In his correspondence with the Corinthian community, the Apostle Paul addressed the problem of factionalism, his criticism aimed particularly against a faction of educated members who regarded their knowledge as evidence of social superiority. He countered these types of claims to superiority by proposing a dichotomy of wisdoms—“the wisdom of this world” and “God's wisdom”:

In the context of Paul's letter, we might consider the “wisdom of this age” generally as the knowledge of human reason, corrupted by its fall into idolatry (cf. Rom. 1), and, more specifically in the context of 1 Corinthians, the learning of the Greek philosophical tradition, paideia, the dominant view of reality that formed the social and cultural values of upper-class Greeks.Footnote ³ This sort of wisdom (σοφία), Paul asserts, is “foolishness” (μωρία), both in the eyes of God and in relation to the “wisdom of God”—that is, the gospel proclamation of the crucified and risen Christ, “who became for us wisdom from God” (1 Cor. 1:30). Sophia itself is not disparaged—in fact, the wisdom tradition of Hellenistic Judaism factors prominently in Paul's letters, particularly in his Christology.Footnote ⁴ Paul's proclamation of the crucified Christ as sophia is an antithesis to the wisdom of the world, which, as Paul explains, quoting the prophet Isaiah, God would destroy (1 Cor. 1:19).

At first glance, Paul's dichotomy might suggest a total and radical enmity between God's wisdom and the world's wisdom, a divide between revelation and reason. Instead, I would suggest that Paul's dichotomy cuts deeper. It is not simply that human reason falls short in its capacity to apprehend the divine; rather, the “wisdom of the world” that is the object of Paul's rebuke constitutes a way of knowing and acting that was inculcated in educational institutions and social circles among the privileged classes of antiquity. This “culture” of knowing and acting, paideia, included training not only in grammatical and rhetorical skills, but also exposed students to the core literary canon of Greek literature. Thus, there was a cultural dimension to Greek education, which aimed to produce skilled and cultured Greeks. As the work of Peter Brown has shown, the ambience of “common culture” created by paideia was limited, of course, to the aristocracy, the leaders of society who “as a whole stood out as the possessors of a high degree of literary culture.”Footnote ⁵ Like any educational system, it was one that produced and reproduced particular intellectual, social, and cultural norms. It was exclusive and reinforced the power structures of Greco-Roman society by imposing a “social distance.”Footnote ⁶

Factionalism and divisions—according to economic and social status, gender and, it would seem, educational background—characterize the community painted by Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul is critical of those who would claim special knowledge and skills, gained through their educational training, that endowed them with a superior understanding of the God of Jesus Christ, and introduces a way of knowing and acting founded on the crucified and risen Christ. This is “wisdom” that is accessible to every member of the community. It is an equalizer. Factional competition was inappropriate within the community. The only wisdom that warranted boasting was not the worldly wisdom of Plato or Aristotle, but rather the wisdom of the God of Israel, revealed in Christ Jesus and announced by Paul.

The way in which Paul frames this dichotomy, particularly in his designation of the gospel as “wisdom” (for example 1 Cor. 2:6–7), does elicit a competitive strategy. To the Hellenized ear, Paul's “good news” is sophia, a true reflection of the mind of God—or the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). Thus, both rhetorically and philosophically, we might say, Paul retains a stake in “wisdom” as something of great value; and he situates the wisdom of the gospel in competition with the other “wisdoms” in which certain members of the Corinthian community have invested. In other words, Paul does not argue that sophia is one thing, and the evangelion another. Instead, the gospel is sophia, but not the sophia one would learn in the orator's classroom or the philosopher's school.Footnote ⁷ The “secret” and “hidden” wisdom of God is understood as revealed in the cross and resurrection of Christ. It could be found not in the texts or schools of the Greek philosophers (“those who suppose they are wise” [Rom. 1:22]), but in the writings of the prophets of Israel and in the proclamation of Paul and his coworkers. God's wisdom shamed the wisdom of the elite and revealed a way to every believer, regardless of gender, status, ethnicity, or education.Footnote ⁸

The canonization of Paul's letters as sacred scripture brought with it the canonization of his pronouncement of a dichotomy of wisdoms. A consequence of this codification was the fading away of the occasional nature of the letters so that, for many early Christian thinkers, Paul's instructions to a first-century community became the reference point for how a Christian could or could not reconcile the claims of Christian faith with the wisdom, or better, philosophy, of the Greek tradition. Still, varied approaches emerged. At one pole is Justin Martyr, a convert to Christianity expounding nascent doctrinal statements by drawing on the intellectual and rhetorical skills of his education and articulating the Christian narrative through the conceptual and semantic categories of Platonism. At the other we find Tertullian, who, with his famous rejection of the Greek philosophical tradition, saw (like Irenaeus) in the “mixing” of Greek learning and Christian faith a marriage that could only produce deformed, and heretical, offspring.Footnote ⁹

I. Cultural Competition in Late Antiquity

The nature of the relationship between Christianity and the Greek philosophical tradition has yielded a considerable amount of attention in ancient and modern times. It is certainly not my intention to rehearse the entire scholarly tradition. Instead, I intend to propose an approach that differs in two ways from other approaches. First, it employs a theoretical approach that investigates the real social and cultural contexts that framed the debate in Late Antiquity. I will do this by characterizing the debate as an example of “cultural competition,” a very real and multifaceted struggle, especially apparent in Late Antiquity, and beginning as early as the second century, as Greek and Christian intellectuals competed to define the religious, intellectual, and political identities of the Roman State.Footnote ¹⁰ This model of competition, rather than a naive model informed by ill-defined notions of “accommodation,” “influence,” or “borrowing,” provides a broader understanding of the “nuts and bolts” of the intellectual machinery and social networks of early Christian authors and their opponents. Thus, in this type of model, the intellectual elites of the Christian and Greek populations are conceived of not only as religious factions in opposition, but they are also classified together as the class of educated, literate, philosophical thinkers who contributed to theological and cultural discourses. They are, considered together, the “educated elite,” the pepaideumenoi, a class of intellectuals. This competition can be thought of as one between a dominant establishment—the “Greeks,” who represent the status quo, and “Christians,” a party of “newcomers,” who, as early as the mid-second century, challenged the status quo and adopted strategies intended to subvert the legitimacy and power hold of the prevailing philosophical “orthodoxy.”Footnote ¹¹Second, a model of cultural competition invites us to examine cultural works (for example, art and literature) that served as the vehicles, or arenas, for debate. The treatise has been the traditional focus of attention on this philosophical question—works, such as Eusebius's Praeparatio evangelica, or Augustine's City of God or Against the Academics. Here I suggest we look also at biographical literature—key texts, I argue, that constituted an arena for cultural competition.

The appearance of philosophical Christianities has often been approached from a perspective that sees a developing and dynamic Christianity scavenging and deforming a static classical tradition. Thankfully, the scholarly terrain has been shifting, as scholars of the ancient world recognize communicating and competing attempts among the circles of the educated to “recapture” and construct Greek culture in the context of Roman imperialism during the Second Sophistic.Footnote ¹² The realities of Roman rule gave urgency to questions related to Greek epistemic, cultural, religious, and ethnic definitions. Paideia served as both a point of reference and a locus of competition in this process. In the context of the present discussion, I would like to pose a more specific definition of paideia, generally conceived of as Greek education and culture. It is also the molding and sustaining complex of ideas and practices that shaped the contours of the lives of the educated elite and afforded them a basis for a cultural authority, and, to varying degrees, social and political authority. Tim Whitmarsh builds on a Bourdieuian cultural anthropology, as applied to the Second Sophistic by Thomas Schmitz, which regards paideia as a “locus for a series of competitions and debates concerning the proper way in which life should be lived,” rather than a “single, doctrinally coherent system.”Footnote ¹³ What I present in this article is a similar approach, adopted independently, and applied to the biographical literature produced within Christian and Greek philosophical circles in Late Antiquity.Footnote ¹⁴

