Bishop of Alexandria (c. 296 - 373), the chief defender of Nicene orthodoxy against Arianism in the fourth century. He was a young deacon when he attended the Council of Nicea in 325 as secretary to the bishop of Alexandria. Made bishop himself three years later, he was exiled five times by four different Roman emperors for refusing to compromise on the deity of Christ — total exile time: approximately 17 years of his 45-year episcopate. His most famous saying is not actually his: Athanasius contra mundum, "Athanasius against the world," coined centuries later to describe his lonely stand.
Athanasius saw clearly what was at stake. Arianism taught that the Son was a created being — the highest creature, but still a creature. Athanasius recognized that a creature cannot save other creatures; only God can reconcile humanity to God. His masterpiece, On the Incarnation, argues that God the Son became fully human precisely so that humanity could be brought into fellowship with God — the famous formula, "He became what we are that we might become what He is" (meaning united to God by adoption, not deification in the pagan sense). Athanasius also gave the Church its first list of the 27 New Testament books matching our current canon (Easter letter of 367). Without Athanasius, Nicene Christianity would likely have fallen; with him, the Church retained the full gospel. Every time a pastor holds a lonely doctrinal line while pressure mounts, he walks the contra mundum road Athanasius paved.