Transcript

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

to non-Christians, or at least with non-Christians' minds.

Now, that doesn't mean Christians weren't reading them, they obviously were, and in some cases, probably more Christians were reading these documents than non-Christians.

But we're going to see how some of them were actually written as open letters to the emperors.

But what I want you to notice is that the apologists are people who consider themselves philosophers.

And so, because they consider themselves philosophers, and because they're writing for primarily a non-Christian audience, and because the New Testament canon is still kind of up in the air at this point, what that means is that they aren't supporting their arguments so much with Scripture as with philosophical and logical arguments.

Because they are philosophers who are converted to Christianity, so they see philosophy as a good thing.

Philosophy is worthwhile.

Now, before we talk about the specific apologists, I want to give you a kind of rundown of the usual tactics that the apologists use in trying to convince their pagan audience that Christianity is a good thing.

Or, in some cases, to convince them to stop persecuting the Christians, right?

We haven't really talked about persecution much yet, but we'll get there.

But it's going on, and the point of some of these apologies is, you know, hey, we're not bad for the umpire, so stop persecuting us.

So there's several, I don't know what to call them other than tactics, that the apologists generally use, and you see the same arguments coming up.

One of them is to show that other religions, besides Christianity, Usually besides Judaism, too.

But to show that these other religions are ridiculous superstition.

Now, it doesn't seem like a good idea to us, if you're going to try to convince somebody that your religion is okay, to start by saying, hey, your religion is ridiculous superstition.

It doesn't seem like a good idea, but yet that's what they did.

And especially in the case of the Greco-Roman mythologies that worship idols, One of the tactics is to try and demonstrate or prove that the idols that are worshipped are not really gods at all.

Like, for example, hey, you worship those idols made of gold and silver?

Well, how come you have to guard them so nobody steals them?

Because the real god guards people, not the other way around, right?

And stuff like that.

So that's one tactic.

Another one is to show that Christianity is morally superior than the other religions and in fact the best way to the good life.

Now, philosophy was in many ways about finding the good and finding ways to live the good life.

Now, that didn't always mean morally good.

Sometimes it simply meant Good as in what would bring honor to you and your family or whatever.

But what the Christian apologists like to do is to point out how in the Greco-Roman mythologies, the gods themselves act immorally.

Cheat on each other, stab each other in the back, and do all kinds of things.

It's like cosmic soap opera going on at the top of Mount Olympus, right?

And so the apologists will say, you know, not only are Christians more moral than the Romans, they're more moral than the Roman gods.

So who would want to worship gods like that?

And the point of all that is to show that Christianity is good for the empire because Christians are morally good.

And, again, you wouldn't think it would be helpful to try and criticize the person that you're talking to if you're trying to convince them to stop persecuting you or whatever.

And, of course, as it turned out, it does sort of work that way.

The argument that we're morally superior doesn't sound good to the pagan ears.

It sounds exactly like it sounds.

But, you know, the Christian apologists are trying to argue that, hey, you know, we're good people, and we pray for the empire, and even the leaders of the empire, so that's a good thing.

Another tactic that the apologists use is to show that Christianity is older than philosophy, and therefore it's better.

Now, remember how we talked about in the ancient world, often, you know, the older thing is assumed to be better.

And so, they're going to try and make the case that Christianity is older than philosophy.

Now you're thinking, wait a minute, how does that work?

Plato was around long before Jesus.

Well, here's how it works.

By showing how Christianity comes from the Old Testament and from the Old Testament prophets, the Old Testament prophets are older than the philosophers.

And so, because it's connected to Judaism, and the Jewish prophets, Christianity is older than philosophy.

In fact, the apologists will say, anything your philosopher says that was good, they plagiarized from our prophets anyway.

Now, of course, the other side of that coin is that at the same time, they're going to be trying to distance themselves from Judaism because they don't want to be associated with the rebellions in Palestine.

So, you know, we come from Judaism, but we're not like those Jews.

So you're going to get this mixed message, right?

Finally, another tactic is to show that Christianity is the best philosophy.

Or in other words, to present Christianity as a philosophy.