In a recent article, Laura Nasrallah has re-mapped the location of figures such as Justin Martyr, his student Tatian, and Lucian of Samosata as participants in this Second Sophistic “negotiation of authoritative culture under conditions of empire.”Footnote ¹⁵ She identifies in these authors what she terms a “geographical thinking,” or a mapping of the world, with paideia as compass. She rightly notes a simultaneous resistance and assimilation to paideia on the part of all three. Tatian, for example, exhibits a negative valuation of Greek identity while he simultaneously “performs Greekness,” that is, engaging his rhetorical opponent through Greek literary forms and references.Footnote ¹⁶ Justin, meanwhile, appeals to the center of imperial power by aligning himself to common paideutic values: “as one of the provincial elites, speaking the common language of Greek, of privileged philosophy, and of Roman subject-hood.”Footnote ¹⁷

A prominent theme in Second Sophistic scholarship has been the function of the negotiation of paideia as an appropriation and imitation of an imagined glorified past so as to define a present in a conflicting dialectic with that past: how did Greeks square a culture of paideia with Roman imperial power? In the third and fourth centuries, as Christian intellectuals found opportunities to participate in this continuing discussion, the “privileged past” of Greece and its catalogue of authoritative representatives was thrown into question, no longer a given, as the parameters of the debate shifted. Yet even in the case of Tertullian, despite his rhetorical abandonment of philosophy, one can see an interesting conflict between an outright rejection of the philosophy of the Greeks and a constraint to defend a Christian way of life and thought to his non-Christian opponents according to the established rules of philosophical culture—conceptually, linguistically, and methodologically. We might contrast Justin and Tertullian and identify either a conscious engagement (which some might call “appropriation”) or disengagement with the philosophy of the Greeks. But is this approach sufficient? Could philosophical thinking and the culture that nurtured it be simply adopted or completely abandoned at will? It seems not even the resistant Tertullian was capable of the latter. In the work De pallio, he justifies his adoption of the pallium (in Greek, the τρίβων), the distinctive garb of the philosopher, as a statement of withdrawal from society.Footnote ¹⁸ Given its association with non-Christian philosophers, Tertullian was compelled to explain why his decision did not actually advocate what he appeared to refute. In an address to the pallium itself, Tertullian performs a tailoring, a “refitting,” if you will: “Now a better philosophy considered you [that is, the pallium] worthy, in that you began to dress the Christian.”Footnote ¹⁹ Where absolute rejection might be expected, Tertullian remains vested by a very powerful and dominant intellectual culture, even outside the immediate geographical confines of the Hellenistic world.

We might think of this deep inculturation, and the tensions it produced, in the words of the author of the apocryphal correspondence between Basil of Caesarea and the celebrated orator Libanius, teacher of both Christians and Greeks. In response to Basil's uneasiness with his classical education, and his humble claim to have “forgotten” what Libanius had taught him, Libanius responds:

The roots remained.

The narrative of Late Antiquity is in many ways the story of the “leveling up” of the social and cultural playing field between Greeks and Christians.Footnote ²¹ Regarding the Christian entrance and participation in the already fragmented intellectual scene of the pre-Constantinian centuries of the common era, a few observations should be made. This brief sketch is intended to locate Christian intellectuals within the social and cultural contexts, that is, the networks and trends, of philosophical circles in Late Antiquity, up to the fourth century. Then, to set the stage for the second aspect of the methodology proposed here, I will proceed with a discussion of biographical literature as an arena for debate among these circles. The paper will conclude with an examination of Athanasius's Vita Antonii as an application of this method.

Even before Christianity appeared on the scene, major shifts were occurring in the philosophical world. Between the first century b.c.e. and the second century c.e., the Hellenistic schools were losing their distinctiveness and influence. Divergence reigned supreme among the presumptive heirs of Socrates and Plato by the first century b.c.e., and, in the case of the Academy, divergence led to competition, competition to fragmentation, and fragmentation, compounded by external political and military factors, to demise and disappearance.Footnote ²² A new type of Platonism was taking shape, mostly in decentralized philosophical circles, outside of Athens, and scattered mostly around the eastern territories of the empire—Egypt, Syria, even Palestine.Footnote ²³ This renewal was spearheaded by Pythagoreans with Platonist leanings, “reformers,” if you will, who called for a return to origins, in order to recover a pure Platonism, purged of elements that had been “mixed in” from other schools. A call such as this perceived (or created) an intellectual crisis that left open the door for a rethinking and reshaping of the Platonist tradition.

One of the reformers of the late second century c.e., Numenius of Apamaea, maintained that a universal philosophy was found in the teaching of Pythagoras. In a work of philosophical history titled On the Disagreement of the Academics against Plato, Numenius proffered a scathing account of the history of Plato's Academy down to Antiochus of Ascalon.Footnote ²⁴ He laments the “disagreement” or “divergence” (διάστασις) between the “pure” teachings of Plato and the views propagated by the Academic successors. The history of the Academy is characterized as a wandering into a heterodox mixing with Stoicism and Aristotelianism: Plato's successors “did not hold fast to the original succession” (οὐκ ἐνέμɛιναν τῇ πρώτῃ διαδoχῇ), and, as a result of their betrayal, the founder suffered, like the mythical Pentheus, his body tortured, twisted, and divided.Footnote ²⁵ As Numenius saw it, Plato was a “Pythagorean” (ὁ δὲ `Πλάτων πυθαγoρίσας) and so proposed the following program of reform:

Christian intellectuals were not uninvolved in this renewal of Platonism. As early as the second century, Greek-speaking, literate intellectuals, that is, a small segment of what Keith Hopkins has called a “sub-elite” of Roman society, were joining Christian ranks.Footnote ²⁷ Figures such as Justin, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, and Tertullian, just to name a few, were educated in the rhetorical and philosophical schools of the empire and socialized among the influential intellectual segments of Roman society. A tiny minority within a tiny minority, these skilled writers and thinkers laid important foundations for a Christian philosophical discourse that did not simply “borrow” from mainstream Platonism, but, we might say, organically grew out of the philosophical discourse of Late Antiquity.Footnote ²⁸ It was not a corruption of a pure, simple faith, or a Frankensteinish concoction, but rather a legitimate and viable competitor that could continue to engage other developing Platonisms, well into the third and fourth centuries. As the recent work of Edward Watts has shown, it was common for Greeks and Christians to study together under the same teachers, and so it was within these circles that philosophically inclined Christians would have been exposed to and incorporated into the discussion. As “partners” in philosophical discussions, educated Christians and pagans “disagreed about the divine” but could employ “philosophy as a common intellectual framework around which they could construct their understandings of God.”Footnote ²⁹ Thus, we see a proximity and interaction among intellectuals, Christian and not, within the educational circles of the third century, that sowed the seeds of a competition which was not only possible but perhaps even necessary. Numenius's Luthersque call ad fontes set the stage for a rethinking and renewal of the Platonic tradition, which was dominated by the school of Plotinus, but also opened the doors to a Christian option. I believe it is no coincidence that our major testimonies to Numenius are preserved in Porphyry, Origen, and Eusebius.Footnote ³⁰ Both Plotinus and Origen became acquainted with the work of Numenius in the school of Ammonius in Alexandria.Footnote ³¹

Finally, lest we underestimate the impact this faction of “Christian newcomers” could make, it is somewhat remarkable that Greek intellectuals of the so-called establishment, such as Celsus and Porphyry, found Christianity enough of a threat to compose sizeable polemical treatises (as early as the middle of the second century) refuting its doctrines and way of life. This speaks volumes to the inroads the Christian option to the philosophical crisis had made, and demonstrates that a “reasonable” and “logical,” philosophically informed Christianity had made frightening progress among the intellectual classes, threatening the stabilizing status quo that the school of Plotinus was making through the efforts of his students. Christian intellectuals of the third century—most notably Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory the Wonderworker—brought their literary, rhetorical, and philosophical training (the same their non-Christian peers had) to bear on their understanding of the Christian narrative and scriptures, both as a foil and as an aid.

