The Eusebians The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the `Arian Controversy'

In this study, David M. Gwynn offers a historical and theological re-evaluation of the polemical writings of Athanasius of Alexandria (bishop 328-73), whose works have exerted a vast influence upon modern interpretations of the fourth-century Church, and in particular of the so-called 'Arian Controversy'. Athanasius would become known to later Christian generations as the champion of Nicene orthodoxy against the 'Arian heresy', but for much of his own lifetime he was a figure of great controversy. Gwynn examines in detail the methodology of his polemic, and focuses in particular upon the construction and evolution of Athanasius' presentation of his opponents as a single Arian party, hoi peri Eusebion ('the ones around Eusebius', or 'the Eusebians'). These are the men, named after their alleged leader Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, whom Athanasius holds responsible for his own condemnation at the Council of Tyre in 335, and whom from that date onwards he accuses of the manipulation of episcopal and imperial politics to persecute the 'orthodox' and to impose their 'heresy' upon the Church. An examination of Athanasius' polemic and of the small amount of surviving external evidence against which that polemic can be compared reveals that the 'Eusebians' who play so prominent a role in modern scholarly accounts of the Arian Controversy were in fact neither a party nor Arian. On the contrary, Athanasius' image of a fourth-century Church polarized between his own orthodoxy and the Arianism of the Eusebians is a polemical construct. The distortions inherent within that construct must be recognized if we are to fully understand the Church in the fourth century, its controversies, and the individuals who shaped this crucial formative period in the history of Christianity and the Later Roman Empire, not least Athanasius himself. Book jacket.

David M. Gwynn is Junior Research Fellow, Christ Church, Oxford.