A historical and theological re-evaluation of the polemical writings of Athanasius of Alexandria (bishop 328-73), who would become known to later Christian generations as a saint and a champion of orthodoxy, and as the defender of the original Nicene Creed of 325 against the `Arian heresy'. For much of his own lifetime, however, Athanasius was an extremely controversial figure, and his writings, although highly influential on modern interpretations of the fourth-century Church and the so-called `Arian Controversy', display bias and distortion. David M. Gwynn examines Athanasius' polemic in detail, and in particular his construction of those he condemns as `Arian' as a single `heretical party', 'the Eusebians'. Gwynn argues that Athanasius' image of the Church polarized between his own `orthodoxy' and the `Arianism' of the `Eusebians' is a polemical construct, which has seriously impaired our knowledge of the development of Christianity in the crucial period in which the Later Roman Empire became ever increasingly a Christian empire.

The nature of Roman primacy and the extent of the teaching and jurisdictional authority of the pope have long been areas of misunderstanding and disagreement between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches of the East. Just as the Petrine office of the Roman pontiff admits of historical unfolding, so, too, do differing theological accounts of this office, and the period of the fourth-century Arian controversy marks a significant stage in the development of both. D. Vincent Twomey’s Apostolikos Thronos exposes two divergent Eastern accounts of Roman primacy in the writings of the rival fourth-century bishops Eusebius of Caesarea and Athanasius of Alexandria. In the first part, Twomey examines successive versions of Eusebius’ Church History, and he shows how Eusebius comes to replace his earlier apostolic ecclesiology with a novel imperial ecclesiology tied to Constantine’s embrace of Christianity, a shift that both reflects and contributes to a lasting change in the consciousness of the East toward the See of Rome. The second part explores the perspective on Roman primacy found in Athanasius’ historical and apologetic works, penned in response to his deposition from the See of Alexandria, which reveal how Athanasius preserves the traditional apostolic ecclesiology of the early Eusebius and also displays a deepening theological appreciation for the preeminence of the church and bishop of Rome, anticipating later articulations of the theology of the papacy.