The benefits that Greek philosophy could offer to Christians and the place it could have, along with its representatives, in a Christian worldview (and, more concretely, in a Christian education) were questions that characterized the writings of Christian intellectuals well into the fourth and fifth centuries. Paul's dichotomy would continue to guide the discussion. In Athanasius's Life of Antony, the desert father addresses his Greek critics by recalling the Apostle's words: “If still you do not believe, seeking logical proofs through words, we will not offer proof by means of ‘plausible Greek wisdom,’ as our teacher (διδάσκαλoς, that is, the Apostle Paul) said, but will persuade by means of the faith that is clearly outpacing your wordy fabrications.”Footnote ³² By the fourth century, Christian intellectuals exhibited a real tension between a strong criticism of the doctrines, methods, and representatives of the Greek schools of philosophy and the presentation of the Christian faith as a revealed doctrinal faith that could be understood through reason and defended logically—using methods developed and inculcated in Greek schools. What appears, then, is a gap between the self-description of writers like Tertullian and Athanasius and the real circumstances of their relationship to the traditions of Greek philosophy and Hellenic culture.

I would suggest that there is, at some level, a “misrecognition” of their indebtedness, commitment to, and formation in philosophical culture.Footnote ³³ In one respect, this is the apparent denial of and disinterest in the cultural value and economic benefits that accompanied intellectual and philosophical expertise in the ancient world. It also refers to the social and cultural constraints of the perception of the actors in a competition of this sort to discern, or recognize, its many facets.Footnote ³⁴ For example, Antony of Egypt's famous avoidance of primary and secondary education overtly disavows the authority and value of that education (Vit. Ant. 1.2); however, Athanasius would not have attained the skills to write about Antony had he himself not benefited from the very education he disavows. Similarly, Antony's dismissal of artful rhetoric and argumentation is itself articulated in finely crafted rhetorical argumentation (Vit. Ant. 78.2–3). Thus, we might say that Athanasius's “misrecognition” lay both in his neglect to reference his own educational training at any time and in his familiarity with rhetoric and philosophy. Through a constructed representation of Antony of Egypt, Athanasius disavows the cultural and social value of such things. Yet the alternative he proposes is not completely divorced from the dominant system, paideia. Instead, it is simultaneously one that is influenced by the dominant system and converts it. In this case, misrecognition entails either the conscious or unconscious disinterest in the influence and authority associated with Greek intellectual training and pedagogical authority. At an unconscious, internalized level, the semantics and specialized discourse of philosophy, the values and cultural norms inculcated through paideia, and the socialization by virtue of being in these strata of Greco-Roman society (as opposed to, say, being an uneducated slave) contributed in very real ways to Athanasius's descriptions of the philosophical life.

Thus, whether conscious or unconscious, the misrecognition displayed in Christian intellectuals of the period under investigation reveals a tension. I am not making a relativistic claim that Christian intellectuals were simply “pagans in disguise.” Rather, they constructed and proposed characteristically Christian views, for example, on human nature and its relationship to the divine (to name just one), which challenged and competed with the dominant outlook of Greek pepaideumenoi. Nevertheless, as members of the intellectual class, they still maintained an investment in similar interests, forms of cultural capital—for example, knowledge, skills, and actual objects of cultural value.Footnote ³⁵ In the present discussion, we can see Greek and Christian intellectuals competing to produce and acquire the same forms of cultural capital—for example, education, intellectual lineages, access to or possession of important philosophical texts, and the skills to read, interpret, and debate their content, including a linguistic capital of specialized philosophical terminology and the fora to engage in debate, rhetorical and literary.

Participants compete within “fields,” social formations that develop economies of symbolic goods within structured spaces of accepted norms and practices that have their own internal logic and power relations. So we might think of Christian and Greek intellectuals as competitors in overlapping fields of philosophy, religion, and education. Of course, these are not easily extricable in the context of antiquity. When defining fields in relation to the academic and literary worlds of modern France, Pierre Bourdieu can describe them as cultural fields, which are autonomous from political and economic fields.Footnote ³⁶ In order to fit this type of field theory to the structures of Late Antiquity, it is necessary to recognize that, while the field of philosophy had a semi-autonomy, it was not completely independent of imperial politics and the economy. Think of emperors such as Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, Julian, and Theodosius, and the role they played as patron and trendsetter in these areas—in their funding of academic institutions and book production, and in their active involvement in promoting doctrine and practice.

Participants employ strategies rooted in a certain “feel for the game,” what Bourdieu calls habitus, a set of skills and dispositions, or embodied principles that generate actions.Footnote ³⁷ Schmitz has identified paideia as the habitus of Greco-Roman antiquity.Footnote ³⁸ Formed in the intellectual, cultural, and social norms of paideia and included among the small percentage of educated elite, men such as Porphyry, Eusebius, Athanasius, and the emperor Julian shared common elite values regarding education, literacy, status, and culture (and sometimes learned them side by side with one another) that influenced and guided their participation in the competition—as all of us who are academics know, there are certain rules we are expected to play by.

The participants in this competition within the philosophical field of Late Antiquity can be divided into two main parties, Greeks, who represent the conservative status quo, and Christians, “newcomers” who represented a challenge to the Greeks. These parties engaged in competition for cultural capital, with a view to converting them into “symbolic capital,” or an economy of authority and influence. This final point is especially important, lest we underestimate what was at stake, and reduce the discussion to a simple “power struggle” between pagans and Christians. The competition focused in many ways on “pedagogic authority.” Paideia was regarded as the formational process through which the youth learned to live the “good life,” in a philosophical harmony of thought and action in conformity with the divine. Thus, at stake was not simply the dominance of certain ideas or “discourses,” but the curricula of schools and the formative principles to be reproduced and instilled in the youth. It also extended to the proper worship of the divine and the direction of political policy based on theological principles. There was indeed much at stake, especially in the fourth century, and a competition of this nature was absolutely necessary.

II. The Biography as Philosophical Text

Alongside treatises that delineated the dialectical aspects of philosophical debate, Christian and Greek intellectuals produced biographies that described the life and teachings of exemplary teachers and ascetics. As a locus of cultural competition, the ancient bios was a literary vehicle that portrayed subjects as representations of divine wisdom. They were seen to possess a special proximity to the divine, and, as such, were embodiments and paradigms of virtue, revealers, teachers, and transmitters of philosophy. As teachers, the subjects were also founders or leaders of various kinds of communities. Biographers, most often their “students,” cast their subjects as philosophical “ancestors.” In Late Antiquity, subjects could have been the first revealers of divine wisdom (for example, Iamblichus's Pythagoras or Philo's Moses), or the teachers who appeared at significant moments in the history of philosophy to restore philosophical authenticity (for example, Porphyry's Plotinus or Eusebius's Origen). Biographers construed themselves as descendants and heirs of the philosophical patrimony passed on in precious texts, in the process of education, and, most often, in the personal relationship they had with their teachers.

