I am currently writing the dissertation for my second Ph.D., in Church History and Ecclesiology at Stellenbosch University. The tentative title of my dissertation is “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist.” As I complete each portion, I will post the segment for anyone who wants to follow my progress. I will not be including the footnotes in these posts, so each chapter will typically be a couple thousand words longer than what’s posted here.
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Chapter 1a: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Introduction”
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Chapter 1b: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: The Apologia in the Greek Barlaam and Ioasaph”
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Chapter 1c: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Syriac Text, Greek Papyri, and Armenian Translations”
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Chapter 2a: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Cosmological, Ethnological, and Doxological Apologetics”
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Chapter 2c: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Ethnological Apologetics in the Apologia of Aristides”
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Chapter 3a: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Who Were the Barbarians?”
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Chapter 3b: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologst: The Origins, Devotion, and Ethics of the Ancient Greeks”
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Chapter 4a: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: The Origins, Devotion, and Ethics of the Jewish People”
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Chapter 4b: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Christian Identity in the Second Century”
5.1 Research Questions
The primary question that has shaped this research thus far has been, “What apologetical arguments did the second-century Christian apologist Aristides of Athens use in a context in which the Christian community was perceived as a threat to the social order?” Based on a detailed engagement with the Apologia, I have concluded that Aristides constructed an ecclesial apologetic that was cosmologically grounded, ethnologically articulated, and practiced through embodied ethics. Aristides began his defense by observing the cosmos, concluding that the order and motion of the cosmos required particular characteristics in its creator. The apology then turns from cosmology to ethnology, comparing and contrasting the people-groups of the world on the basis of three markers of ethnic identity: origins, devotion, and ethics. According to Aristides, Christian origins, devotion, and ethics uniquely aligned with the creator necessitated by nature, revealing that Christians alone knew the true God. In his exposition of Christian ethics, Aristides argued that the Christian community practiced greater good than any other people-group. Furthermore, the ethics of the Christian community were enacted through embodied habits that contributed to the good of their neighbors.
This ecclesial argument countered one of the most prominent suspicions that Romans held concerning the church, that Christians were a threat to civic flourishing because they refused to honor the venerable gods. According to Aristides, the moral habits of the Christian community aligned with a higher, cosmic order which would be revealed in the coming age as the way of life ordained by the creator. Thus the moral habits of the church were evidence for the truth of the faith, and this truth would be eschatologically vindicated.
In this final chapter, my focus turns to the secondary question: “In what ways, if any, might these apologetical arguments be relevant in contemporary contexts in which social imaginaries have been reshaped by the condition of secularity?” To consider this question, I will engage with the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, focusing on his essay “To Follow a Rule” (Taylor 1997:165–180). The research then concludes by suggesting that the Apologia of Aristides was an ecclesial apologetic not only in the sense that the church functioned as evidence for the truth of the faith but also in the sense that the primary purpose of the apologetic was the formation of the church. Despite being addressed to an imperial court, the apology was not composed to convince any emperor of the truth or tolerability of Christian practices. Instead, the apology’s primary audience was the church, and the purpose of the apology was to form a distinctive Christian identity that was public and political.