Apology as Dialogue and Appeal

This chapter presents a reading of the Octavius, which is cast as a transcription of an earlier dialogue that purportedly took place in Ostia between three lawyers and friends: Marcus Minucius Felix, Caecilius Natalis, and Octavius Januaris. The text is set in a dialogical format that is clearly meant to recall the philosophical dialogues of Cicero, though it is less of a dialogue as it is actually composed of two speeches: one by Caecilius, defending the pagan position; and one by Octavius the Christian. Minucius functions as the arbitrator between the two others, though his actual role is the narrator of the exchange. The three lawyers are on holiday in Ostia, chatting as they walk along the shoreline, when the subject turns to religion; their conversation becomes a debate presenting both sides of the pagan-vs.-Christian arguments as commonly portrayed at the end of the second century. The chapter also considers the work of Thracius Caecilianus Cyprianus, bishop of Carthage.

Persecution and the Ambiguity of Roman Law

This chapter considers the legal status of Christianity before the first imperially initiated persecution under Decius (249–251). Generally speaking, there are a number of ambiguities when it comes to determining the attitude of Roman law toward Christian communities. Roman officials rarely found themselves in legal situations that would have demanded special legislation toward the Christians. As a result, only a tiny amount of legal protocol had accumulated before the mid-third century for regulating procedure when it came to dealing with Christians. After several exhaustive reviews of Christian and non-Christian sources in the 1960s, against which there have been no successful contradictory arguments, it appears that the Romans did not issue any special legislation against Christians or Christianity.

Introduction

This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to provide the reader with a contextualized overview of texts that fit the qualifications of an apology, instead of operating from a master list of apologists and their works. The relatively loose definition applied to this literature makes it impossible to provide a comprehensive treatment of all such texts. While this book mentions a number of ancient writings that have been considered apologies, it also shows that they better fit the broader category of polemic that in varied ways address Christian-pagan conflicts, but are not responding to a particular threat. The remainder of the chapter discusses titles of apologies, premodern apologia, and pagans and paganism.

Apologetic as Exhortation

In the Middle Ages, spurious and anonymous works were spawned by the texts of more influential patristic writers like Justin (the Martyr). This chapter considers one text attributed to Justin, which was identified in his time as the Cohortatio ad Graecos (Exhortation to the Greeks) (Coh). While the reader will find some similarities between the Coh and Justin’s first apology, the former is manifestly not a product of Justin and displays characteristics of having been written probably in the later third century. The question now is whether the Coh should rightly be considered an apologia. It is shown that the work is responding more to a general anti-Christian milieu more than any one specific attack. The chapter also examines the work of Athanasius of Alexandria.

Apologist Par Excellence

This chapter considers the work of Eusebius of Caesarea, who is best known as the early Church’s historian, as the author of the Life of Constantine, and supposedly for being on the “Arian” side in the debate before the Council of Nicaea (325). It is less known that Eusebius devoted much of his adult life and senior years to producing apologetic works which constituted a central pillar in the treasury of his writings. In sheer volume, apologetic material surpasses all the rest of his works combined. Eusebius employs several different literary styles in his apologetic writing. In the midst of it all he never strays far from the notion that the Gospel is an invitation to all people of all nationalities and in all stations of life.

Earliest Christian Responses

This chapter considers the earliest Christian apologetic literature. Paul’s speeches in Acts served as an initial mold by which several kinds of apologetic technique were later formed. In Luke’s narrative, a series of situations call for the charge and countercharge of apologetic speech, before both Jews and Romans. While Paul addresses a non-Jewish audience in only two of his speeches—neither of which are apologetic—the charges raised by Jewish leaders in the other four instances where he must defend himself are taken up by Roman magistrates. In Acts 21, Paul is beaten by the Jews in Jerusalem, rescued by Roman soldiers, and thereafter addresses the entire crowd in Jerusalem in chapter 22, where he declares he is making an apologia before them (22:1).

Fifth-Century Anti-Pagan Polemic Expressions

This chapter looks at the continued tensions between Christians and pagans in the fifth century. At the beginning of the fifth century, a Western bishop, Maximus of Turin (died between 408 and 423), earnestly warned his congregation about their lack of vigilance when it came to casting out all pagan religious paraphernalia from their households and places of business. By the end of the second decade of the fifth century, it was necessary to exclude pagans from imperial administration and the judiciary. Over the next forty years, the open practice of paganism was threatened with capital punishment several times. All of this, however, seems to have had little effect in preventing vital locales of paganism, and from pagans holding positions close to the imperium.

The Unexpected Pagan Emperor

This chapter examines the work of Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus (Julian), who represents a particular phase in the struggle between paganism and Christianity; he ruled only for a brief period, between 361 and 363, before being killed during a Roman offensive against the Persians. It was the last time a professed pagan ruled over the entire Roman Empire, and while doing so attempted to secure a religious revival, and restore the glories of paganism. This development revealed that pagan culture was far from moribund; rather, it was a living organism responding as sensitively to its Christian environment as Christianity itself responded to the pagan world. Julian’s Against the Galileans is so successful from the pagan’s perspective because he was raised within Christian circles until his adulthood.

North African Apologetics

This chapter considers the work of Arnobius, who presents the most mysteries of all the figures discussed in this book, both in terms of himself and in terms of what he was precisely attempting to achieve with his only known work, Against the Pagans (Adversus nations). There is almost no externally verifiable information on Arnobius except his authorship of this work, penned about fifty years after Cyprian’s death, likely during or just after the “great persecution” that the emperor Diocletian inaugurated from 303 until it was unexpectedly halted in 311 by Galerius—one week before his death. Against the Pagans provides a window into the intellectual debate of the time, through its engagement with the religious and philosophical standpoints that underpinned the outburst of anti-Christian feeling of the Diocletianic persecution. Just as Lactantius’s Divine Institutes and Eusebius’s Preparation of the Gospel will do, so Arnobius is rebutting the pagan attempts to justify the gods’ perceived anger toward Christianity. This chapter is also concerned with Lactantius

Clash of the Giants

This chapter considers the work of Origen, whose one and only anti-pagan work elevated Christian standing in a culture that prized philosophical argumentation and intellectual attainment as among the higher goods. It was the first draft, as it were, “of a sustained Christian reflection of the evangelization of Hellenistic culture,” and the first one to survive. Origen had produced multivolume projects on a larger scale than Contra Celsum (Against Celsus), but it is this work that has come down to us, complete, in eight volumes. A great deal is known about both Origen and his literary efforts, including his work against the Christian critic Celsus. Although Celsus had been dead for seventy years or so, it is supposed that his arguments had been effectual enough to cause such severe Christian trepidation that Origen was asked by his patron, Ambrosius, to construct a refutation.