SOURCE: Pettersen, Alvyn. “A Good Being Would Envy None Life: Athanasius on the Goodness of God.” Theology Today 55, no. 1 (April 1998): 59-69.

In the following essay, Pettersen analyzes Athanasius's emphasis on the goodness of God in his writings.

The title of this article looks like a literary flourish and in ways it is. In his Timaeus Plato writes that the One “was good; and for the good there never has been any envy concerning anyone.”¹ Athanasius of Alexandria echoes this in his early dual work Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione when, in a rather literary way, he records that “a good being would be envious of no one; so [the God of all who is good and excellent by nature] envies nobody existence but rather wishes everyone to exist” (Contra Gentes 41). He especially reflects Plato when he pens that “God is good—or rather the source of goodness—and the good...