So if the other philosophies, like Stoicism, are acceptable, Christianity ought to be acceptable too.

And in fact, the apologists will argue, Christianity is better than the other philosophies.

It's the most rational.

And it's the natural conclusion of all good philosophies.

The other philosophies, if they had had the chance to really think their own thoughts through to their ultimate conclusions, they would have become Christians.

And some of the apologists would argue that if they hadn't killed Socrates, or they hadn't made him commit suicide, he was going to come out as a monotheist and his disciples would have too, except they were afraid for their own lives.

So, Christianity is not only the superior philosophy, But it has the added edge of divine revelation.

So because it does not need to rely entirely on human reason, it's completely superior to all other philosophies.

So it's got the best of both worlds.

The best philosophy and also divine revelation.

So those are kind of the general tactics that you'll see in pretty much all the apologists' works.

Now I want to talk about a few of the apologists who I think are the most important.

And where's my chalk?

I always do this.

I put the chalk down and I can't find it.

We're going to talk about Justin.

Now, you know him as Justin Martyr.

But, of course, Martyr is not his last name.

That's a label based on his fate.

Obviously, he's not the only martyr, though.

But anyway, that's just sort of how he's traditionally called.

He was born somewhere around 110 to 114. We don't really know for sure.

But he lived to 165 when he was martyred.

But now, here's a guy, and this is kind of typical of a lot of the apologists, but he's a philosopher, he's not raised in a Christian home, he's a Greek, he's a Gentile, and he sets out to find the best philosophy.

And so he explores all kinds of different philosophies.

And remember, now this is at a time when some of the philosophers are coming around to versions of monotheism, or versions of the Greco-Roman mythologies where they're sort of allegorizing the myth.

and talking about the highest god as the real god and the other lower gods as personifications of virtues or whatever.

So the philosophers are all coming around to variations of monotheism.

And so Justin is in that camp and he starts learning about Christianity as though it's simply one of the philosophical options out there.

And he was impressed, he tells us, by the way the life and ministry of Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies.

Remember, this is a world where, you know, the Greco-Roman mythologies, they have their prophecies too, their oracles, right, and their prophecy fulfillments.

And so he saw the way the early Christians were interpreting Old Testament texts as prophecies being fulfilled in Jesus.

And he was impressed with that.

But what really convinced him to convert and become Christian, he says, was by witnessing the bravery of the martyrs.

People don't die for something that they don't really believe in.

And if these people believed it so much that they're willing to die for it, there must be some truth to it.

And also he mentions the morality of the Christians as well as, again, this idea that they're living the good life.

And so, he was converted to Christianity somewhere around 130, 132, somewhere around there.

And he eventually moved to Rome where he began teaching Christianity as a philosophy.

And so he had a kind of a philosophical school.

And he taught Christianity as a philosophy, and so because he's grounded in philosophy, he really latched on to John's concept of the Logos.

Jesus as Logos.

Remember we talked about that.

the Greek word for word, but it means much more than that, the rational principle or the sort of matrix that holds the universe together.

And it means a lot more than that as well.

But this idea that the pre-incarnate Christ is the divine Logos.

And so what we're seeing here in the second century is a continuation of what John was doing in the fourth Gospel, and we usually refer to it as Logos Christology, And this is the Christology of the 2nd and early 3rd century, and in some ways it is also the response to the heresies that we were talking about earlier, the Evianites on one side and the Docetics and Gnostics on the other.

So when you think about what was the mainstream response to that, or what was the mainstream answer, it's Logos Christology.

Now, Justin taught in Rome, According to the story, the other philosophers in Rome, the non-Christian philosophers, became jealous of the way he was attracting students, and they conspired against him.

He was eventually arrested and martyred in 165 CE. And it probably didn't help that his two apologies were written to the emperors, and so the emperors are aware of him.

The most important document is his first apology, or Apology 1. Written in the 150s, right in the middle of the second century.

Written to the emperor at the time, Antoninus Pius.

And again, when you read this, you'll be surprised at how much he takes an attitude with the emperor.

Don't mess with us, emperor.