Competition among the intellectual circles of antiquity contributed significantly to the development and evolution of biographical literature. The Hellenistic era witnessed important evolutions in the formal development of a generic theory of the bios.Footnote ³⁹ The Socratics, Peripatetics, and the later Platonists all took a particular interest in utilizing biographical literature as a way of promoting philosophical doctrines and praising their subjects as persons, not only of historical importance, but also as embodiments of philosophical ideals.Footnote ⁴⁰ The great biographer Plutarch likened his task to the work of artists. In a famous passage from the prologue to his Life of Alexander, Plutarch posited a stark distinction between the “life” and the “history.” As an author of “lives,” instead of “histories,” his task was to portray his subjects’ characters through the “signs of the soul” (ɛἰς τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς σημɛῖα). Histories, as mere collections of great deeds (πράξɛις), did not necessarily provide a moral directive (δήλωσις ἀρɛτῆς ἢ κακίας). The composition of a bios was analogous to the work of painters who represented the character of their subject through a careful representation of the face and eyes. The portrait or the statue demonstrated in a static but eternal moment the ethical composition of the subject. It was a portrait of the soul.Footnote ⁴¹ Likewise, the biographer painted a portrait of the soul in words, using deeds to demonstrate character.Footnote ⁴²

Recent studies on the origins and literary characteristics of the bios have focused attention on its social contexts and functions.Footnote ⁴³ As arenas of competition between Christian and Greek intellectuals, biographies served apologetic and polemical purposes by promoting teachers and delineating philosophical dynasties. Thus, despite the strict generic distinction Plutarch made between the ancient “biography” and the “history,” I would suggest that biographies (and especially collective biographies, such as Eunapius's Lives of the Sophists and Theodoret of Cyrrhus's Religious History) could serve a historiographical purpose as accounts of the origins and transmission of philosophical traditions as told through the lives of exemplary representatives—just as one today might teach a history of philosophy through the study of major thinkers. As contributions to a process of tradition building, philosophical bioi,Footnote ⁴⁴ individually and collectively, told the history of philosophy. Dynasties required history to claim an inheritance, in this case, not only the inheritance of a precious philosophical tradition, but also the right to protect and guard it, and the skill and authority to correctly teach and transmit it.Footnote ⁴⁵

It was not uncommon for teachers and students in antiquity to regard their relationship as one of father to son. In his correspondence, Libanius regularly addressed his students as παῖδɛς. In one of these letters, Libanius construes the kinship as one “of words,” paralleling it with a kinship of blood: “How could you not help Arrhabius too who is also my child, and even more than Eusebius? For it is [a kinship] of words with Arrhabius, but it is also [a kinship] through blood, which is not the case with Eusebius.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Furthermore, Libanius often used the verb τρέφɛιν to describe the pedagogical kinship with his students.Footnote ⁴⁷ Even contemporary sociological analyses of education recognize the important function of education as not only formative, but also socially and culturally reproductive.Footnote ⁴⁸ For the educated elite of Late Antiquity, intellectual skill and achievement were important, but it was also important to have a respectable pedigree, an educational lineage, that situated one within a philosophical tradition connected to a teacher. The bios served as an ancestral portrait.

Two important “biographers” of the late third and early fourth centuries were Porphyry and Eusebius. Their compositions contributed, in part, to a high-stakes debate over the origins and direction of a philosophical renewal. If we consider Plotinus the genius behind the renewal, Porphyry was its first systematizer, interpreter, promoter, and chronicler. His early work, the Philosophical History, outlined the history of philosophy from Pythagoras to Plato through a series of biographical portraits. His best known biographical work, the Life of Plotinus, might be considered an appropriate appendix and climax to this historical project, one that represented and reproduced a dominant culture of paideia in continuity with an esteemed Greek past.

In many ways, Eusebius might be seen as the Christian counterpart to Porphyry, his Ecclesiastical History, with an extended biographical section dedicated to Origen, an interesting analogue. As apologist, historian, exegete, and biographer, Eusebius made foundational contributions to the construction and presentation of a Christian tradition, including a Christian intellectual tradition. His biographical accounts of Origen and Pamphilus, in particular, represent an important foray into the discussion regarding the direction of philosophy and its authentic representatives in an age of persecution. In these works, Eusebius promoted his predecessors as Christian scholars, representatives of an Alexandrian-Caesarean tradition of Christian philosophy. In the sixth book of the Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius presents Origen as a philosopher and ascetic who lived and taught a tradition, which was grounded in both the philosophy of the Greeks and Christian revelation.Footnote ⁴⁹ It seems to be addressed to both Greek and Christian detractors of Origen: he is both a skilled philosopher and expositor of orthodoxy.Footnote ⁵⁰ From an early age, and at the insistence of his father, Origen was immersed “in Greek learning” (ɛ'ν τοῖς‘∃λλήνων μαθήμασιν [6.2.15]), receiving a standard “general education” (η‘ τῶν ɛ'γκυκλίων παιδɛία [6.2.7]) in addition to his training in the scriptures. So impressive was his knowledge of philosophy that his Greek peers proclaimed him a “great philosopher” (μɛ´γαν … φιλόσοφον). Likewise, Pamphilus, student of Pierinus (whom tradition would remember as a “new Origen”) and teacher of Eusebius, is described by his spiritual son as the “jewel” of the Caesarean church.Footnote ⁵¹ He was exceptional in his comprehension of Greek paideia and superior to all others in his knowledge of Christian dogma.Footnote ⁵²

This model of the Christian teacher would be rejected in Athanasius of Alexandria's Life of Antony. When read with an eye to his earlier works, which criticized the dominant Greek intellectual culture, his bios of the provincial Copt contributed in part to the cultural competition, as both a rejection of earlier attempts to represent the Christian philosopher (for example, the biographical sketch of Origen in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History), and, more broadly speaking, a refutation of paideia, the philosophical status quo, and any attempt (even Christian) to associate wisdom and virtue with power, education, and ethnicity. In short, Athanasius aims to displace the dominant image of the philosopher, recasting it in the form of a new type of philosopher found in an unexpected place.

III. Athanasius of Alexandria's Alternative Paideia

The Life of Antony (henceforth, Vit. Ant.), traditionally attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria,Footnote ⁵³ was and remains one of the most known and imitated works of Christian biographical literature from Late Antiquity. Scholarship on the Vit. Ant., considered a “prototype” of Christian hagiography, is extensive.Footnote ⁵⁴ My intention is not to focus on its place in Christian literature or the development of monasticism. Instead, I will apply the methodology outlined above, which itself builds on groundwork begun by Philip Rousseau and Samuel Rubenson in relation to Athanasius's portrayal of Antony as a Christian teacher and philosopher.Footnote ⁵⁵ Through a reading of the accounts of Antony's formation as a youth and his encounters with Greek philosophers in chapters 72–80, I will demonstrate that these episodes express in narrative form similar anti-Greek polemic to that found in Athanasius's apologetic works Contra gentes and De incarnatione and contributed to the continuing competition with Greek intellectuals over the origins, content, and transmission of authentic philosophy, and the displacement and recasting of conventional representations of the philosopher.Footnote ⁵⁶

In the early works, Athanasius challenged the pedagogic authority of his intellectual rivals, and refuted the claim that wisdom and virtue could be most successfully pursued within the confines of Greek education and on the basis of Greek authorities and texts. I prefer to understand Athanasius's literary and intellectual activities as forms of “competition” precisely because they are not wholly unlike the literary and intellectual activities of his opponents. That is to say, Athanasius shared key skills and dispositions—training in literature and rhetoric, a knowledge of philosophical terminology, and a general sense of philosophical views on human nature, the cosmos, and society, which were not wholly unlike that of his opponents. To put it simply, Athanasius had the knowledge and skills to play the philosophical game. Thus, we might say, on the one hand, that Athanasius entered the competition on a common playing field, adhering to similar rules and using similar tools. On the other hand, there was much, in fact, at stake—including a precise understanding of the nature of God, his purpose in the incarnation (a doctrine Athanasius's Greek competitors considered utterly irrational), and its implications for human nature. Practically speaking, also at stake were the means and support to defend and propagate these views. To the well-educated, refined, and socially respected Greek philosopher formed by paideia, Athanasius's Vit. Ant. put forth an unlikely alternative in the uninstructed, unkempt, socially marginalized Coptic hermit. The bios then served as an arena in which a developing alternative Christian paideia was proposed, one founded on Christian texts, doctrines, and authorities, in which the Church and its leaders, most notably bishops and monks, preserved and transmitted an education of real value. Thus, in the Vit. Ant. we discover an attempt at representing hermit and bishop as “both undefiled by human learning and wiser than Greek philosophers.”Footnote ⁵⁷ To this end, a two-fold strategy can be discerned: on the one hand, any “defilement,” or, more neutrally speaking, any connection to Greek paideia, its habitus, and treasure of goods is misrecognized, while, on the other hand, they are openly challenged in an attempt to recast and convert their value in the light of a Christian economy.

