Before Nicaea, before the Arian crisis, before the exiles — Athanasius of Alexandria wrote this. Contra Gentes is his first work: 47 sections dismantling Greek idolatry through patristic theology, ancient philosophy, and the logic of creation itself.
Composed around 318 AD when Athanasius was perhaps twenty-two years old, Against the Heathen is the first half of a two-part argument — its companion being On the Incarnation. Addressed to Macarius, the treatise traces the origin of heathenism to the soul’s rejection of the good: turning from God, the rational soul began to worship its own inventions — images, animals, elements, and the deified passions of the Greek pantheon. Athanasius moves systematically through these corruptions, drawing on Plato, Homer, and the poets to refute paganism on its own terms.
From the diagnosis of idolatry, Athanasius builds upward: the soul retains its rational nature and its capacity to know God; creation displays an order that no polytheistic scheme can explain; and behind all visible things stands the invisible Logos — the Word of God who holds the cosmos together. The reader encounters orthodox christology and the seeds of deification theology in their earliest Alexandrian form, articulated a decade before arianism forced the Council of Nicaea.
The authoritative English text: Archibald Robertson’s 1892 translation from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, with scholarly footnotes throughout.
Many modern reprints are low-quality scans or bulk website scrapes — no footnotes, no index, broken formatting, garbled Greek. Contra Gentes is almost never sold as a standalone volume: it is either bundled into expensive collected editions or lost in cheap reprints indistinguishable from one another. This edition is the only standalone pocket paperback with all 91 of Robertson’s footnotes, a 227-entry subject index, and a 46-reference scripture index.
The Three Parts of the Argument
For Whom This Edition Is Prepared
The Holy Nativity Press Edition
The Holy Nativity Patristic Library publishes the Early Church Fathers as individual annotated pocket editions — each with scholarly footnotes, subject and scripture indices, and professional typesetting.
