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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03
(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;
104
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.
105
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.
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
106
Also the Stoics and some of the poets as far as their moral teaching went, Comp. Just. Apol. II.c. 8, and 13.
73
Philip Schaff
History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene
Christianity. A.D. 100-325.