I would also suggest that in many respects, the Vit. Ant. is also responding to the previous Christian attempts to represent the Christian philosopher, discussed briefly above. That is, we can also identify competing trends within Christian circles. Eusebius's biographical sketch of Origen tended more toward a harmony, rather than a strict dichotomy, between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God. Greek philosophy was a “preparation” for Christian philosophy. Antony was not an Origen, who, as Eusebius argued, was just as much a philosopher, indeed a better one, than his Greek contemporaries—he received a standard Greek education, was surrounded by books and students in his “school,” and lived and worked in major urban intellectual centers such as Alexandria and Caesarea.Footnote ⁵⁸ Eusebius's presentation of Origen's successful engagement with Greek learning was an attempt at legitimizing Origen's standing as a bona fide pepaideumenos of a Greek model, while more broadly responding to the charges of “irrationality” with a demonstration of the intellectual and rational character of Christianity. Furthermore, Antony's indifference and hesitation at the reception of letters from Constantine and Constans (who, the monks had to convince their Abba, were truly Christians) contrasts wildly with Eusebius's portrait of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, in the Vita Constantini.Footnote ⁵⁹ In the latter, the emperor appears as the “philosopher-king” who guides the bishops to unity and unanimity, a role that Athanasius was hesitant to concede to imperial authority, especially, as in the case of Constantius, when it favored the opponents of Nicaea.

Athanasius, on the other hand, argued that Greek paideia was neither a preparation nor a necessary prerequisite for the path to virtue.Footnote ⁶⁰ From very early in his career, Athanasius conceived of a vast divide between Greeks and Christians and adopted a strategy that characterized Greek philosophy as the corrupted product of corrupting polytheism and idolatry, a result of “inadequate and irrational reasoning.”Footnote ⁶¹ Thus it was useless (pace Origen's understanding of philosophy as “useful”Footnote ⁶²) and unnecessary for arriving at true knowledge of God. The revelation found in scripture was sufficient, and there was no need to supplement revelation with Greek wisdom.

I believe it is important to note that while Athanasius's rejection of Greek philosophy was blunt and his investment in it not overt, he did have an adequate familiarity with Platonic philosophy, espoused some of its ideas, and was able to engage in the “philosophical game” of dialectical argumentation.Footnote ⁶³ He tread an interesting line between bankrupting the Greek philosophers of their authority and voice, and engaging them on their own turf. Despite the fact that the details of Athanasius's early life and education are sketchy, his way of articulating an alternative philosophical culture belies an apparent influence of Greek paideia and, I would argue, points to a concealed, even if habituated, investment. His own silence on his background served to distance himself further from any endorsement.Footnote ⁶⁴

The intellectual character of ancient Alexandria is a subject of great interest, one that cannot be explored in great detail here. Nevertheless, some reflections on the nature of the education of a young Christian man at the beginning of the fourth century might help to shed some light on what I mean when I characterize Athanasius's commitment to the classical philosophical tradition as one that is, in part, “misrecognized.” We know that the Christian intellectual environment of Alexandria in the second and third centuries was one in which there was close contact between Christian and non-Christian thinkers. Origen and his colleague Heraclas, future bishop of Alexandria, both studied under Ammonius Saccas, also teacher of Plotinus.Footnote ⁶⁵ The curriculum of Origen's “school” at Alexandria included the study of the Greek philosophers and was open to both Christian and non-Christian students.Footnote ⁶⁶ Eusebius writes:

Tension mounted between the lay Christian teacher and the bishop during Origen's tenure as head of catechetical instruction in Alexandria, with the bishop (particularly Demetrius) attempting to bring lay teachers under his direct control and supervision. Any independence, or what has been called the “private” nature, such a school may have had, in relation to the bishop's authority, was lost after Origen: his two immediate successors, Heraclas and Dionysius, were both elected bishops of Alexandria.Footnote ⁶⁸ Heraclas, in particular, was philosophically inclined, and even donned the philosopher's attire.Footnote ⁶⁹ Watts has argued that the Alexandrian church, growing more and more suspicious of independent Christian teachers in conversation with non-Christian intellectuals and their ideas, began to take measures to “eliminate the speculative environment” of these circles.Footnote ⁷⁰ As a result, the sort of social and cultural interaction and exchange of ideas between Christians and Greeks that characterized an earlier period in Alexandria diminished. (Eusebius, for example, cites Porphyry's praise of Origen's knowledge of philosophical literature to score points for Origen.Footnote ⁷¹) Nevertheless, the study of the Greek philosophers continued, as is evidenced by the great Christian intellectuals of the fourth century who were certainly familiar with their works. But by this point, the philosophical articulation of Christian doctrine, which earlier had been in more direct conversation with the circles of Greek intellectuals, while not abandoned, had simply become the accepted mode of expression. In many respects, its debt to a previous period when there was more Christian/Greek interaction, and to the continuing intellectual discussion of Alexandria, was misrecognized. Thus, a young man like Athanasius, educated in the ecclesiastical circles of Christian Alexandria in the early fourth century, would most likely have been isolated from the social and intellectual networks of Alexandrian Greeks in a way that Origen was not. The Arian controversy of the fourth century only served to enhance the Alexandrian church's suspicion of Christian teachers with a speculative philosophical bent. Watts sees Athanasius's attacks against academic Christianity in his festal letters as a response to Arianism, and the Life of Antony as “an original and carefully designed program” that identifies the Christian ascetic as the true philosopher.Footnote ⁷²

Athanasius's overt offensive against Greek thought and practice began long before the Arian controversy and is found in his early apologetic works. Many of his arguments here reappear in the Vit. Ant. Both Contra gentes and De incarnatione begin with a defense of the reasonable nature of Christianity against the charge that Christian faith was “irrational,” ά'λογος.Footnote ⁷³ In the introduction of Contra gentes, Athanasius writes that the revelation of scripture is “sufficient” for declaring the truth (exactly what Antony will teach his students in his first extended discourse). In his explication of a theology of the cross as the very manifestation of God's wisdom, in good Pauline form, Athanasius asserts that his intention is to demonstrate to the “Gentiles” who scoff at the cross that “faith in Christ” is not “unreasonable.”Footnote ⁷⁴ In fact, it is through the cross that the “knowledge of God” is made manifest. The decline of idolatry is proof that the power of God through Christ fills the world. Moreover, the power of the cross scatters demons.

Athanasius sets out to demonstrate the reasonableness of Christian faith by engaging his opponents in “reasonable arguments”: “As our argument is not lacking in demonstrative proof, come let us put them also to shame on reasonable grounds.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Thus, Athanasius willingly participates in the philosophical game, or better, competition, utilizing skills and resources (literacy, education, a position of authority) that made his entry of consequence. Furthermore, his very participation in such a project required him both to invest covertly in the cultural capital that fueled and drove the competition, while overtly challenging the basic principles of the game and proposing a Christian “heterodox” alternative to the dominant Greek “orthodoxy.” This alternative was founded not only on the revelation of God in scripture, but also on a natural revelation inherent in the human intellect. As such, there was no express need for teachers or schools: “The knowledge (γνῶσις) of the worship of God and the truth about the universe is received not so much from the teaching of human beings, as much as it is intelligible by itself.”Footnote ⁷⁶

