CLAS / PHIL 2610 Paganism to Christianity

Reading Handout 10. Christian Apology

Reading for Thursday April 4, 2002

Reading: Chadwick 54-79

Lane and MacMullen 14.1-15.2 (pp. 164-201)

Our word apology derives from the Greek apologia, which means something like “defense”. Since the fourth century BC, Greek and in turn Jewish intellectuals had written learned “apologies” of various philosophical and theological positions that came under attack. With the rise of Christianity and the beginnings of persecutions in the second half of the first century AD, Christian authors adopted the same literary genre and perfected it to a refined art form. Time has preserved the works of seven Greek and three Latin apologists: Quadratus (c. 120), Aristides (c. 145), Justin (AD 150), Athenagoras (AD 177), Tatian (AD 180) and Theophilus (AD 180) and Eusebius (c. 315) in Greek and Tertullian (AD 197), Minucius Felix (early 200s) and Lactantius (c. 310) in Latin. Today the bulk of our reading consists of the Greek apology of Athenagoras, one of the shorter extant apologetic texts (Lactantius’ Divine Institutes stretches to nearly 1000 pages and Eusebius’ dual apologetic works to over twice that). Athenagoras writes explicitly to the emperors of his day and defends against stock charges lodged against Christians while himself engaging in polemics against paganism. His essay provides a model for many of the arguments developed in the later and more prolix apologists as well.

Questions:

1. What were the charges brought against Christians by the polytheists of their day? Were any of these accurate attacks on Christianity and Christian practice or mere slanders?
2. What did the Roman governor Pliny think of the Christians? Did he perceive them as a real threat? Why did he choose to carry through with his persecution?
3. What cultural heroes did the Christians turn to in their defense of the faith? From where did they draw their arguments for Christianity and against polytheism? Were the early Christian apologists concerned to communicate with the pagans on their own terms?
4. To what degree is Athenagoras’ apology a defense of Christianity and to what degree is it an attack on paganism? Was it wise to undermine traditional pagan religion in this way?
5. Would Athenagoras’ pagan contemporaries have regarded his arguments as revolutionary? Would the arguments have challenged the cosmological and theological notions of those contemporaries? Did Athenagoras share cosmological and theological ideas with the pagans (think of demons, pagan gods, the structure of the universe)?
6. Had Christian apology changed by the time Lactantius was writing? Had circumstances changed for the Christians?