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After Diocletian’s persecution of Christians, many of the later Roman emperors, including Constantine, saw Christianity as an ally instead of an enemy. In 313, when the only other emperor was Licinius, Constantine arranged an agreement between the two of them so that Christianity was no longer an illegal religion. This was known as the Edict of Milan. Later, in 323 when Constantine defeated Licinius to become the sole emperor, he made Christianity the preferred religion (which means he still allowed other religions, including emperor worship).
Contrary to the ease and delight I found in reading Athanasius, I found St. Gregory of Nazianzus’ On God and Christ to be very difficult to get through and had to put the book down numerous times in order to take mental breaks. Although it has been said that Gregory is a prose artist in the original Greek, the English translation loses this appeal and thrusts the work into the realm of virtual incomprehensibility.
Reading St. Athanasius’s On the Incarnation was my first experience with any of the early church fathers. I found this exercise both fun and interesting. As a Christian, and as any “-an” for that matter, it is important to know the history of the faith (or the history of the United States, if one is an Americ”-an”). Through understanding the history of the early church, we can not only gain a better theological understanding but also, as apologetics students, an understanding of the various heresies these founders were confronting and how they overcame them. Responses to early heresies should be on every apologist’s bookshelf as the same heresies keep coming back in different forms. For example, today’s Jehovah’s Witness heresy is a form of Arianism. Early responses to the Arian heresy by church fathers such as Athanasius are critical tools for confronting this cult today.
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