Defending Faith: Lessons from Early Christian Apologists
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How did ancient Christians, how did Christians near the beginning of the founding of the church do apologetics? How did they defend the faith? How did they approach the situation that they faced? And that's a question I think Christians have a little more interest in at our time because we see certain parallels between our situation in a post-Christian world and their situation in a pre-Christian world. [00:00:49]
Today, living in a post-Christian world, one of the great problems we have is getting some people to take even a look at Christianity because they all think they know what it is. They act as if they've thought it carefully through and rejected Christianity. So, we have to find a way to get people to take a second look although in reality it's usually for most of them a first look. [00:02:14]
The most famous of these early apologists was Justin Martyr who had been a philosopher and then was converted to Christianity, died a martyr. His last name wasn't Martyr. He wasn't Mr. Martyr, but he was Justin who became a martyr and was a very thoughtful thinker about Christianity and how to defend Christianity. [00:06:06]
Christianity was an illegal religion in the Roman Empire in the second century. It was an illegal religion because Christians were atheists and traitors according to the Romans; atheists because they denied the Roman gods, and traitors because if you did not support the Roman religion you did not support the Roman State. [00:07:18]
They looked both for common convictions to make a point of contact and then they talked about distinctive Christian doctrines. They also focused on what they regarded as the weak points of paganism in the world that surrounded them. And they did that on the basis of what pagan writers were themselves saying about paganism. [00:09:25]
The early Christian apologists said, "As your own authors have said, those myths are full of immorality and absurdity. One god raping another, one god having sexual relations with human women, demigods being born, wars amongst the gods, does any of this really make any sense?" the Christians said. [00:10:47]
And what Harper, as far as I can see a secular historian, argues is that Christians were able to focus on the fact that in the pagan world much of sex that went on was coercive. Slaves were forced to have sex. They had no rights over their own body sexually. The Roman Empire was full of prostitutes who most of them were involved in coerced sexuality. [00:14:20]
Christian morality liberates. Christian morality advances love. Supposedly, we're all concerned about love. Christian morality advances love and so we ought to put our best foot forward and talk about the community of love and freedom that marriage offers to those who find themselves trapped in an endless cycle of change and fleeting relationships. [00:16:02]
And early Christian worship was very pure, very Word-centered, very prayer-centered, very Scripture-reading-centered. There were no images in Christian churches for centuries after the founding of the church. It's always intrigued me that those churches so big on tradition seemed to have missed that earliest tradition, no images in the churches. [00:21:47]
And so the apologists would go on to talk about those distinctive Christian truths that we know only by revelation, that God is a Trinity, that the one God exists eternally in three Persons, or the Christian truth of the incarnation of the second Person of the Trinity, or the revelation of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. [00:23:07]
The root of the word conversion from Latin is "turning," turning in a new direction, turning to a new truth, accepting and adopting a new conviction. And Brown writes in his little book how offended the pagan philosophers were by the notion that common people could really know the truth. [00:24:23]
And the apologists then made an impact, made an impact on the broader world that they faced, but they made an impact particularly on those who had become Christians to help them have confidence that their Christianity was true, that their Christianity made a difference, and that they were new people in Christ. [00:25:47]
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Today, living in a post-Christian world, one of the great problems we have is getting some people to take even a look at Christianity because they all think they know what it is. They act as if they've thought it carefully through and rejected Christianity. So, we have to find a way to get people to take a second look although in reality it's usually for most of them a first look. [00:02:14]
The most famous of these early apologists was Justin Martyr who had been a philosopher and then was converted to Christianity, died a martyr. His last name wasn't Martyr. He wasn't Mr. Martyr, but he was Justin who became a martyr and was a very thoughtful thinker about Christianity and how to defend Christianity. [00:06:06]
Christianity was an illegal religion in the Roman Empire in the second century. It was an illegal religion because Christians were atheists and traitors according to the Romans; atheists because they denied the Roman gods, and traitors because if you did not support the Roman religion you did not support the Roman State. [00:07:18]
They looked both for common convictions to make a point of contact and then they talked about distinctive Christian doctrines. They also focused on what they regarded as the weak points of paganism in the world that surrounded them. And they did that on the basis of what pagan writers were themselves saying about paganism. [00:09:25]
The early Christian apologists said, "As your own authors have said, those myths are full of immorality and absurdity. One god raping another, one god having sexual relations with human women, demigods being born, wars amongst the gods, does any of this really make any sense?" the Christians said. [00:10:47]
And what Harper, as far as I can see a secular historian, argues is that Christians were able to focus on the fact that in the pagan world much of sex that went on was coercive. Slaves were forced to have sex. They had no rights over their own body sexually. The Roman Empire was full of prostitutes who most of them were involved in coerced sexuality. [00:14:20]
Christian morality liberates. Christian morality advances love. Supposedly, we're all concerned about love. Christian morality advances love and so we ought to put our best foot forward and talk about the community of love and freedom that marriage offers to those who find themselves trapped in an endless cycle of change and fleeting relationships. [00:16:02]
And early Christian worship was very pure, very Word-centered, very prayer-centered, very Scripture-reading-centered. There were no images in Christian churches for centuries after the founding of the church. It's always intrigued me that those churches so big on tradition seemed to have missed that earliest tradition, no images in the churches. [00:21:47]
And so the apologists would go on to talk about those distinctive Christian truths that we know only by revelation, that God is a Trinity, that the one God exists eternally in three Persons, or the Christian truth of the incarnation of the second Person of the Trinity, or the revelation of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. [00:23:07]
The root of the word conversion from Latin is "turning," turning in a new direction, turning to a new truth, accepting and adopting a new conviction. And Brown writes in his little book how offended the pagan philosophers were by the notion that common people could really know the truth. [00:24:23]
And the apologists then made an impact, made an impact on the broader world that they faced, but they made an impact particularly on those who had become Christians to help them have confidence that their Christianity was true, that their Christianity made a difference, and that they were new people in Christ. [00:25:47]
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