Athanasius contends that knowledge of truth and virtue does not require study of Greek philosophical texts in Greek institutions of education—in fact, it would preclude this, as these all have been corrupted by the error of idolatry, rendering them insufficient. Therefore, his alternative proposal is one that is comprehensive, suggesting that Christians devote themselves to a different canon of authoritative texts, different institutions, and different teachers: the Old and New Testaments replaced the Dialogues of Plato as sufficient definitive texts;Footnote ⁷⁷ Hebrew prophets, Christian apostles and authors, instead of Greek philosophers, formed the authoritative doctrinal and interpretive traditions;Footnote ⁷⁸ and, finally, the activity of the Triune God, especially in the incarnation of the Son, rather than allegorized Greek myths, provided the narrative of salvation. As a teacher, Athanasius provides his students with arguments to be used in their own participation in this cultural competition. E. P. Meijering thus regarded these companion apologetic works as “an elementary education in the Christian faith,” a στοιχɛίωσις, as Athanasius himself terms it at De incarnatione 56.Footnote ⁷⁹ Athanasius does not simply supply rational arguments, but constructs an alternative philosophical program, which, in conversation with a competing philosophical culture, both built upon and refuted it, in a process of building a Christian paideia. At once engaged in fundamental philosophical discussions of his day and disengaged from the schools and circles of the Greeks, Athanasius envisioned a Christian philosophy that was “meaner,” accessible to men and women, Greeks and non-Greeks, rich and poor—and not confined to the narrow circles of senatorial families who had the means and luxury of educating their sons in the rhetorical and philosophical schools of important centers such as Athens, Rome, and his own Alexandria. Athanasius boldly (and rashly) declared that the sun had set on the Greeks, boasting that the dominance of the Greek philosophers had come to an end. Their philosophy would be replaced by the true doctrine (διδασκαλία [De incarnatione 51]) revealed in scripture, and, especially, in the incarnation and cross of Christ:

Corrupted by idolatry, Greek wisdom could not lead to virtue, as the very gods it professed acted irrationally and were slaves to their passions.Footnote ⁸¹ No allegorizing of myth could erase this indelible embarrassment to the Greeks.Footnote ⁸² As such, Athanasius declared the disappearance of the “wisdom of the world” (De incarnatione 46; 55), citing as proof the “wise” (probably educated Greek converts), who were turning away from Greek philosophy to devote their studies to the gospels (De incarnatione 53). A Christian philosophy would still need models and exemplars, but these were now virgins, monks, and martyrs, whom Athanasius calls the students of Christ (De incarnatione 48). They were “proofs” of the truth of the teaching of Christ, who “has by his godhead confounded and overshadowed the opinions of the poets and the delusion of the daemons and the wisdom of the Greeks.”

Athanasius outlined a vision of an alternative Christian philosophy and philosophical culture in his tracts Contra Gentes and On the Incarnation. In the context of a Constantinian and post-Constantinian era, Athanasius's proposal posed real challenges to the established philosophical orthodoxies of the previous Roman regimes.

IV. The Life of Antony and Greek Paideia

In the light of these arguments, I suggest that the figure of Antony in the Vit. Ant. serves, in part, to challenge the dominance of Greek paideia and to propose an alternative Christian learning aimed at wisdom and virtue. I do not see this as the only purpose of the Vit. Ant., but as one element of a comprehensive strategy on Athanasius's part to promote ascetic Christianity and to defend Christian orthodoxy against groups such as the Arians and Meletians. I believe, however, that this move against the Greeks is often overlooked. While the preface and closing of the work are addressed to Christian ascetics, a non-Christian audience is also envisioned:

This is an audience that would include the intellectual elite who were the target of Athanasius's earlier works. Abandoning the approach of previous Christian biographers who found a certain usefulness in Greek wisdom in their competitive exchanges with opponents, Athanasius indicates from the very beginning of his account of the life of Antony that Greek education played no role in the monk's attainment of wisdom and virtue. As a youth, he “could not bear to learn letters” (γράμματα μὲν μαθɛῖν ου'κ η'νɛ´σχɛτο [Vit. Ant. 1.2]) and refused the education that would have set him on the path to social mobility. Instead, Antony learns from Christian scripture (Vit. Ant. 2–3); and in his first lecture to his followers, he teaches them that scripture is sufficient (ι‘κανάς) for “instruction” (πρòς διδασκαλίαν) (Vit. Ant. 16.1).Footnote ⁸⁴ Bankrupting the cultural and philosophical value of Greek “letters” (γράµµατα), this assertion of Antony (which echoes the view of Athanasius) invests the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom in Christian scripture, the direct revelation of God's wisdom, rather than the corrupted pseudo-wisdom of the philosophers. It is significant that Athanasius's model of wisdom and virtue is an uneducated Copt who does not speak Greek, and who requires a translator when debating his philosopher opponents. These narrative and rhetorical strategies served to drive a dissimulating wedge between Antony and the linguistic, practical, and conceptual worlds of Greek intellectual culture.

I believe we can already see the complexity of Athanasius's approach. While it may, in fact, betray a suspicion of what has been termed “academic Christianity,” that is, organized communities engaged in textual study under the guidance of a teacher and influenced by Greek intellectual culture, his rejection was not absolute.Footnote ⁸⁵ Athanasius can compete with his opponents precisely because he seeks to redefine their models. Furthermore, with his invitation to the “Gentiles,” an attempt to attract Greek intellectuals to invest their souls and their skills into the Christian intellectual project, Athanasius was compelled to adopt arguments and strategies that could convince his intellectual competitors that Christianity was a logical and viable alternative to Greek systems and circles of learning.Footnote ⁸⁶

While Antony's formation occurs outside of Greek institutions, it still bears resemblance to the Greek way in two respects: the attachment to a teacher and, relatedly, the mimetic dynamic of education.Footnote ⁸⁷ It was not uncommon for the sons of the Roman aristocracy in Late Antiquity to travel to important centers, such as Athens, Alexandria, and Constantinople, to study with renowned experts and teachers in rhetoric and philosophy. In the Laws, Plato regards proper paideia as that which shapes and molds young men into the best of men, producing good and perfected citizens of the state.Footnote ⁸⁸ To pursue education for any other reason than the perfection of virtue, such as for wealth, was a “vulgar” and “unworthy” pursuit. Antony, too, like the other young men of his time, left home to seek out great teachers, but he sought them not among the interpreters of Pythagoras or Plato. Nor did he travel to distant lands, not even to Alexandria.Footnote ⁸⁹ “The Greeks leave home and cross the sea in order to be educated,” Antony informs his students, “but we have no need to leave home for the kingdom of heaven or to cross the sea for virtue” (Vit. Ant. 20.4). Antony shuns the cities and their schools in search of the desert teachers who lived on the fringes of civilized society (Vit. Ant. 3.3–4 & 4.1). This is a violent separation of the pursuit and acquisition of wisdom and virtue from the experts and institutions normally associated with their cultivation. Through the figure of Antony, Athanasius asserts that virtue is not dependent on paideia. It is not bound to the embrace of Hellenism, nor is it the proper domain of Greek teachers. Instead, Antony, an uneducated (but not necessarily illiterateFootnote ⁹⁰) Copt, is able to cultivate a virtue that is natural to his human nature through his encounters with the enigmatic “pre-monks,” from whom he collects various virtues, like Pythagoras before him, to assemble them into a perfect Christian systemFootnote ⁹¹: graciousness (τò χαρίɛν), intensity (τò σύντονον) in prayer, freedom from anger (τò ἀo´ργητον), the love of humanity (τò φιλάνθρωπον), watchfulness (τò ἀγρυπνɛῖν), the love of words (τò φιλολογɛῖν), patient endurance (καρτɛρία), fasting (νηστɛία), sleeping on the ground (χαμɛυνία), gentleness (πραότης), long-suffering (μακροθυμία), piety (ɛυ'σɛ´βɛια), and love toward others (τη`ν πρòς ἀλλήλους ἀγάπην). He admires the zeal of their ascetic practice, their prayer vigils, and their study of scripture.Footnote ⁹²

As to the inherent nature of virtue, the uneducated Antony echoes the sentiments of his biographer. “All virtue needs, then, is our willing, since it is in us [referring to Luke 17:21], and arises from us. For virtue exists when the soul maintains its intellectual part (τò νοɛρóν) according to nature (κατὰ φύσιν)” (Vit. Ant. 20.5). He continues: “The task is not difficult: if we remain as we came into being, then virtue is with us, but if we think about bad things, we are judged as evil” (Vit. Ant. 20.8). Similarly, in the Contra gentes, Athanasius had maintained that the path to the kingdom is within every rational creature by virtue of possession of a rational soul:Footnote ⁹³ “The road to [God] is neither far from us nor outside of us. But it is within us” (Contra gentes 30). God can be seen and known by the human soul and reason, and even the Greeks have the capability of knowing the true God and his will.Footnote ⁹⁴ Yet, their philosophy and education prohibits them from true knowledge of God because it has been corrupted by idolatry. This corruption sits so deeply within Greek literature, culture, and thought that the Greeks have separated themselves from God and plunged themselves into vice, evident within the very structures of Roman government and society. The result is enslavement to irrationality, the very charge leveled against Christians.Footnote ⁹⁵ And the tables are turned.

