Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Christian Identity in the Second Century

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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.

4.3.1 Christian Ethnography in the Apologia of Aristides

The apologetical arguments in the Apologia of Aristides culminate with the ethnography of the fourth genus of humanity, the Christians. This section—extending from Apologia 15.1 through the conclusion in Apologia 17.3—represents the consummation of the argumentative structure of the entire work. The Christians, according to Aristides, traced their genealogy to the true God through his son. According to the Greek text, Christians were descendants of “the son of the most-high God” (“ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ὑψίστου,” cf. Mark 5:7; Luke 1:32; 8:28; Acts 16:17), and they knew “God the creator and constructor of all things” (“γινώσκουσι γὰρ τὸν θεὸν κτίστην καὶ δημιουργὸν τῶν ἁπάντων,” Apol. 15.1 Gr.). Despite situating the genealogy earlier in the Apologia, the Syriac and Armenian translations similarly specify the son of the most-high God as the origin of Christians (Apol. 2 Arm.; Apol. 2.2 Syr.), and the Syriac version identifies the God of the Christians as the creator of heaven and earth who requires no companion (Apol. 15.3 Syr.).

The Armenian text focuses solely on the origins of the Christians, while the Greek and Syriac versions address not only the origins and constitutional figure of the Christians but also their devotional and ethical practices. From the perspective of Aristides, the deity worshiped by the Christians was the unmoved mover and singular sustainer of the created order. This deity was the God necessitated by the order and motion of the cosmos—which is to say, the deity described in the apology’s opening chapter. Because the Christians aligned their lives with the order of the cosmos by devoting themselves to this God, the Christians, “beyond all the nations of the earth, are the ones finding the truth” (“οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ὑπὲρ πὰντα τὰ ἔθνη τῆς γῆς εὑρόντες τὴν ἀλήθειαν,” Apol. 15.3 Gr.; similarly in Syr.; “πὰντα τὰ ἔθνη τῆς γῆς” seems to echo a phrase from the Jewish Scriptures that is also present in the Christian Scriptures, e.g., Genesis 22:18 LXX; 26:4 LXX; Joshua 4:24 LXX; Zechariah 12:3 LXX; Galatians 3:8; see also Justin, Dial. Tryph. 50). This declaration represents the consummation of the argument that Aristides began to construct in his opening chapter and continued throughout the meandering series of ethnological analyses in between.

To understand the development of this ethnological argument, I will follow the same threefold structure in analyzing the Christian ethnography that I have applied to the ethnographies of the barbarians, Greeks, and Jews, examining the apology’s depictions of the origins and constitutional figure of the Christians, the devotion of the Christians, and finally the ethics of the Christians.

4.3.2 Christian Origins and Constitutional Figure in Apologia of Aristides

Every version of the Apologia recognizes Jesus Christ as the constitutional figure from whom Christians originate (Apol. 2 Arm.; Apol. 15.1 Gr.; Apol. 2.4 Syr.). Thus Christian identity was grounded in a shared narrative of genealogical descent that did not require blood relationship or physical kinship. The Christian genealogy is a genealogy that is constituted adoptively not biologically.