Athanasius was born in Egypt to a Christian family sometime around 295 AD. He was given a good education by his parents, and in his youth, the local bishop, recognizing his talents, took him on as his aide. As a result he would get the chance to be present at Nicaea for the first ecumenical council of the church.
These works cover the full span of his life, beginning before 319 AD, when he wrote his famous, 'On the Incarnation of the Word'. At the time there were a number of different understandings of Christ circulating throughout Egypt, and Christianity was not yet a well-defined, official religion of the Roman Empire.
Most of his works center around defending the Christian faith. Also included are many of his letters and the 'Life of St. Anthony', which became the defining work of early monasticism.
The followings books are included in this collected work:
1 Against the Heathen
2 On the Incarnation of the Word
3 Deposition of Arius
4 Statement of Faith
5 On Luke 10:22 (Matthew 11:27)
6 Circular Letter
7 Defense against the Arians
8 Defense of the Nicene Definition
9 Defense of Dionysius
10 Life of St. Anthony
11 Circular to the Bishops of Egypt and Libya
12 Defense to the Emperor
13 Defense of his flight
14 Arian History
15 Four Discourses Against the Arians
16 On the Councils
17 Letter to the people of Antioch
18 Letter to the Bishops of Africa
19 Historia Acephala
20 Letters
St. Cyril of Alexandria (376 - 444)
Was the Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444. He was enthroned when the city was at the height of its influence and power within the Roman Empire. Cyril wrote extensively and was a leading protagonist in the Christological controversies of the late-4th and 5th centuries. He was a central figure in the Council of Ephesus in 431, which led to the deposition of Nestorius as Patriarch of Constantinople.Cyril is counted among the Church Fathers and the Doctors of the Church, and his reputation within the Christian world has resulted in his titles Pillar of Faith and Seal of all the Fathers. Cyril regarded the embodiment of God in the person of Jesus Christ to be so mystically powerful that it spread out from the body of the God-man into the rest of the race, to reconstitute human nature into a graced and deified condition of the saints, one that promised immortality and transfiguration to believers. Nestorius, on the other hand, saw the incarnation as primarily a moral and ethical example to the faithful, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Cyril's constant stress was on the simple idea that it was God who walked the streets of Nazareth (hence Mary was Theotokos, meaning "God bearer", which became in Latin "Mater Dei or Dei Genetrix", or Mother of God), and God who had appeared in a transfigured humanity. Nestorius spoke of the distinct "Jesus the man" and "the divine Logos" in ways that Cyril thought were too dichotomous, widening the ontological gap between man and God in a way that some of his contemporaries believed would annihilate the person of Christ.
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