Discourse Against the Arians

The first two books of the Orations against the Arians may well date to this exile. Scholars differ as to whether the third book follows soon after the first two or was written later, perhaps during the period from 356 to 362 when Athanasius was exiled internally in Egypt. This set of three treatises, generally regarded as “Athanasius’ most important dogmatic work” and “the anti-Arian classic,” exemplify the exegetical strategies used by pro-Nicene theologians in the controversies of the fourth century.

James D. Ernest, “Patristic Exegesis and the Arithmetic of the Divine from the Apologists to Athanasius,” in God in Early Christian Thought: Essays in Memory of Lloyd G. Patterson, ed. Andrew B. McGowan, Brian E. Daley, and Timothy J. Gaden, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 94 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 143.