On Athenagoras' apologia for the Christians

 

Text of Athenagoras' "Apology"

     Athenagoras addresses his apology to joint Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus[1], probably near the end of the former’s life, i.e. c. AD 177.[2]  It seems to me that Athenagoras’ repeated homages to the intellectual acuity of the senior emperor crosses the line between appropriate deference and shameless flattery[3], but then again, I’m not the “greatest of sovereigns” (echoes of Daniel’s throne-room manner vis-à-vis Nebuchadnezzar)[4].  Athenagoras starts off strong, labeling pagan religious practice as “ridiculous”.  The satirizing of idolatry, both the so-called gods themselves as well as those who fabricate and worship them, is a constant throughout the apology, reminding us of prophetic critiques of idol-worship such as those found in Second Isaiah.[5]  Athenagoras begins by demonstrating the absurdity of persecuting people simply for bearing the name “Christian”.[6]  Claiming that Christians are the victims of slanderous gossip and false accusations, Athenagoras pleads that they be treated as equal to all other subjects of the empire before the law, and to be granted due process (one presumes, as opposed to lynching or summary torture and/or execution).

     Athenagoras sets himself the task of refuting three absurd allegations being brought against Christians, namely atheism, Thyestean feasts[7] and Oedipodean intercourse[8].  The vast majority of the apology’s chapters consist in what turns out to be not only a refutation of the charge of atheism, but also a bracing attack against both pagan beliefs and religious practice.  Athenagoras begins his defense of Christian theology by explaining orthodox belief in the one God as creator, as distinct from matter.  He quotes Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics to buttress his case for a single uncreated and eternal God.  Athenagoras avails himself of two primary weapons as he builds his case for the Christian vision of the deity – the Scriptures[9] on the one hand, and reason[10] on the other.  Classical Greek thought had taught that the deity was “uncreated, impassible, unchangeable and indivisible”, and Athenagoras fully concurs.

     Athenagoras’ doctrine of God is surprisingly trinitarian[11] and much weight is put on the Johannine concept of the Son as the Logos (i.e. “reason”) of the Father.  Indeed, the Son came forth from God as “the idea” of all material things.[12]  Lest Marcus Aurelius be left with the impression that all the Christians are philosophers, Athenagoras disabuses him of that notion by insisting that “among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works” (i.e. they live according to the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount[13]).

     Turning from his constructive case for the Christian vision of God, Athenagoras, beginning in chapter XIV, trains his guns on the absurdity of pagan idolatry.  As a first move in his stratagem to discredit the pagan gods, Athenagoras traces their genesis to the works of Orpheus, Homer and Hesiod “who gave both genealogies and names to those whom they call gods”.  Athenagoras quotes Herodotus to this effect.  Not yet content, Athenagoras proceeds to catalogue the names of the artists and sculptors who had fashioned well know images of the gods that could be found throughout the Mediterranean world.  Athenagoras’ case is cumulative – we know who named the gods, we know who built their statues; at the end of the day, the gods of ancient Greece and Rome owe their existence – both in literature and in stone – to…men.  The gods are man-made, and ipso facto, they are void of reality, of true being.[14]

     At long last, in the final six chapters, Athenagoras refutes the remaining two allegations, namely cannibalism and incest in the common life of Christians.  Concerning incest, Athenagoras states that the idea is absurd because Christians are very scrupulous about sexual morality due to their fear of divine judgment.[15]  Concerning cannibalism, Athenagoras points to the Christians’ abhorrence of all forms of cruelty; indeed, they hate to see people suffer capital punishment and they condemn both abortion and the exposing of unwanted infants.  How much less could they possibly contemplate cannibalism, especially in light of their belief in the resurrection of the body?

     I now propose to offer a few concluding thoughts on theology, ethics and apologetics as pertaining to this text.  Athenagoras is definitely punching above his weight class in that he is speaking on behalf of a misunderstood minority within the empire to the most powerful man in the world – Caesar, the Lord of Rome.[16]  Athenagoras flatters Marcus Aurelius’ intelligence and encyclopedic knowledge, all the while presuming to dismantle the entire belief system/worldview which had always been taken for granted by everyone in (non-Jewish) antiquity.  True, Athenagoras does this by engaging with the emperor as a philosopher, and thus, as it were, turns Marcus Aurelius into a fellow member of an “inner ring” of those who see the world through the eyes of reason, over and against those who would attack Christians with irrational hatred.  Though there is undoubtedly value in taking this apologetic tack, by building a case for faith on the common ground of shared logical reasoning, there is also the danger of reducing Christianity to a system of ideas, when in truth, the core of Christianity is the incarnation, the union of heaven and earth, of “the divine” and “the material”, of the uncreated with the creation.  The biblical vision of reality goes beyond any simple distinction between Plato’s forms and the rough-and-tumble world of space, time and matter.  Of course, there is a certain inevitability to all this, in that Christianity so quickly became a “gentile” religious movement as it spread throughout the empire.