Antony, instead, progresses successfully on the path to virtue through a co-working, συνɛργία, with the incarnate Word, from whom he derives his “activity in holiness.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Through faith, and a turning of his mind (νοῦς) toward its natural focus—contemplation of God through the Word—Antony becomes receptive to the divine power of the Word, which aids and cooperates with his natural, internal capacity toward virtue: “But Antony, reflecting on Christ in his heart (ɛ'νθυμούμɛνος) and the goodness he had through him, and reflecting on the spiritual insight given to him by his soul (τò νoɛρóν), extinguished the Devil's deceitful coals” (Vit. Ant. 5). Khaled Anatolios describes this as “Christic virtue” and is careful to explain that Athanasius's assertion that virtue is internal to the human person, “within us,” and that all that is necessary for virtue is “our willing,” is not to claim that virtue is achieved apart from divine assistance; rather, “through the incarnation, what naturally belongs to God and was historically effected through the agency of the Incarnate Word becomes in some sense ascribable to us as subjects, through grace.”Footnote ⁹⁷ It is through Christ as teacher and revealer of wisdom, model and aid in virtue, that Antony becomes a true philosopher.

V. Competing with the Philosophers

Athanasius's polemic against Greek paideia takes on a narrative form in Antony's confrontations with philosophers. These encounters are part of a larger narrative unit that refutes unorthodox doctrines and groups. In these episodes, Athanasius presents Antony as “unschooled,” but ever skilled to converse with ease on philosophical topics, mastering technical jargon and debating nuanced philosophical points. He both impresses and shames his opponents. Without having set foot in a school in the intellectual capital of Alexandria or picking up a text of Plato—even without knowing the Greek language—Antony demonstrates the intellectual and rhetorical skills of a highly trained philosopher. What we see here is a modification of the trope of the wise, uneducated peasant, who displays an “ethical superiority” to the urban intellectual.Footnote ⁹⁸ His is a knowledge of God that derives from the seeds of wisdom inherent in his rational soul and perfected by the guidance and assistance of God through prayer, ascetical practice, and the reading of scripture.Footnote ⁹⁹ Thus, the true philosopher, that is, the Christian philosopher, need not, and ought not, turn to the corrupted and irrational Greek schools, teachers, and texts; but needs only to turn inward, to find inside his or her own self that which the Greeks sought elsewhere.

The first round of the competition begins at Vit. Ant. 72. Even before Antony's opponents appear, we learn that this unschooled Coptic hermit who casts out demons is also “extremely wise” (φρóνιμος … λίαν), “shrewd” (α’γχίνους),Footnote ¹⁰⁰ and “intelligent” (συνɛτóς). Antony is a philosopher inwardly, but outwardly he is not—at least according to the standards of the period. The opposite can be said of his interlocutors. This is significant, because when his philosopher competitors arrive to “put Antony to the test,” they are immediately recognizable as visual icons of Greek philosophical culture. They bear the external image of the philosopher and represent visually aristocratic Greek intellectual culture. Antony knows them “from their appearance” (ɛ’κ τοῦ προσω´που), probably a reference to the characteristic dress of the philosopher—the τρίβων (which Tertullian had re-tailored!). But it becomes readily apparent who the wise man truly is. This contrast of external appearance and internal state participates in a critique of would-be philosophers who do violence to the vocation with their attraction to fame and wealth.Footnote ¹⁰¹

This first exchange is very brief, and deliberately incorporates echoes of the Pauline dichotomy of wisdoms. Through an interpreter (and again we are reminded of Antony's distance from respectable Greek philosophical culture), Antony addresses his visitors: “Why do you trouble yourselves, philosophers, coming to see such a foolish (μωρóν) person?” (Vit. Ant. 72). They politely disagree and assure Antony that he is indeed wise (φρóνιμον). Seizing on their recognition of his wisdom, and in the form of a good Greek teacher, Antony urges them (as students) toward mimêsis: “If you think I am wise, become like me, for we ought to imitate what is good … Become like me: I am a Christian.”Footnote ¹⁰² The philosophers depart in amazement without responding.

The second brief encounter (Vit. Ant. 73) moves the discussion from the identification of the wise man to a philosophical dialogue on the relationship between intellect (νοῦς) and letters (γράμματα). Once again, through the speech of the unschooled Antony, Athanasius challenges both the adequacy of the standard course of Greek education for coming to knowledge of God, and the authority and legitimacy of such institutions. This challenge is a radical one. An education in “letters” was not simply a matter of advanced philosophical studies, but referred instead to the basic grammatical and rhetorical training any man needed for upward mobility in society. Nevertheless, we can see this tension: behind this rejection of “letters” by the narrative icon of Antony is the voice and pen of Athanasius, the educated bishop of Alexandria, who had studied “letters” and philosophy, and who now in some measure speaks through Antony as heir of his legacy and transmitter of his memory.

Anticipating ridicule for his lack of education, Antony questions the philosophers on the cause of “letters,” inquiring whether the intellect produces letters, or vice versa. Without hesitation, the Greeks respond that the intellect is the source and inventor of letters. Antony concludes, “The person whose mind is sound (ὑγιαίνɛι), therefore, has no need of letters” (Vit. Ant. 73.3). That is to say, a sound intellect is one that is maintained in accordance with its natural, created state. When the intellect remains focused on its origins and destination, that is, its source and end (God), it will remain untainted and healthy. Again, echoing the opening chapters of Athanasius's Contra gentes, Antony will demonstrate, in the next exchange with the philosophers, how polytheism and idolatry have corrupted the Greek intellect and bred confusion. With these serious, inherent flaws, Greek education is not only problematic, it is both a result of humanity's falling away from God and that which transmits error and vice, generation after generation—in short, Greek education not only preserved and transmitted philosophical and theological errors, but it facilitated the reproduction of a dominant culture and produced individuals whose minds, and thus their views of reality, were shaped according to these errors. It is not simply that Christians ought to avoid reading about the sexual escapades of the Homeric gods. The challenge is much more serious, and the charge much more radical. If the educational system proposes and inculcates false claims on the nature of God, participation in it endangers one's movement toward union with God, as “letters” will corrupt the mind. What is more, since it is this system of education that reproduces the structures of society and shapes the “minds” of the individuals who rule, Hellenism has produced a society under the reign of irrational minds.Footnote ¹⁰³

The philosophers depart, reflecting on how this encounter with Antony has challenged their assumptions about the good life. First, they are amazed that they had found “such great understanding (σύνɛσιν) in an unlettered person.” Second, they are astonished by Antony's “character”: “Although Antony had been raised on that mountain, as it were, and had grown old there, his character was not wild; instead, he had the graces of someone raised in the city. His speech was seasoned with divine salt” (Vit. Ant. 73.4). Eusebius's account of the life of Origen had attempted to accentuate the social respectability and philosophical legitimacy of the Christian intellectual by emphasizing how he was like Greek philosophers, not simply in character, but also in habitus, that is, in skills and dispositions. Athanasius, however, rejects this approach, and demonstrates how much the true Christian philosopher is unlike his Greek counterparts, at least culturally. The figure of Antony offers a paradigm of a Christian philosopher who is at once detached from the cultural capital, institutions, and dispositions of the Greek philosopher, yet successful in attaining the philosophical telos his Greek competitors fail to achieve.

