The Second-Century Greek Apologists

Around 124 a Christian named Quadratus handed the emperor Hadrian a written defence of his religion, and for the next eighty years others kept doing it. Aristides did it at Athens; Justin, a philosopher who kept wearing the philosopher's cloak after his conversion and ran a school at Rome, did it twice and was executed for it about 165. Athenagoras addressed Marcus Aurelius; Melito of Sardis addressed him too; Theophilus wrote three books to a pagan friend named Autolycus; an anonymous writer produced the letter to Diognetus that is still the most quoted thing any of them wrote. The charges were always roughly the same - that Christians were atheists because they had no images, cannibals because of what they said about eating a body, and disloyal because they would not sacrifice - and the answers were too. What made the enterprise interesting was the second move: rather than only denying the charges, most of them argued that the best of Greek philosophy had been reaching toward what the church now held, and that Christians were therefore the true heirs of reason rather than its enemies.