By Bart D. Ehrman, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Tertullian was a prolific writer from around 200 CE. He produced a wide range of texts: moral essays in which he promoted extraordinarily severe ethics for true Christians, vicious attacks on Christian heretics for believing the wrong things, and vigorous defenses of the faith against the charges leveled against the Christians by the general populace. That is, he wrote apologies.
The Apology
In his book that is simply called The Apology, Tertullian summarizes brilliantly the problem pagans had with the Christians, claiming that any disaster that ever happens is because the gods are punishing people for allowing Christians in their midst. This was the pagan claim.
Tertullian says,
They think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not give its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there’s an earthquake, if there’s a famine or pestilence straight away, the cry is, ‘Away with the Christians to the lions’.
And so, how do pagans handle the Christians? According to the Tertullian, they say, execute them in public, humiliating, and painful ways because of disasters that happened to the populace because of the gods.
The Apologists
Tertullian was not the first highly educated Christian to write defenses of the Christian view in light of these kinds of attacks. The first surviving apology from a Christian comes to us from an intellectual named Justin, from Rome, in about the year 150 CE. More commonly, he’s called Justin Martyr because of what ended up happening to him despite his attempts to defend his faith.
Some 30 years later, we have an apology by Athenagoras of Athens. And some 70 years later by Origen of Alexandria, with a number of other authors writing apologies in between.
These apologists and others like them were both distressed and incensed that they were being called atheists. Their view is one that will resonate with many people today.
This article comes directly from content in the video series The Triumph of Christianity. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Only One True God
These apologists insisted that Christians alone were the people who are not atheists. The Christians believed in God, the only one true God, the God who created the world. All the other gods simply didn’t exist or were demonic forces.
The true God is the invisible force behind all that is, He alone should be worshiped. The pagan idols were simply statues with no power and no divine presence. The pagan gods were powerless and helpless if not evil. And so those who worship them are not worshiping God. True religion meant turning from worshiping them, the pagan gods to embracing the one true God who could bring salvation.
Christian Tradition Older than Paganism
In particular, the Christian apologists rejected the charge that their religion was a novelty, that there were no ancient roots to this Christian view or the Christian traditions. They pointed out that their God was the God of the Old Testament, the God Jews had worshiped for many centuries. According to the apologists, Jesus had been predicted by the Hebrew prophets, hundreds of years before he appeared. He had in fact been predicted by the great lawgiver of the Jews, Moses himself. That makes the Christian tradition older than anything in paganism.
The Christian apologists pointed out that Moses was writing 400 years before Homer, 800 years before Plato. Moreover, since Christianity was true Judaism, it was actually older than Judaism, as practiced by Jews.
In conclusion, as convincing as the arguments might seem to readers today, these defenses had no practical effect or consequences. Christians were continued to be taken to court as they had in the days of Pliny, charged with atheism and sometimes taken off to be executed. It didn’t happen regularly, just when they seem to be a particular nuisance. But it happened enough to cause serious problems to Christians in some times and places.
Common Questions about the Apologists’ Defense of the Christian View
In his book that is simply called The Apology, Tertullian summarizes brilliantly the problem pagans had with the Christians, claiming that any disaster that ever happens is because the gods are punishing people for allowing Christians in their midst. This was the pagan claim.
The first surviving apology from a Christian, comes to us from an intellectual named Justin, from Rome, in about the year 150 CE. More commonly, he’s called Justin Martyr because of what ended up happening to him despite his attempts to defend his faith.
The Christian apologists rejected the charge that their religion was a novelty, that there were no ancient roots to this Christian view or the Christian traditions. They pointed out that their God was the God of the Old Testament, the God Jews had worshiped for many centuries. According to the apologists, Jesus had been predicted by the Hebrew prophets, hundreds of years before he appeared.
