apologetics

Philosophical writings that attempt to refute attacks on the Christian faith. Apologists include St Justin, Origen, St Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Blaise Pascal, and Joseph Butler. The questions raised by scientific, historical, and archaeological discoveries have widened the field of apologetics.

AD 30 to the fall of the Roman Empire During this period apologetics were addressed to the Jewish and pagan worlds. Some of the New Testament writings have an apologetic (defensive and commendatory) character, for example, Luke's Gospel and Romans 13, but the ‘Apologies of the Fathers’ was the first systematic work of the kind. It had as its object to uphold Christianity against paganism, to refute accusations made against Christians, and to show emperors the injustice of persecution.

Among the Greek apologists of the 2nd century were St Justin, who defended and expounded the faith in his two books of Apologies about 150; Athenagoras, who defended the Christians against charges of atheism, incest, and infanticide; Tatianus; Theophilus of Antioch; and Hermas. Among the Latin apologists of the 2nd century were Tertullian, with his Apologeticus; Minucius Felix, who wrote the dialogue Octavius; and St Cyprian, On the Absurdity of Idolatry. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries Origen, a Greek, and Arnobius, a Latin, wrote against Celsus, Porphyrius, and others who attacked the history and doctrines as well as the morals of the Christians. The greatest of these apologists was Eusebius, whose Evangelical Preparation (15 books) and Evangelical Demonstration (20 books) explain the harmony between the Old Testament and New Testament, uphold the teachings of Christ and of his disciples, and examine the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus.

Other apologists were Athanasius, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and Theodoret, who seeks to prove Christianity from the writings of the heathens; Lactantius (Divinae Institutiones), St Augustine of Hippo (The City of God), and St Jerome.

About 632 (death of Muhammad) to about 1500 Apologetics during this period were chiefly concerned with the defence of Christianity against the Muslim religion and philosophy. The first great apology of this kind was that of St John of Damascus (c. 750) in the form of a discussion between a Christian and a Saracen. During the Middle Ages Jewish and Muslim writers took up new lines of attack. Among them were Avicenna, Averroës, Maimonides, and Jehuda Halevi, who were opposed by St Anselm, Peter Abelard, St Albert the Great, and St Thomas Aquinas. The Christian fruit of these controversies was the ‘Thomist compromise’, which declares that certain doctrines are beyond the sphere of reason. The nominalists, William of Occam, Jean Buridan, and others, going further, declared all matters of faith to be above reason.

From 1500 to the present During this period apologetics fall into two groups: (1) the Catholic–Protestant controversy, producing its apologists on both sides, and (2) the defence of Christianity by Catholic and Protestant alike against deism, pantheism, materialism, agnosticism, and rationalism of all kinds. Apologetics have also had to deal with the alleged conflict between science and religion, and with searching biblical criticism.

Among the chief apologies of this period, the Huguenot Philippe de Mornay's De la Verité de la Religion Chrestienne/A Woorke Concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion (1581) was the first in a modern language. Joseph Butler's Analogy of Religion (1736), is outstanding, and so is William Paley's A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794). Wolfhart Pannenberg's The Apostle's Creed in the Light of Today's Questions (1972) is an example of a modern apology. The work of such bodies as the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and the Catholic Truth Society is chiefly apologetic.