The final dialogue (Vit. Ant. 74–80) between Antony and “those among the Greeks who suppose themselves wise” brings the entire sequence to a climax. It is an especially interesting demonstration of cultural competition in which Athanasius employs both polemical and apologetic strategies that articulate a Christian stance toward the dominant philosophical culture. This section, in particular, resonates harmoniously with both the Contra gentes and De incarnatione, and approaches questions of language, philosophical vocabulary, method of argumentation, epistemology, and mythological narrative. Here the tension arises in Antony's critique of “argumentation” (α’πóδɛιξις), an important skill for anyone trained in philosophy. Of course, Antony's criticism is that his opponents rely on fancy verbal sophistry, rather than on the expression of truth. The desert father does not debate, but simply speaks, commanding the attention of a captive audience—both the philosophers and the readers of the Life. His teaching is dotted with “argumentative speech.” It is replete with the specialized language of the philosophical field. Thus, in some sense, the unlettered hermit can command a position on the field of play, equipped as he is with the knowledge and skills of his competitors.

In the figure of Antony, the lover of truth is detached from his cultural and social foundations. Put simply, it is an attempt to “get the Greek out,” to demonstrate that the successful acquisition of wisdom and virtue is not limited by either cultural (read, Hellenic) or social boundaries. Though Antony's relatively technical philosophical lecture is spoken through an interpreter (Vit. Ant. 77.1), the reader (at least the reader of the Greek Life) reads Antony in Greek—his biographer having “re-translated” his “lesson.” In this way, Athanasius violently detaches “language purism,” what Swain has called “a badge of elite,” Hellenic identity, from the identification of the philosopher, while affirming Antony's linguistic capital in his ability to engage in, and triumph, in the discussion.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ While Antony appears as a teacher who captivates and commands his audience, bearing the pedagogical authority of a teacher who communicates and lives the philosophy he professes, he does not teach in an urban school with an endowed chair, enjoying the benefits of the intellectual's life in urban centers. Rather, Antony inhabits a city of another sort, one far removed from the cities of the philosophers culturally and ideologically, as well as geographically.

Having explicitly critiqued the Greek method of dialectic and, implicitly, the social and cultural habitus and location of the Greek philosophers, Antony's discourse turns to a lengthy discussion of core philosophical and theological questions. It is not my intention here to discuss these matters in detail. Rather, it is worth noting how this narrative unit of the Vit. Ant., which, I have argued, is an example of how the bios served as an arena for the cultural competition for philosophy, reaches its zenith here. Once Athanasius, through the figure of Antony, has challenged the culturally dominant image of the authoritative (Greek) philosopher and the pedagogical route that formed and legitimated him, he outlines the central doctrines of a Christian philosophy, with a typical Athanasian emphasis on the incarnation and the cross of Christ. Here the tables are dramatically turned on the Greeks, as Antony demonstrates that these central Christian beliefs, which the Greeks considered “irrational,” actually reveal a completely pure and rational knowledge of God that leads to virtue. The cross, he explains, is “a sign of courage and proof that we look upon death with contempt” (Vit. Ant. 74.3).Footnote ¹⁰⁵ It is not a reason for ridicule, but a sign that stands at the center of a complete and coherent Christian wisdom. The myths of the Greeks, on the other hand, even when understood allegorically, depict the gods as slaves to their passions, and thus are useless models of the virtuous life. Regarding the incarnation, Antony asks, which is more irrational, to assert that the Word of God participated in human nature in order that human beings might participate in the divine nature, or to “liken God to irrational beings?”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ “For these are the objects of worship of wise men like yourselves!”

We should not overlook the fact that this attack confronts the established philosophical orthodoxy on its own terms. That is, despite the scathing assault, Athanasius does not discard typically Platonic doctrines altogether; nor does he reject the specialized language of the philosophical field. Simply put, what we do not see here is a total disengagement on the part of Athanasius, despite the claims that there is one. We do not see, to propose a fictional example, something like the author of the biblical book of Revelation refuting Platonic doctrine in a completely different conceptual, cultural, and semantic world. The late Roman world of ideas and perceptions was still permeated and dominated by a Platonic view of reality, even if it was not always perceived as such. Athanasius “negotiates” the terms and meanings of the debate by appealing to the revelation of Christian scripture:

Antony's monologue continues—his visitors speechless. This Christian philosopher has clearly convinced his opponents of the truth of his arguments. He smiles and declares, “These beliefs of yours are self-evidently refuted” (Vit. Ant. 77.1). The teacher now turns to basic epistemological questions. The Greek charge that Christianity was ά'λογoς was both philosophical and epistemological; that is, both what Christians believed and why they believed were deemed irrational. The Christian appeal to revelation and faith was seen by the philosophers as a blind acceptance of irrational principles without any critical, rational inquiry. In this last major section of the Vit. Ant.’s refutation of the established philosophical orthodoxy, Antony discusses a dichotomy between “the working of faith” (η‘ ɛ'νɛ´ργɛια πίστɛως) and “demonstration through arguments” (η‘ διὰ λόγων ἀπόδɛιξις): “How is reality accurately discerned, and especially the knowledge of God?” (Vit. Ant. 77.3).

This is where Athanasius, through the figure of Antony, applies an understanding of Paul's dichotomy of wisdoms that regards the “wisdom of God” as the working of faith, and the “wisdom of the world” as demonstration through arguments. We should be careful, however, not to read a modern dichotomy of faith versus reason into Athanasius's position. Reason is not discarded. Rather, the revelation found in the inspired scriptures constitutes the principles of a natural rationality, defined as the condition of the human intellect as possessed by Adam before the fall to which one returns once purified of the errors of idolatry.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ True knowledge is not deduced from reason alone, but stems first from the revelation of scripture, apprehended through reason.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ While Antony will conclude that in the end dialectic is “superfluous,” it is precisely through argumentation that he defeats the false knowledge of his opponents. And this is the key. On this point, Antony corners the philosophers into admitting that the working of faith precedes the demonstration of argument. Knowledge derived from faith is a disposition (διάθɛσις) of a soul in accord with nature, and assisted by God. Argumentation, on the other hand, is a skill (τɛ´χνη) that is learned, and which can be used to defend irrational and false ideas—as the Greeks themselves did. Thus, the art of argumentation, a part of the treasure trove of the cultural capital acquired in Greek circles, is understood negatively, and bankrupted of its value. The ability to develop rational arguments may demonstrate a person's skill, but it was unnecessary for a well-ordered and virtuous soul. It was also unnecessary for true knowledge of God, which is supplied through revelation and faith (Vit. Ant. 77.3). Christians “know” truth through faith. They do not discover it or “construct” it through the argumentation of words. Those who rely on Platonic dialectic to discover truth will find that they are unable even to “perceive” (φράσαι) what Christians have secure knowledge of through the working of faith.

In the conclusion of these encounters, Athanasius attempts to shift cultural capital away from the eloquent Greek to the Christian man of actions. He does it, of course, through crafted argumentation. With the basis for knowledge rooted in faith as a disposition of soul, Antony has achieved through “Christianity” what the philosophers were unable to achieve through “Hellenism,” terms used in the text itself (Vit. Ant. 78). Christian pistis is proposed as a superior alternative to Greek sophia and the basis for “true worship” (Vit. Ant. 80). Antony notes that the appearance of Christianity has heralded the decline of the worship of Greek gods. The spread of Christianity is a prelude to the disappearance of Greek philosophy (Vit. Ant. 78; cf. De incarnatione 46): “Your views perish, though acclaimed and celebrated far and wide. But the faith and teaching of Christ, ridiculed by you and persecuted frequently by rulers, has filled the world.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ The proof of this lies in the virtuous lives, not of philosophers, but of the virgins and martyrs, the new caste of Christian philosophers (De incarnatione 48). Antony proves his own authority by casting out demons, those who had fooled the Greeks into believing they were gods and who had instilled irrationality in Greek culture. Ultimately it is this power, not his arguments, that convinces the philosophers.