Kirill Zinkovskii: Saint Athanasius the Great on Matter and the Human Body

The teaching of St. Athanasius on the eschatological perspective of human flesh has been so far beyond a focus of close theological attention. In the study we’ve shown that St. Athanasius provided theological underpinning to a qualitatively different from Origen conception of the nature of resurrected bodies. By contrast to Platonic tradition, in St. Athanasius the lower material reality is not rejected in the process of deification as it is to be framed to a truly harmonious state in conformity with the Logos.Correcting the errors of Origen’s anthropology, the Saint brought the Alexandrian theology back to the grounds of the biblical positive view on the destiny of matter and flesh of the human body. We also highlight the emergence of a fundamentally new concept of meonism in St. Athanasius. We’ve shown the great difference of understanding of the eternal and chaotic meon (τὸ μὴ ὂν) of the Middle Platonists to the meonism of matter in the Athanasius. The latter is supposed to reflect logically interrelated conceptions of matter as having appeared from the absolute non-being, the necessity of existence of created beings as rooted in the Creator’s good will, and the anthropocentricity of the design and providence for the material world.We have also traced two original expressions of the Saint, which confirm the realistic character of his Eucharistic theology.