Coptica 15, 2016

Athanasius’s Fighting Spirit Doubled in Shenoute

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As for these words of this sort, the man of God in truth, Apa Athanasius the archbishop of Alexandria, also convicted disturbers because of them: “Why do you dare to perceive that which even the angels do not know? For creatures will not be able to describe the birth of the creator,” and, “It is enough for you to know that the Father begat the Son before the ages, but to say how, no one knows. For it is written, ‘Who will describe his generation?’ No one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father who begat him.” 24 In I Am Amazed Shenoute uses Athanasius as a weapon against Gnosticism and Arianism. Shenoute’s Athanasian sword is turned against Manichaeism in Who Speaks through the Prophet , where Shenoute accuses the Manichaeans of teaching that the material world was not created by the good God and that, therefore, there will be no resurrection of the physical body but only of a spiritual body. He directs any readers who want to know more about the “straying of many heretics” to the letters of Athanasius. 25 There are three letters in which Athanasius explicitly deals with Manichaeism. They are addressed to Epictetus (bishop of Corinth), Adelphius (bishop of Onuphis), and Maximus (Cynic philosopher). Athanasius’s depiction of Manichaeans in all three letters is the same: They are docetist, that is, they deny the true humanity of the Savior and assert that his physicality was in appearance only. 26 Athanasius counters that created human flesh “has become God’s body” in the incarnation of the Word. He argues that this is important for soteriological reasons: The Word became flesh and was “born of a woman…in order to transfer to Himself our erring generation, and that we may become henceforth a holy race… .” 27 If the humanity of the Word is only apparent, then “both the salvation and the resurrection of [humanity] is apparent only.” 28 Shenoute uses Athanasius to insist on the reality of physical resurrection. Finally we come to the discourse God Is Blessed , a sermon given at the monastery’s church at a time when thousands of refugees had taken shelter on the monastery’s extensive grounds from invading Blemmyes and 24 I Am Amazed , in Selected Discourses of Shenoute the Great , 80. See also Davis, Coptic Christology in Practice , 285; and Orlandi, Shenute contra origenistas , §815, pages 60-63. 25 On Who Speaks by the Prophet , see Emmel, Shenoute’s Literary Corpus , vol. 2, CSCO 600, pages 682 and 867. In her work on Shenoute’s conception of the body, Caroline Schroeder suggests that Shenoute might be referring to a section of the Life of Antony in which Antony disassociates himself from heresies like Manichaeism. I think it is more likely that Shenoute means “his letters” ( ⲛⲉϥⲉⲡⲓⲥⲧⲟⲗⲏ) in the strictest sense. See Schroeder, Monastic Bodies , 149 and 209, note 110. 26 In To Epictetus , see especially §7; in To Adelphius , see especially §2; and in To Maximus , see especially §3. 27 To Adelphius , §3-4. 28 To Epictetus , §7.