How One Second-Century Christian Presented the Gospel to a King
Have you ever wondered how early Christians responded to Roman imperial power? Here’s how one Christian philosopher engaged with his emperor.
Imagine yourself as a follower of Jesus in the opening decades of the second century.
Nearly a century has passed since the first followers of Jesus claimed that they saw their leader alive three days after they watched him die. Now, the Christian faith has reached nearly every urban center in the Roman Empire. And yet, this faith — your faith — remains marginalized. You live with the ever-present risk that someone will accuse you of bearing the hated title “Christian.”
Despite this specter that shadows every aspect of your daily life, your social position has improved since the days of Nero and Domitian. In many regions, allegiance to Jesus as your God results in a death sentence only if you are guilty of another crime as well.
In Athens, there are even philosophers who openly pursue their love of wisdom from the foundation of their faith in Jesus. One of these philosophers is Aristides.
In the winter of the year that we know as 125, Aristides turns his philosophical capacities toward the audacious goal of converting an emperor. The emperor is none other than Hadrian, lover of Greek culture and builder of the wall across Britain that is known by his name still today.
The Context of Christianity in the Early Second Century
Seven years into Hadrian’s reign in the early second century, it seemed that this new emperor would pursue a path similar to his immediate predecessor Trajan when it came to Christians. “If an accuser comes forward,” Hadrian instructed the proconsul of Asiana,
with proof that the Christians are acting contrary to the laws, hand down a sentence that is commensurate with the offense. But — by Hercules! — if anyone turns this into a pretext for slander, pay attention to this misdeed and punish the accuser severely.
In other words, if Christians were found to be breaking the laws of the Roman Empire, they were to be punished both for these offenses and for their refusal as Christians to honor the gods of state and empire. No one, however, was to face criminal charges based on the mere claim that he or she might be a Christian.
A year after sending these orders to his proconsul in Asia Minor, Hadrian decided to spend thewinter in Athens. During this Aegean reprieve from the city of Rome, Hadrian was presented with a defense — an apologia — penned by the Christian philosopher Aristides. Given the precarious position of Christians at this moment, one might expect the Apology of Aristides either to have flattered the emperor, saying nothing that might offend, or to have focused his defense solely on gaining legal protections for Christians.
Aristides did neither.
Aristides Spoke Moral Truth to the Emperor
Aristides the philosopher spoke divine truth to imperial power, even when these truths would almost certainly offend.
Hadrian prized Greek culture. Yet Aristides did not hesitate to mention how “the Greeks, because they are more refined than the barbarians, have strayed further from the truth than the barbarians.”
Hadrian’s homosexual relationship with young man named Antinous was well-known. Yet Aristides was willing to speak against the “base practices of intercourse with males.”
It is conceivable that Hadrian could have returned to the harsh policies practiced by Nero and Domitian. Yet Aristides never tried to soften God’s truth in his appeal to Hadrian. He urged the emperor to read the Christian Scriptures and to turn to the true God. Near the end of his defense, Aristides reminded the emperor that anyone who does not turn to the true God will fall “before the awful judgment that Jesus the Messiah has determined to bring upon the whole human race.”
So what can Christians today learn from Aristides’ approach to presenting the gospel to his emperor?
Aristides Drew from Multiple Sources to Make His Case
Aristides doesn’t fit neatly into any modern category of apologist. His arguments were simultaneously classical and presuppositional. He appealed to creation itself as evidence for God, and he assumed that he and the emperor were capable of arriving at similar conclusions on a common basis in shared reason. Aristides was a philosopher who argued for imperial tolerance of the Christian faith. Yet he was also an evangelist, and his defense reveals a man who was more passionate about pointing Hadrian to the true God than about sidestepping persecution.
It is unlikely — though not inconceivable — that Aristides was allowed to deliver his defense to Hadrian. The emperor did, after all, engage with the philosophers of Athens and was fond of listening to new ideas. Whether Aristides presented his defense in person or only in a document that never actually reached the emperor, he was clearly a man who was willing to risk his own well-being to speak divine truth to his king.
