Greek Apologists

Much of the scholarly discussion pertaining to epistemological assumptions regarding the earliest Christian authors has been framed by a series of dichotomies, placing "faith" and "religion" on one side and "reason" and "philosophy" on the other. I argue in this paper that uncritical use of these hard-to-define and overly general concepts as blanket categories to analyse Christian writings from the first three centuries CE inevitably causes major methodological issues and could be seen as heuristically unjustified. I suggest that a more frugal approach may be initiated by reconceptualizing the traditional "faith" vs. "reason" dichotomy in terms of the concept of personal and impersonal epistemic justification.

Algunos elementos de la filosofía platónica establecidos en tratados apologéticos de muchos escritores cristianos entre los cuales se encuentra el ateniense Atenágoras y su conocida obra πρεσβεία περὶ χριστιανῶν, cuya versión del helenista y teólogo español Daniel Ruiz será el objeto de estudio en el presente texto, demuestran un especial interés por la exposición de la cosmología. Si bien esta temática hace las veces de un intento por demostrar racionalmente la trascendencia de lo divino y la seguida generación del universo por causa del designio y poder de Dios, no se trata de una exposición meticulosa de las ideas de filósofos que el mismo Atenágoras cita sino más bien de una exégesis cristiana acerca de Platón en la que pareciese que incurrieran tales escritores, al menos por ser este uno de los autores que abogan por la filosofía griega, para realizar una reflexión profunda sobre la fe.

Approximately one-third of the Oration to the Greeks composed by Tatian the Assyrian is devoted to exposing the origin and current activity of demons in human affairs. The primary goal of the present article is to elucidate the source and logic of Tatian’s demonology, specifically as it relates to astrological fate and pharmacology, the two “hostile devices of the demented demons” that he denounces. I argue, first, that his focus upon these two areas is not by chance, but is due to the influence of 1 Enoch, since, like 1 Enoch, he holds that these domains of human expertise derive from malevolent heavenly beings. I argue, second, that Tatian’s criticisms of both astrology and pharmacology are structurally analogous insofar as he claims both are purely the product of demonic contrivance. As a result, these seeming areas of knowledge are in fact based upon nothing real or natural about the world but are instead arbitrary and nonsensical. Moreover, Tatian’s emphasis upon demonic delusion serves the polemical goal of his Oration in an additional way, since it casts the demons as a foil for Tatian himself. Unlike the demons, whom he compares to bandits, Tatian speaks as a representative of the true world order and its one legitimate ruler, and he offers his own Oration as a kind of harsh logotherapy that can accomplish the very thing the demons mendaciously claim to be able to effect through astrology and pharmacology.

Der Artikel untersucht die Funktion der Verweise auf frühchristliche Berichte in der Apologie des Quadratus von Athen (ca. 117–125 n. Chr.) und im Brief des Dionysius von Korinth an die Athener (ca. 170 n. Chr.). Augenzeugenberichte über die Wunder Jesu und die Erzählung aus Apg 17 werden in diesen Texten zur defensiv und kon- struktiv angelegten Identitätsbildung verwendet, um der athenischen Kirche zu helfen, auf äußere Widerstände und die damit verbundenen Probleme zu reagieren. Die Analyse dieser Texte erlaubt außerdem einen Einblick in die Veränderungen, die die athenische Kirche im 2. Jahrhundert erlebt hat.

This article explores the function of references to early Christian accounts in the Apology of Quadratus of Athens (c. 117–125CE) and Dionysius of Corinth’s letter to the Athenians (c. 170s CE). Eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ miracles and the Acts 17 narrative are utilised in these texts for defensive and constructive identity formation to help the Athenian church to respond to external opposition and the problems it caused for the Christian community. The analysis of these texts also allows some insight into the transition the Athenian church went through in the second century CE.

Greek gods and polytheism as a distinctive feature of Graeco-Roman culture and religion were favourite themes among the Christian apologists of the second century. In an attempt to promote monotheism as characteristic of Christian religion, the apologists not only presented pagan religion as a typically polytheistic belief, but also established the 'disarmingly simple model . . . according to which mankind . . . had progressed from polytheism to monotheism under the catalytic action of Christianity'. 1 This idea was pushed so far that the evolutionary model was altered and polytheism presented as a temporary involution: as a corruption of the original monotheism, polytheism had its roots in the transgression committed by Adam and Eve. Since then human beings had surrendered to externalities and sensualism, as a result of which polytheism and its concomitant idolatry established itself as the way, par excellence, to channel human religious experience. 2 Strange though it may seem, these conceptions are not confi ned to antiquity and the Middle Ages, however. On the one hand, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), at the end of the eighteenth century, and the philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), in the middle of the nineteenth, are both representatives of the evolutionary model. 3 On