A Defense of the Nicene Definition: (De Decretis)

St. Athanasius of Alexandria (298-373), Confessor and Doctor of the Church, was one of the principal architects of the Nicene Creed. He persisted throughout his life, in and out of persecution, in explaining and defending Christ’s divinity and the teachings of the Nicene Council.

In his Defense of the Nicene Definition, Athanasius defends the specific doctrine of the Council of Nicaea that the Father and the Son are “one in substance.” Responding to Arian efforts to show from Scripture that Christ is a created being, Athanasius examines the witness of Isaiah and the Gospels, showing that Christ is an eternal person, because he possesses the same undivided divine substance as the Father.

This translation by Bl. John Henry Newman, one of England’s greatest modern theologians, combines the best of Newman’s extensive scholarship of the Greek language and Early Church and his high mastery of English prose. He provides a clear and accessible entryway into the thought of one of the Church’s greatest and holiest teachers.