Athengoras: A Christian without Christ

"We know with certainty regarding Athenagoras, that he was an Athenian philosopher who had embraced Christianity, and that his Apology, or, as he styles it, "Embassy" (presbei/a), was presented to the Emperors Aurelius and Commodus about a.d. 177. He is supposed to have written a considerable number of works, but the only other production of his extant is his treatise on the Resurrection. It is probable that this work was composed somewhat later than the Apology (see chap. xxxvi.), though its exact date cannot be determined. Philip of Side also states that he preceded Pantaenus as head of the catechetical school at Alexandria; but this is probably incorrect, and is contradicted by Eusebius. A more interesting and perhaps well-rounded statement is made by the same writer respecting Athenagoras, to the effect that he was won over to Christianity while reading the Scriptures in order to controvert them.4 Both his Apology and his treatise on the Resurrection display a practised pen and a richly cultured mind. He is by far the most elegant, and certainly at the same time one of the ablest, of the early Christian Apologists." [an]

"Athenagoras was a Christian philosopher skilled in grammar, rhetoric and logic and possessed with forcible reasoning and a powerful style of Greek devoid of antagonism and insults. His primary object was to instruct and demonstrate. He never strays from his subject and is so concise that he verges at times on dryness. His Supplication for the Christians, composed around the year 177, was addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. It was an attempt to refute the widespread calumnies circulated by pagans that the Christians were atheists, cannibals and incestuous. Athenagoras refutes these calumnies successively: the Christians are not atheists for they worship one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Christians are not sexually immoral, rather they fear hell and are condemned to there for even the thought of evil; and as for cannibalism, Christians hate homicide, avoid the gladiatorial fights, condemn abortion and infanticide and believe in the resurrection of the body. Athenagoras concludes with an appeal to Aurelius and Commodus for justice." [lv]

"For either the tales told by the multitude and the poets about the gods are unworthy of credit, and the reverence shown them is superfluous (for those do not exist, the tales concerning whom are untrue); or if the births, the amours, the murders, the thefts, the castrations, the thunderbolts, are true, they no longer exist, having ceased to be since they were born, having previously had no being. And on what principle must we believe some things and disbelieve others, when the poets have written their stories in order to gain greater veneration for them? For surely those through whom they have got to be considered gods, and who have striven to represent their deeds as worthy of reverence, cannot have invented their sufferings. That, therefore, we are not atheists, acknowledging as we do God the Maker of this universe and His Logos, has been proved according to my ability, if not according to the importance of the subject." [Chapter XXX]

"...He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind, had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos; but in as much as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth... The prophetic Spirit also agrees with our statements. "The Lord," it says, "made me, the beginning of His ways to His works." The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun. Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men who speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and who declare both their power in union and their distinction in order, called atheists? Nor is our teaching in what relates to the divine nature confined to these points; but we recognise also a multitude of angels and ministers, whom God the Maker and Framer of the world distributed and appointed to their several posts by His Logos, to occupy themselves about the elements, and the heavens, and the world, and the things in it, and the goodly ordering of them all."

PTET on Early Christian Writings | PTET homepage | top of page | e-mail PTET Please link to this page if you copy from or refer to it.