Aristides Presented Christianity as a New Identity and a New Type of Humanity
Aristides launched his defense of the Christian faith by pointing out what the cosmos itself reveals about God’s nature. His approach seems assumed a rational common ground between what he saw when he looked at the world and what the emperor was able to observe, and there are both teleological and cosmological components woven into his opening arguments. According to Aristides,
When I had considered the sky and earth and seas, when I had surveyed the sun and the remainder of creation, I marveled at the sheer beauty of the cosmos. And that is when I recognized that the cosmos and everything in it are moved by the power of another, and I understood that the one who moves them is God who is both hidden within them and veiled by them. Now, it is clear that whatever causes movement must be more powerful than what is being moved. … Concerning this mover, I declare that he is God of all, who created all things for the sake of humanity. And so, it seems to me that this is reasonable: that one should fear this God and oppress no human being. … This God is neither born nor created; he is an ever-abiding nature without beginning or end, immortal, complete, and incomprehensible. Now, when I say that he is “complete,” this means that there is no deficiency in him. He needs nothing, but all things need him.
After declaring the nature of the divine, the question that Aristides set out to explore is which type of humanity most clearly follows this God that the cosmos reveals. According to the Greek version of this treatise, there are three types of humanity:
Those who worship a multiplicity of deities include Chaldeans, Egyptians, and Greeks.
He then moved on to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity and the unique identity that Christians share. The Syriac version of the Apology, which may be closer to Aristides’ original than the Greek text that survives to us, makes many of the same points but delineates four classes of humanity: barbarians, Greeks, Jews, and Christians.
Here, we glimpse an example of how — in the minds of many ancient Christians, including Aristides — Christians constituted a new class or type of humanity. To become a believer in Jesus Christ was to be adopted into a new family and to receive a new identity that fulfilled God’s work with the Jewish people. This new identity simultaneously distinguished Christians from the Jewish people and provided them with an esteemed historical pedigree that could be traced through the Jews to Abraham. “Truly,” Aristides writes regarding the church,
this is a new people, and there is something divine mingled among them.
Aristides Argued that Only the God Revealed in Jesus Christ Could Possibly Be the Creator
One by one, Aristides worked through the deities of each race and showed why none of them can possibly be the God that the cosmos reveals. He skewered the pagan deities in terms that echo the sharp but playful mockeries that Old Testament prophets and psalmists aimed at the gods of the nations around Israel (see, for examples, Psalm 115:4–8; Jeremiah 10:1–16). According to Aristides, the barbarians
formed certain shapes and styled them as representations of sky and earth, sea and son and moon and other primal shapes and lights. They close them up in shrines and worship them … even though they have to guard them securely to keep them from being stolen! Don’t they understand that anything that acts as guard must be greater than that which is guarded?
Moving from the barbarians to the Greeks, Aristides declares that “the Greeks have strayed further from the truth than the barbarians.” In the end, none of the supposed deities of the barbarians or the Greeks or the Egyptians could possibly be the one Creator of the cosmos because — according to Aristides — they would have been “unified in nature” if they had all truly been gods. If these characters had been unified in one divine nature, they would not have “slain or kidnapped one another” or hurled lightning bolts at each other. What’s more, they certainly would not have broken laws that even humans seek to keep. “These gods are,” Aristides concluded, “nothing more than mere names,” their stories are “myths and nothing more.”
The Jews did, in the words of Aristides, “approach truth more than all the nations” because they worshiped one Almighty God and because “they have compassion on the poor, they release the captives, and they bury the dead.” Nevertheless — according to Aristides — the rituals described in the Old Testament render worship not to the true God but to his angels. Finally, Aristides turned his attention to the Christians.
It’s at this point that Apology of Aristides heads in a direction that made me uncomfortable the first time I read this text.
The Lives of Christians as Proof of the Truth
In his central argument for the truthfulness of Christianity, Aristides didn’t appeal to Scripture or Christian theology as the only possible explanation for the world as it is experienced, like a presuppositionalist might choose to do.
