simplicity. And so, the body of this essay will be an exposition of Athanasius’ views on simplicity from his treatise Contra Gentes ( Against the Heathens ). In this treatise, Athanasius establishes Christian theism against the pantheistic philosophies that the heathens held. Panthe