He stood for the Trinitarian doctrine, "whole and undefiled," when it looked as if all the civilised world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius - into one of those "sensible" synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which, then as now, included among their devotees many highly cultivate clergymen.
Now, yes, it does push matters more than somewhat to suggest that Athanasius taught the fulness of Trinitarian doctrine which would be expounded by the conciliar tradition in the centuries to come. Lewis's foreword is certainly no substitute for reading Williams's Arius: Heresy and Tradition. That said, I cannot forget the delight in reading Athanasius, the power it gave to the words of the Nicene Creed:
For whereas human things cease and the fact of Christ remains, it is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary, but that He Who remains is God and very Son of God, the sole-begotten Word.
Despite my joy and delight in the witness and teaching of Athanasius, I am not disappointed by the fact that while today - 2nd May - many contemporary Anglican calendars today commemorate him, his name is not to be found amongst the Black Letter Days of the 1662 Kalendar.
Why am I not be disappointed?
The 1662 Kalendar commemorates the Four Latin Doctors of the Church - Ambrose (4th April), Jerome (30th September), Gregory the Great (12th March), and Augustine (28th August). It was through the teaching and witness of the Four Latin Doctors that the Latin West was shaped by Nicene orthodoxy, the faith for which Athanasius contended: or, to be more precise, by the Chalcedonian orthodoxy which rightly interpreted Athanasius.
This draws our attention to the near-complete absence of Greek figures from the 1662 Kalendar. "S. Denys, Areopagite" is commemorated on 9th October (a conflation of the Dionysius figure and the martyr of Paris). What is striking about this absence is the fact that the teaching of the Greek Fathers loomed large in the thought of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana. Chrysostom, famously, appears in the daily prayer of the BCP, and is quoted throughout the Book of Homilies. The Cappadocians are also quoted in the Homilies, while, for example, Jewel's A Treatise of the Sacraments, alongside liberal use of Chrysostom, also quotes Nazianzen and Nyssa.
What, then, is the significance of the absence of the Greek Fathers from the 1662 Kalendar? It quite clearly cannot be taken to mean either ignorance of or rejection of their teaching. What is does do, however, is situate the theological tradition of the reformed ecclesia Anglican firmly within the great Latin tradition of the West. As Diarmaid MacCulloch puts it, referring to the Latin Doctors in a different context, it points to a "delineation of the tradition of the previous fifteen hundred years that calls itself Catholic".
It was, is, a tradition deeply Chalcedonian and deeply Augustinian (which are the categories which most profoundly shaped the eucharistic doctrine of the reformed ecclesia Anglicana). And it is this which the 1662 Kalendar celebrates and promotes with its commemoration of the Four Latin Doctors. That the different tradition of the Greek East can yet enrich the reformed ecclesia Anglicana, and the wider Latin West, is without question. But it is the Latin tradition which is our home. It is the voices of the Latin Fathers which, in a way quite distinct from the Greek Fathers, shape us.
The absence of Greek Fathers from the 1662 Kalendar, then, speaks not about them, but of us and who we are: the inheritors of the Latin tradition, seen in Quicunque Vult, Filioque and Article V, in the Words of Institution rather than epiclesis, in the "as Hierome saith" and "as Saint Augustine saith" of the Articles.
As with the best of the Latins, however, we also heed the Greeks, to be enriched by their teaching: not a native voice, to be sure, but one also bearing light and truth. Amongst their number shines Athanasius, described by the Book of Homilies as "a very ancient, holy, and learned bishop and doctor".
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