Neither did Aristides begin to unpack evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, as an evidentialist or classical apologist might.
Instead, Aristides presented the moral lives of Christians as the primary proof of the truth of their faith.
Christians … have the commands of the Lord Jesus, the Messiah himself, etched into their hearts. They keep these commands, looking forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. They do not engage in adultery or sexual immorality, and they do not bear false witness. Neither do they covet that which belongs to others; they honor father and mother, love their neighbors, judge according to justice, and do not do to others anything that they do not wish to be done to them. They comfort those who injure them, even trying to win them over as their friends. They are eager to do good to their enemies. They are gentle and easy to approach with an appeal. They abstain from unlawful lifestyles and all impurity. They neither neglect the widow nor oppress the orphan. What each one has, he is willing to give freely to care for the one who has nothing. If they see one of their number outcast, they take him under their roof and rejoice over him as they would over a brother. For they call themselves brothers, not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. They are even prepared to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the Messiah.
Aristides spoke truth to power primarily by appealing to the goodness of the Christian life.
This is an apologetic worth recovering, but — to recover this apologetic — we must make certain that it’s true.
The reason that this apologetic argument makes me uncomfortable is because I fear that, in many churches today, it is not true.
Ultimately, this argument causes me to squirm because too often the lifestyle that Aristides describes does not describe me.
The words of Aristides are convicting — and they should be.
Avery Dulles summarizes Aristides’ primary point well in his A History of Apologetics:
The Christians … surpass all others because they worship the one true God in uprightness, as is attested by the purity and modesty of their lives. In conformity with their faith, Christians tell the truth, show mutual love, and have compassion even for their enemies.
“Take the Writings and Read Them”
After appealing to the moral lives of Christians, Aristides urged Hadrian to read the writings of the Christians:
Take their writings and read them. … Ever since I read their writings I was fully assured of these things and also of things yet to come. That is why I was compelled to declare this truth to anyone who wishes to hear it and to seek the world to come. For me, there is no doubt that the earth itself persists because of the prayers of the Christians. … There are also things found in their writings that are hard to explain and difficult to describe — things that are not only spoken in words but also worked out in deeds.
The Apology of Aristides draws to a close with a denial of the charge that Christians engage in incestuous orgies and with a final declaration that Christians alone worship the true God. But, once again, the argument is focused on the lives that Christians live — “things that are not only spoken in words but also worked out in deeds.”
Those who refuse to turn to this God will face — in the words of Aristides — “horrible judgment which through Jesus the Messiah is destined to fall on the whole human race.” To the very end, Aristides was an evangelist who spoke not only with brilliance and wit but also with boldness.
The Wall in Hadrian’s Will that Never Fell
Part of the goal of the Apology of Aristides seems to have been the fall of Hadrian’s wall — not the physical structure that today runs across northern England but the barrier of unbelief in Hadrian’s heart.
In this, Aristides failed.
Hadrian may have been more tolerant of Christians than many of his successors and predecessors, but he never turned to the Christian God.
Despite this failure, what the Apology of Aristides does for us today is to provide us with an invaluable glimpse into one approach to apologetics among early second-century Christians. What we see in this text is an approach to apologetics that
- … assumes some rational commonality between the believer and the unbeliever by which both can recognize the true God through what they observe in nature;
- … moves from the evidence of the cosmos and of the lives of Christians to Scripture as the necessary foundation for faith; and,
- … is unapologetic about calling even a king to repent.
The Apology of Aristides is an apologetic that was simultaneously meant for a king and crafted to point this king to the King of kings. His unique blend of boldness, brilliance, and wit models a pattern that can strengthen apologetics still today. “Notwithstanding its brevity,” Avery Dulles has pointed out,
Aristides’ Apology deserves high respect for its clarity and firmness of argument. By placing primary emphasis on the good moral lives of Christians, including their purity and charity, rather than the biblical miracles, this work lays the basis for some of the most successful apologetics of the next few centuries.
