Apologists and Thinkers

Apostles to intellectuals

By the mid-100s Christianity was attracting educated converts, and educated critics. Pagan writers mocked it as a religion for slaves, women and children, based on silly stories about a crucified criminal. The philosopher Celsus, around 178, wrote a sharp attack called True Word. He said Christians tell people not to ask questions but just believe, that Jesus was a magician born of an adulterous affair, and that the resurrection rests on the word of a hysterical woman.

A new kind of Christian writer arose to respond: the apologists. In Greek, an apologia is a defense speech in court, not an apology in the modern sense. Shelley calls them "apostles to intellectuals." Their works had two aims: to persuade the authorities that Christians were harmless and should not be persecuted, and to show educated people that Christianity was the true philosophy.

Justin Martyr: Christ the Logos

Justin Martyr (c. 100–165) was born in Samaria to a pagan family. He tried one school of philosophy after another, Stoic, Aristotelian, Pythagorean and Platonic. Then, he says, an old man he met by the sea showed him the Hebrew prophets, and he found the true philosophy in Christ. He kept wearing the philosopher's cloak and opened a Christian school in Rome.

Justin addressed his First Apology (c. 155) to the emperor Antoninus Pius. He argued that Christians were moral, loyal citizens and gave one of the earliest descriptions of Christian worship (see Worship and Daily Life). His key idea built on the word Logos. The divine Word or Reason that became flesh in Jesus had been at work in all human beings from the beginning, sowing "seeds of the Logos." So whatever philosophers like Socrates and Plato had said rightly belonged to Christians. Socrates, in a sense, was a Christian before Christ. This generous view opened a path for Christians to welcome the best of pagan culture.

Justin's openness did not save him. Around 165 he and several students were beheaded in Rome for refusing to sacrifice. That is why he is called "Martyr."

Irenaeus: the faith of the whole church

Irenaeus of Lyon of Lyon (c. 130–202), already met in the struggle against Gnosticism, was less a philosopher than a pastor and biblical theologian. He gave the church a big-picture story of salvation. God's single plan runs from creation through Israel to Christ, who "recapitulates" (sums up and heals) all of human history in himself. Irenaeus is often called the first great systematic theologian.

Tertullian: the Latin lawyer

Tertullian of Carthage (c. 160–225) was the first major Christian writer in Latin. He was brilliant, witty, sarcastic and extreme. His Apology (197) demolished the charges against Christians with lawyer-like skill. He famously asked, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" That is, what has philosophy to do with faith? He distrusted philosophers as the "patriarchs of heretics."

Yet Tertullian contributed more to Western theological vocabulary than almost anyone. He was the first to use the Latin word trinitas (Trinity) for God. He described God as "one substance in three persons" (una substantia, tres personae), a formula that became standard in the West. Late in life he joined the strict Montanist movement. Some later Christians suspected him for that, but his influence on Latin Christianity was enormous.

Where the early Christian thinkers worked

Alexandria: faith seeking understanding

The great city of Alexandria, home of Philo of Alexandria, the Library and the Museum, became the intellectual capital of early Christianity. Its catechetical school, originally for instructing converts, grew into something like a Christian university.

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–215) took Justin's approach further. Philosophy, he argued, had been to the Greeks what the law was to the Jews, a "schoolmaster" leading them to Christ. Clement wanted to show educated Alexandrians that one could be a cultured, refined person and a Christian. He wrote about everything from table manners to the true "Gnostic," meaning the mature Christian who has real spiritual knowledge.

Origen: the greatest mind of the early church

Origen (c. 185–254) was the most brilliant and productive scholar of the early church. As a teenager he watched his father martyred and wanted to die with him. His mother, the story goes, hid his clothes so he could not leave the house. He succeeded Clement as head of the Alexandrian school at about eighteen, lived with extreme self-denial, and, according to Eusebius, even castrated himself, taking a verse in Matthew too literally. He later regretted it.

His output was staggering. Ancient sources say he dictated to teams of stenographers and produced hundreds or even thousands of works. They include:

• the Hexapla, a giant edition of the Old Testament in six parallel columns (Hebrew and several Greek versions), a landmark of textual scholarship;
• commentaries and sermons on almost every book of the Bible;
• On First Principles, the first attempt at a complete Christian theology;
• Against Celsus, a careful point-by-point reply to the pagan critic.

Origen read the Bible on several levels: literal, moral and spiritual. He looked especially for the spiritual or "allegorical" meaning beneath the surface. This method influenced Christian Bible reading for over a thousand years.

But some of his speculations, shaped by Platonism, troubled later Christians. He suggested that souls existed before birth. He seemed to rank the Son below the Father. He hinted that in the end all beings, perhaps even the devil, might be restored to God (apokatastasis). Conflicts with his bishop drove him to Caesarea in Palestine around 230. During the Decian persecution he was imprisoned and tortured, and he died soon after. Three centuries later, in 553, some of his ideas, as developed by followers, were condemned. So the man who did more than anyone to build Christian theology became a "heretic" to some. Yet the great theologians of the 300s, such as Athanasius and the Cappadocians, all stood on his shoulders.

The pagan philosophical response

Pagan philosophy did not stand still. In the 200s Plotinus developed Neoplatonism, a powerful spiritual philosophy. His student Porphyry wrote fifteen books Against the Christians, so dangerous that Christian emperors later ordered them burned. The contest of ideas was serious, and Christianity did not win simply by default. It won partly because its thinkers absorbed the best of Greek philosophy into a new synthesis.

Women of faith and learning

The great writers of this period were men. But women were central to the life of the church and sometimes to its intellectual life too. Origen taught women as well as men in Alexandria. Wealthy women supported scholars and copied manuscripts. Perpetua's prison diary (see Persecution and Martyrs) is one of the earliest pieces of Christian writing by a woman, full of vivid visions and theological reflection. A popular second-century story, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, told of a young woman who left an arranged marriage to follow Paul, baptized herself, and taught the gospel. Tertullian disapproved of the story precisely because some women were citing it as permission to teach and baptize. The episode shows that questions about women's roles were already being argued over.