Defense at the Price of Acclamation: Where is the Beauty in Modern Apologetics?
Aristides defends Christianity with eloquence in his long-lost Apology.
Recall our definition of apologetics as both the defense and acclamation of the faith. Modern apologists excel at question-and-answer responses to secular objections, but winning a debate isn’t the same as winning over a person. We can argue that Christianity is truth, but what happened to showcasing Christianity’s splendor?
Apologists obviously recognize the majesty of the Christian God: He designed the heavens and earth, made and kept powerful and personal promises to a fickle people, and voluntarily faced unthinkable tragedy to save those He loved. But apologists can’t start off by describing God’s beauty; they must build a foundation of fact and presupposition first.
Attempting to agree upon metaphysical presuppositions is dicey in our modern world of scientism and relativism, however. Hard sciences have edged out philosophy to assert their monopoly on absolute truth, rendering any truth claims regarding the non-material world as unprovable nonsense at best and malicious power grabs at worst. On the other hand, relativism and emotivism urge us to comfortably paper over conflicting truth claims as “your truth” and “my truth.” Thus the apologist finds himself stuck between the improperly laid demands of scientific proof upon metaphysics and the inability to discuss the truth of anything outside the perimeter of one’s own body.
Most apologists respond to this dilemma by adopting a course they know will be respected by secular university students and academics: a scholarly, research-based defense of the faith. But as our featured apologist, the Athenian philosopher Aristides, teaches us this week, it is possible to defend the faith with reason and commend Christianity with moving eloquence in the same body of work — though, surprisingly, Aristides does so without directly quoting the Bible.
Aristides wrote his Apology (c. AD 125 - 147) to the Roman emperor Hadrian in an attempt to protect the Christian from Roman persecution by explaining the reasonableness of Christian doctrine and highlighting Christianity’s ability to produce virtuous followers as compared with that of pagan religions.1 As far as we know, his acclamation of the faith appears to have been successful: according to Eusebius’s History of the Church (c. 306-337)2, Hadrian may have been induced in part by the apologia of Aristides and Quadratus to forbid the punishment of Christians solely on the basis of their faith and without investigation.
Following his attack on pagan religion, which we will discuss below, Aristides offers a beautiful description of the Christian as an honorable, gentle, and generous character; one which I found very moving yet sadly (and understandably) contrary to public perception.
“And these are they who more than all the nations on the earth have found the truth. For they know God, the Creator and Fashioner of all things through the only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit; and beside Him they worship no other God. They have the commands of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself graven upon their hearts; and they observe them, looking forward to the resurrection of the dead and life in the world to come. They do not commit adultery nor fornication, nor bear false witness, nor covet the things of others; they honour father and mother, and love their neighbours; they judge justly, and they never do to others what they would not wish to happen to themselves; they appeal to those who injure them, and try to win them as friends; they are eager to do good to their enemies; they are gentle and easy to be entreated; they abstain from all unlawful conversation and from all impurity; they despise not the widow, nor oppress the orphan; and he that has, gives ungrudgingly for the maintenance of him who has not. If they see a stranger, they take him under their roof, and rejoice over him as over a very brother; for they call themselves brethren not after the flesh but after the spirit. And they are ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of Christ; for they observe His commands without swerving, and live holy and just lives, as the Lord God enjoined upon them. And they give thanks unto Him every hour, for all meat and drink and other blessings.”
Saint Aristides, mural painting in an Eastern Orthodox church, source: Wikipedia.
Now that we’ve read the passage which I have waxed on about, let’s examine Aristides’ Apology from the beginning. First, Aristides discusses the attributes of the Christian God: He is creator and sustainer, eternal, lacking in defect or need, all-powerful, and wise. His argument for God’s power over His creation reminds me of Newton’s Laws of Motion: “that which causes motion is more powerful than that which is moved.” Aristides states that God can’t be fully known; He is “unsearchable in his nature” and “not possible [for] a man [to] fully comprehend.” His statement on God’s lack of wrath (“wrath and indignation he possesses not, for there is nothing which is able to stand against him”) may either be muddled by translation (in other words, meant to attest to God’s power rather than His wrathfulness) or incorrect doctrine as God’s wrath is frequently referred to in the Bible.
Aristides then moves on to discuss the attributes of men. He splits men into three classes (four depending on which translation you read): Christians, Jews, and Chaldeans / Greeks / Egyptians. The Chaldeans are makers of idols, or man-made statues which are guarded in shrines and worshipped as gods. Aristides cleverly argues that order of creation implies a spiritual hierarchy: “everyone who creates is greater than that which is created.” How can idols, made of materials which are liable to ruin and change and which must be kept safe by their worshippers, be greater than the men who guard and create them, or be greater than the animals they represent?
A common argument of Aristides against the elements (earth, water, fire, winds, and sun) as gods is that of purity: anything which can be contaminated cannot be holy. Earth, for example, “takes in the filthy refuse of men and beasts and cattle,” “is trodden under foot” and holds the bloodstains and bodies of the dead; it cannot be holy by definition. Similarly, men of the past were not gods, they are finite beings made of elements who cannot even control their own lives: “at times when he looks for joy, there comes trouble, and when he looks for laughter, there comes to him weeping.”
The Greeks, meanwhile, worshipped a panoply of gods known to commit moral sins, including adultery and murder. These gods even changed themselves into animals for wicked ends (Zeus famously transmutes into a swan to rape Leda). How can the Greeks hold to moral laws that their gods do not themselves obey? Aristides also wrote amusing specifics about various Greek gods, including Aphrodite:
“Did you ever see, O King, greater folly than this, to bring forward as a goddess one who is adulterous and given to such weeping and wailing?”
And Artemis:
“How then should such a woman, who hunts and roams with her dogs, be a divine being?”
These arguments are reminiscent of the purity arguments against the Chaldeans’ elemental worship. It is a wonder that Aristides, while he scorns Artemis for roaming with dogs or Aphrodite for crying excessively, should venerate Jesus, who was known to weep and to associate with “unclean” peoples. The difference clearly lies in the holiness of the gods themselves: Jesus himself is perfect and holy—he is unstained by the sin which plagues creation— while the pagan gods are morally and constitutionally imperfect.
Finally, Aristides describes the willful blindness of Egyptians who worship animal gods: “though they see their gods eaten by men of other tribes, and burnt as offerings and slain as victims and mouldering in decay, they have not perceived that they are not gods.” He ends his offense by reminding the Roman Emperor of the rejection of prophets and of Jesus by the Jews and concludes his Apology by recommending to the Emperor the noble religion of Christianity. Do me a favor and read his description of the Christian man (see the quote above) once more; I pray that it compels you to lead a good life worthy of His holy name. It certainly made an impression on me.
Miscellaneous facts about Aristides’ Apology:
A fragment of the translated Apology was first found in Venice by Armenian monks in 1878; the entire Syriac version was later found in 1889 at an Eastern Orthodox monastery in Egypt.
Aristides does not directly quote Scripture, but he refers to it: “And if you would read, O King, you may judge the glory of His presence from the holy gospel writing”
Aristides the Philosopher. The Apology. English translation by D. M. Kay. University of Edinburgh, <http://prenicea.net/doc2/20801-en-01.pdf>
Eusebius, of Caesarea, Bishop of Caesarea, approximately 260-approximately 340. The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine. Baltimore :Penguin Books, 1965.
I thought I was the only person who ever wrote about the apologist Aristides of Athens! I am working on a translation of his Apologia, so I tend to talk about him perhaps a bit too often: https://timothypauljones.substack.com/t/aristides. In any case, good to run across your post and Substack.