/lit/ - Literature

Happy feast day of Saint Athanasius the Great, one of the most legendary men in all the history of the Church. He wrote many classic works of Christian thought, as well. I particularly love his Life of Saint Anthony.

>>12521171
>hating on St. Athanasius the Great

I'm a Roman Catholic and I adore this man and his single-handed defense of Christian Truth against the force of popes, archbishops, and emperors. He is one of the most skilled and crafty motherfuckers in the history of Christianity. Multiple Roman Emperors pronounced death warrants on him, but Athanasius evaded them all and lived to die of natural causes at the age of 78. All the while he proclaimed the Trinity and opposed Arianism, no matter what or who was arrayed against him. You should read Edward Gibbon's writing on him, Gibbon hates Christianity but is forced to respect Athanasius for his sheer force of will and personality, and he states that in pagan times he might have become a Roman Emperor himself. But Athanasius sought better things.

>>12047260
You cannot even begin to fathom how powerful a witness Athanasius is. He spat in the face of pagans and heretics alike. By the grace of God he defied all attempts on his life and died a natural death, fitting for such a witness of Christ. Contra mundum!

Read "The Life of St. Anthony," written by St. Athanasius. It's a book about a saint written by a saint, you can't get much better than that.

Underrated? That is probably true, him or Tertullian or Justin Martyr.

But everyone knows the most based Church Father is Athanasius. He is certainly not underrated, though.

>>11384432
This is a good post.

I'll add to it that if you want just a bare-bones shortlist, check out all of these guys:
-Basil the Great
-Gregory of Nazianzus
-Gregory of Nyssa
-Athanasius
-Ambrose of Milan
-Augustine

All of these guys are great. What's more, they're all saints in both the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. If an early Christian thinker is recognized as a saint by both East and West, that's generally a good sign.

>>11280788
It's funny because this is technically the second time that Africa is going to save the Church from heresy that is supported by the pope.

>>10365408
No truly lived Christian life can be "normal" as the world understands it. Our goal as Christians should be to become saints, because it's the saints that loved God to the fullest extent possible in this life.

>>10225373
>There is no such thing as a sincerely religious person who regularly browses 4chan.

You'd be surprised.

>>10155304
I feel like a big part of becoming a mature, faithful Catholic is realizing that the Church has gone through shit before and will go through shit in the future, until Christ comes again. We survived the Arian crisis, we survived the Avignon popes, we survived the fucking antipopes, we survived the French Revolution. We'll survive whatever Francis does.

>>9336947
>God is dead because God cannot even be said to exist without committing heresy. When one speaks of God truthfully, they are left speechless.


But we have revelation. We know God is real because he's told us. We also know certain things about him because he's told us, and we've been able to extrapolate certain other things about him by taking the things he's told us and applying our reason to it.

Are there any particular books that capture a uniquely Christian happiness/joy?

By that I mean the joy that comes from the Resurrection, the joy a Christian feels on Easter Sunday when they realize that Christ is risen and the gates of paradise are open wide. Any books you all feel capture that?