We've got God on our side.

You can kill us, but you can't hurt us.

And if you do hurt, if you do kill us, you risk your own damnation.

So he's basically telling the emperor, be careful or you're going to hell for the way you're treating us.

So you'll see the standard arguments, idols aren't really gods, and the real god doesn't need Anything from us, because God is all-sufficient.

So God, the real God, gives us things.

The real God doesn't need us to give offerings, but you're a little statue because you give them these offerings and, you know, it doesn't make sense.

And, you know, of course, Christians are morally superior.

And so, therefore, Christians are not a threat to the empire.

In fact, Christians are good for the empire.

And so he goes through this thing where he says, you know, a good emperor wouldn't persecute the church.

A good emperor would want more people to be like the Christians.

And, you know, a good emperor would recognize the truth in what people are willing to die for.

So this is his sort of apology for the church.

Now, within that, You begin to see what his Christology is, what his understanding of Christ is.

You begin to see how this Logos Christology is fleshed out.

The Son of God is the Father's messenger.

And some of these apologists will talk about Christ, or the Son of God, as the angel.

Yeah, that's right, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right.

You know, there's an angel and there's an angel, and I'm second guessing myself.

Okay, anyway, you know what an angel is.

Well, do you?

Because remember, that in Greek, the word angelos simply means messenger.

So, a lot of times, you know, you hear angel, you think, you know, John Travolta with wings, right?

But really, you know, don't confuse this with The angel Christology of the Evianites is a totally different thing.

The angel Christology of the Evianites is saying that Christ or the Spirit is a created being, but spiritual.

This is angel as messenger.

So to say that the Son is the Father's angel is to say that the Son is the Father's messenger.

And what we're getting here, what we're beginning to get, is a description of the Trinity In terms of the relationship between Father and Son.

Now, it's going to take a while before we get around to starting to ask questions about the Holy Spirit.

So don't be disturbed by the fact that they don't get to that yet.

At first, it's really going to be all about the relationship between the Father and the Son and the Trinity because, after all, we're already worshiping Jesus in the Church.

So you've got to justify that, especially to the Jewish brothers and sisters, right?

The first problem is to describe and define the relationship between this human being, Jesus Christ, and God the Father.

What we have here then is this relationship between Father and Son as sender and messenger.

What that implies is that in any situation where there is a sender and a messenger, There is a hierarchy.

There's a hierarchy of authority where the sender is a higher level of authority than the messenger.

Because the messenger goes where the sender tells him to go.

And the messenger brings the message of the sender.

So the messenger does the will of the sender, just like Jesus said, you know, he would do the Father's will.

So, Justin will actually say that, you know, in God, and there's no word for this yet.

There's no word for that yet.

But what he will say is that in God, the Father takes the first place, the Son takes the second place, and the Spirit takes the third place.

So there's already a sense that there are these three within God, but we don't have a word for it yet.

But Justin knows that there's some sort of hierarchy here, even within the Trinity.

And he tries to...

He tries a little bit to get at the difference between the Son and the Spirit, too, when he says the Logos, the Divine Word, spoke through the prophets, but the Holy Spirit spoke through Moses.

Now, why he makes that distinction, I don't know, but it's just interesting to see how he's trying to feel his way through this.

What's the difference between Father and Son and Spirit?

When Moses is standing in front of the burning bush, it's the Logos speaking to him in the burning bush.

Why?

Because this is the Word of God.

So anytime you hear God speaking, it's God's Word.

So anyway, there's going to be a lot of speculation throughout the period of the Apologist who's speaking when, and not a whole lot of agreement, so don't worry about that.

But the point is, it's just interesting to notice how the apologists are already trying to work out what does it mean for God to be three, and they don't even have a word yet for what it means for God to be one.

There's no word like trinity yet.

But the point is that the second person of this threeness who is the Son, who is the Logos, who is Jesus, who is discernible in the Old Testament.

You can see him in the Old Testament, whether it's in the burning bush, or whether it's in the appearances of the so-called angel of the Lord.

Remember that stuff, right?

