Athanasius: Select Works and Letters
9781465541208
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In preparing the present volume the Editor has aimed at providing the English reader with the most complete apparatus for the study of Athanasius, his life, and his theological influence, which could be brought within the compass of a single volume of the ‘Nicene and Post-Nicene Library.’ The volume contains all the most important treatises of Athanasius (in as nearly as possible their exact chronological order), with the exception of the ad Serapionem, the contra Apollinarium, the ad Marcellinum, and the exegetical remains. On these and other treatises omitted from the present collection the reader is referred to the Prolegomena, ch. iii. A great part of the volume, including the bulk of the historical and anti-Arian works, and the Festal Letters, consists of a revision of translations and notes comprised in the Oxford Library of the Fathers. The notes to all, and the translation of most, of the works in question, excepting the Festal Letters, were prepared for that series by Mr. (since Cardinal) Newman. It was at first intended to incorporate his work without any change; but as the volume began to take shape this intention was inevitably to some extent modified; moreover, the limits of space demanded the sacrifice of some of the less important matter. The principles upon which the necessary changes have been made will be found stated on pp. 304, 305, 450. What is there said applies also to the de Decretis and Letter of Eusebius, as well as to the notes to the historical pieces; it may be added that the translation of the ‘Fourth Discourse’ has been very carefully revised, in order to secure the utmost closeness to the somewhat difficult original. In all the new translations, as well as in the revision of earlier work, the aim has been to secure the strictest fidelity compatible with clearness. The easy assumption that distinctions of tenses, constructions, amp;c., count for little or nothing in patristic Greek has been steadily resisted. Doubtless there are passages where the distinction, for example, of aorist and perfect, seems to fade away; but generally speaking, Athanasius is fully sensitive to this and other points of grammar. The incorporation in this volume of so much of the ample patristic learning of Cardinal Newman has inevitably involved some sacrifice of uniformity. To provide the new matter with illustrative notes on anything like the same scale, even had it been within the present editor’s power, would have involved the crowding out of many works which the reader will certainly prefer to have before him. Again, many opinions are expressed by Cardinal Newman which the present editor is unable to accept. It may not be invidious to specify as an example the many cases in which the notes enforce views of Church authority, especially of papal authority, or again of the justifiableness of religious persecution, which appear to be at any rate foreign to the mind of Athanasius; or the tacit assumption that the men of the fourth century can be divided by a broad and fast line into orthodox and heretical, and that while everything may be believed to the discredit of the latter, the former were at once uniform in their convictions and consistently right in practice. Such an assumption operates with special injustice against men like Eusebius, whose position does not fall in with so summary a classification. But it has been thought better to leave the notes in nearly all such cases as they stand, only very rarely inserting a reference or observation to call attention to another aspect of the case. And in no instance has the editor forgotten the respect due to the theological learning and personal greatness of Cardinal Newman, or to his peculiar eminence as a religious thinker.
