History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

and to the creation of the world and of man; and its propriety and reasonableness were argued from

the divine image in man, from the high destiny of the body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and

from its intimate connection with the soul, as well as from the righteousness and goodness of God.

The argument from analogy was also very generally used, but often without proper discrimination.

Thus, Theophilus alludes to the decline and return of the seasons, the alternations of day and night,

the renewal of the waning and waxing moon, the growth of seeds and fruits. Tertullian expresses

his surprise that anybody should deny the possibility and probability of the resurrection in view of

the mystery of our birth and the daily occurrences of surrounding nature. "All things," he says, "are

preserved by dissolution, renewed by perishing; and shall man ... the lord of all this universe of

creatures, which die and rise again, himself die only to perish forever?"

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(4) The charge of immoral conduct and secret vice the apologists might repel with just

indignation, since the New Testament contains the purest and noblest morality, and the general

conduct of the Christians compared most favorably with that of the heathens. "Shame! shame!"

they justly cried; "to roll upon the innocent what you are openly guilty of, and what belongs to you

and your gods!" Origen says in the preface to the first book against Celsus: "When false witness

was brought against our blessed Saviour, the spotless Jesus, he held his peace, and when he was

accused, returned no answer, being fully persuaded that the tenor of his life and conduct among

the Jews was the best apology that could possibly be made in his behalf .... And even now he

preserves the same silence, and makes no other answer than the unblemished lives of his sincere

followers; they are his most cheerful and successful advocates, and have so loud a voice that they

drown the clamors of the most zealous and bigoted adversaries."

II. To their defence the Christians, with the rising consciousness of victory, added direct

arguments against heathenism, which were practically sustained by, its dissolution in the following

period.

(1) The popular religion of the heathens, particularly the doctrine of the gods, is unworthy,

contradictory, absurd, immoral, and pernicious. The apologists and most of the early church teachers

looked upon the heathen gods not as mere imaginations or personified powers of nature or

deifications of distinguished men, but as demons or fallen angels. They took this view from the

Septuagint version of Ps. 96:5,

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 and from the immorality of those deities, which was charged

to demons (even sexual intercourse with fair daughters of men, according to Gen. 6:2).

"What sad fates," says Minucius Felix, "what lies, ridiculous things, and weaknesses we

read of the pretended gods! Even their form, how pitiable it is! Vulcan limps; Mercury has wings

to his feet; Pan is hoofed; Saturn in fetters; and Janus has two faces, as if he walked backwards ....

Sometimes Hercules is a hostler, Apollo a cow-herd, and Neptune, Laomedon’s mason, cheated of

his wages. There we have the thunder of Jove and the arms of Aeneas forged on the same anvil (as

if the heavens and the thunder and lightning did not exist before Jove was born in Crete); the adultery

of Mars and Venus; the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede, all of which were invented for the

gods to authorize men in their wickedness." "Which of the poets," asks Tertullian, "does not

calumniate your gods? One sets Apollo to keep sheep; another hires out Neptune to build a wall;

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Apolog. c. 43. Comp. his special tract De resurrectione Carnis, c. 12, where he defends the doctrine more fully against the

Gnostics and their radical misconception of the nature and import of the body.

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Πάντες οἱ θεοὶ τῶν εθνῶν δαιμόνια. Comp. 1 Cor. 10:20.

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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Pindar declares Esculapius was deservedly scathed for his avarice in exercising the art of medicine

to a bad purpose; whilst the writers of tragedy and comedy alike, take for their subjects the crimes

or the miseries of the deities. Nor are the philosophers behindhand in this respect. Out of pure

contempt, they would swear by an oak, a goat, a dog. Diogenes turned Hercules into ridicule; and

the Roman Cynic Varro introduces three hundred Joves without heads." From the stage abuser the

sarcastic African father selects, partly from his own former observation, those of Diana being

flogged, the reading of Jupiter’s will after his decease, and the three half-starved Herculesses! Justin

brings up the infanticide of Saturn, the parricide, the anger, and the adultery of Jupiter, the

drunkenness of Bacchus, the voluptuousness of Venus, and he appeals to the judgment of the better

heathens, who were ashamed of these scandalous histories of the gods; to Plato, for example, who

for this reason banishes Homer from his ideal State. Those myths, which had some resemblance

to the Old Testament prophecies or the gospel history, Justin regards as caricatures of the truth,

framed by demons by abuse of Scripture. The story of Bacchus, for instance rests in his fanciful

view, on Gen. 49:11 sq.; the myth of the birth of Perseus from a virgin, on Is. 7:14; that of the

wandering of Hercules, on Ps. 19:6; the fiction of the miracles of Esculapius on Is. 35:1 sqq.

Origen asks Celsus, why it is that he can discover profound mysteries in those strange and

senseless accidents, which have befallen his gods and goddesses, showing them to be polluted with

crimes and doing many shameful things; whilst Moses, who says nothing derogatory to the character

of God, angel, or man, is treated as an impostor. He challenges any one to compare Moses and his

laws with the best Greek writers; and yet Moses was as far inferior to Christ, as he was superior to

the greatest of heathen sages and legislators.

(2) The Greek philosophy, which rises above the popular belief, is not suited to the masses,

cannot meet the religious wants, and confutes itself by its manifold contradictions. Socrates, the

wisest of all the philosophers, himself acknowledged that he knew nothing. On divine and human

things Justin finds the philosophers at variance among themselves; with Thales water is the ultimate

principle of all things; with Anaximander, air; with Heraclitus, fire; with Pythagoras, number. Even

Plato not seldom contradicts himself; now supposing three fundamental causes (God, matter, and

ideas), now four (adding the world-soul); now he considers matter is unbegotten, now as begotten;

at one time he ascribes substantiality to ideas, at another makes them mere forms of thought, etc.

Who, then, he concludes, would intrust to the philosophers the salvation of his soul?

(3) But, on the other hand, the Greek apologists recognized also elements of truth in the

Hellenic literature, especially in the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, and saw in them, as in the law

and the prophecies of Judaism, a preparation of the way for Christianity. Justin attributes all the

good in heathenism to the divine Logos, who, even before his incarnation, scattered the seeds of

truth (hence the name "Logos spermaticos"), and incited susceptible spirits to a holy walk. Thus

there were Christians before Christianity; and among these he expressly reckons Socrates and

Heraclitus.

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 Besides, he supposed that Pythagoras, Plato, and other educated Greeks, in their

journeys to the East, became acquainted with the Old Testament writings, and drew from them the

doctrine of the unity of God, and other like truths, though they in various ways misunderstood

them, and adulterated them with pagan errors. This view of a certain affinity between the Grecian

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Also the Stoics and some of the poets as far as their moral teaching went, Comp. Just. Apol. II.c. 8, and 13.

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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