     Also, Athenagoras’ polemic contra paganism bears no trace of what C.S. Lewis would describe as the “good dreams” of dying-and-rising gods that the Creator had sent to the pagans before the incarnation in order to arouse the human desire for salvation and redemption of both the human condition and of the world, dreams that would “come true” through the incarnation of the divine Logos.[17]  Lewis’ approach allows for the building of a bridge between ancient paganism and Christianity, by presenting Christ as the object of human religious impulses (cf. Ac. 17.26-28).  Lewis’ strategy also protects the Christian apologist from their antagonist exploiting the vulnerability of Athenagoras – his emphasis on the true God being the deity the classical philosophers had spoken about as opposed to Yahweh, the One who had revealed himself to Israel throughout their tortuous and theologically messy history.  As Blaise Pascal (1623—1662) would put it towards the end of his life, “The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars”.  No one could ever mistake the God of the Hebrew Bible for an “idea”; no, Yahweh is a living God, a character who is actively and intimately involved in the life of his people.

     It’s hard to imagine a contemporary Christian daring to make a defense of the faith in the manner of Athenagoras (even granted that he was being idealistic in his presentation of Christian ethical praxis).  The “sins of the Church” over the last 2,000 years have been many and grievous, and Christians can no longer claim a moral high ground.  Perhaps the best apology that we can now offer the world is that prized by the book of Revelation and that embodied by people like Edith Stein (died in 1942), Maximilan Kolbe (died in 1941), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (died in 1945) and all the other members of that innumerable throng of “conquerors” dressed in white and standing before the throne of God (cf. Rev. 7.9-17).

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[1] Wait a minute, didn’t Commodus kill his father in the movie?  But I digress…

[2] Cf. https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/athenagoras (accessed September 17, 2024).

[3] Athenagoras goes so far as to draw a parallel between the divine Father and Son, on the one hand, and the emperor and his son and co-regent Commodus, on the other (cf. chapter XVIII)!

[4] E.g. Dn. 2.37-38, etc.

[5] Cf. Is. chapters 46-48, etc.  Not only is Athenagoras’ familiarity with the entire corpus of Christian Scripture striking, but his quotations/allusions from both the Gospels and the Pauline letters also help to provide a “latest possible date of composition” for these NT documents.  Athenagoras’ text is indeed replete with biblical allusions, be they from the Hebrew prophets, the Paul of the book of Acts (Areopagus speech) or the First Letter of Peter.

[6] In Pliny the Younger’s correspondence with Trajan some 60 years earlier, we see that the mere denunciation of an individual as a “Christian” was enough to have said person arrested and interrogated by the imperial authorities.

[7] I.e. cannibalism.

[8] I.e. incest.

[9] It’s interesting to speculate about a possible sensus fidelium concerning the Christian canon at this time, considering that Athenagoras quotes widely from the Hebrew Bible as well as several NT texts…

[10] I.e. both “Jewish” sources and Greek ones.

[11] Indeed, in the apology, we have “spoilers” of the later formulations of Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon; the notions of the Son being uncreated and the three persons of the Godhead sharing the same substance and yet remaining distinct are all to be found here in nuce.

[12] Athenagoras’ theology is thoroughly philosophical, and in my view, lacks an incarnational dimension.  The name “Jesus” is never mentioned in the apology; rather, we find copious references to the Son, the Logos, etc.  We are clearly in the realm of ideas, as opposed to the event when the Word “became flesh” and united himself to matter.

[13] It’s striking to see that as far as Athenagoras is concerned, literal obedience to the dominical commands of the Sermon on the Mount is assumed to be the norm for Christians (if perhaps somewhat idealistic?).  Indeed, towards the end of the apology, it is affirmed that Christians must guard themselves against entertaining so much as an impure thought during the exchange of the “kiss of peace” in fear of jeopardizing their soul’s eternal destiny.  What is more, sexual intercourse is only permitted between a Christian man and his wife for the sole purpose of the procreation of children (cf. chapter XXXIII)!

[14] In chapters XXVIII—XXX, Athenagoras brings his polemic to a climax by claiming that all the pagan gods were originally human beings, kings/heroes who were “apotheosized” and so became mythical divine figures.  This is a fascinating instance of ancient “historical criticism”!  Cf. the 2014 movie Hercules.

[15] Interestingly, in chapter XXXI, Athenagoras denies the possibility of eschatological “annihilation”, insisting that both the wicked and the righteous will be eternally conscious of their judgment/salvation.

[16] The empire was at its zenith at this time, as the “pacification” of Germania proceeded.

[17] Cf. “Myth became fact”, essay published in God in the Dock, Walter Hooper (Editor), Wm. B. Eerdmans; Reprint edition (October 1994; original copyright 1970 by the Trustees of the Estate of C. S. Lewis).