Doesn't the angel of the Lord come to Abraham, and Abraham washes his feet and makes food for him?

Then the angel of the Lord speaks a divine promise in the first person, and it's like, wait a minute, there's this being here called the angel of the Lord who seems to be divine and worshiped, you know, but also tangible and can eat and have his feet washed, and they can see him, and yet, you know, we know from Scripture no one can see God and live.

So what's that all about?

Well, clearly for the apologists, If you think you're seeing God in the Old Testament, you're not seeing God the first person, the Father, you're seeing God the second person, the Law of God.

So, again, they're just beginning to figure this out and to speculate on some of this.

Okay, let me just say real quickly that Justin also wrote a second apology, which is real short, it's kind of like an add-on, written to Marcus Aurelius, the next emperor, And he also wrote a document called On the Resurrection, which we only possess in fragments.

And I don't remember if I've asked you to read any of that, but these apologists were writing documents on the resurrection because in the philosophical world, the philosophers either believed in a version of reincarnation or in a version of an afterlife as a disembodied soul.

You know, the body is discarded and the soul ascends.

And the Christians were saying, somehow that's not adequate.

Somehow there's this idea that if Jesus was raised bodily, so will we be.

You look at 1 Corinthians 15, and the Apostle Paul talks about a resurrection body.

What is that?

Sounds like an oxymoron, right?

Jumbo shrimp or whatever?

But whatever it means, it's not what the philosophers were talking about.

So Justin and other apologists will write these documents on the resurrection and they talk about how our resurrection will be like Jesus'. It will be somehow a bodily resurrection.

And you can tell that they've been sort of dealing with counter-arguments, like, well wait a minute, you die, your body decays, what, God's going to put back all the molecules?

And ultimately he says, yeah.

Think of it like a mosaic, you know, if an artist makes a mosaic out of If the jigsaw puzzle gets messed up, it's no problem for the one who created it in the first place to put it back together.

Wherever your molecules have dispersed, God will...

That may be too literal for some of us, but that's where Justin goes with it, as a way of arguing against the philosophical concept of this disembodied soul.

What I want to do right now is point out, or just actually read a little bit of Justin's first apology, and you'll read this on your own, but it's worth pointing out because part of his letter to the Emperor was, look, you know, we're not Anti-Roman, we're not doing anything weird in our meetings.

In fact, I'll tell you what we do.

And he says, here is what we do when we gather at dawn on Sunday.

And he goes right through it.

So listen to this, and listen to how much it sounds like an order of worship you might encounter in any church today.

It hasn't changed that much, and this is, you know, the middle of the second century.

He says, and on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place.

And the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets, are read, as long as time permits.

Then, when the reader has ceased, the presider verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.

Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we said before, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the presider, in like manner, offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability.

And the people assent, saying, Amen.

And there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given.

And to those who are absent, a portion is sent by the deacons.

And they who are well-to-do and willing give what each thinks fit.

And what is collected is deposited with the presider, who helps the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us.

And in a word, takes care of all who are in need.

But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world.

And Jesus Christ, our Savior, on the same day, rose from the dead.

For he was crucified on the day before that of Saturn , and on the day after that of Saturn , Having appeared to his apostles and disciples, he taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.

So notice how much that sounds like worship.

The memoirs of the apostles, New Testament reading, although it's not called that yet.

The writings of the prophets are read, Old Testament reading, as long as time permits.

Obviously, you know, you have to stop so people can get home for the kickoff of the football game.

Then when the reader has ceased, the presider verbally instructs.

Now, in the text you'll read, presider is translated president, but I don't like that translation.

The Greek word there is not the same as, it's not presider, it's, I forget the Greek, the point is it just means the leader, the one standing up in front.

But, okay, so the presider verbally instructs and exhorts to the invitation of these good things.

Well, there's your sermon.

Then we all rise together and pray, intercessory prayer.

As we said before, when the prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, the presentation of the gifts for the Eucharist.

And the presider, in like manner, offers prayers and thanksgivings.

So there's your Eucharistic prayer, according to his ability.

And the people ascend, saying amen.

There's responses.

There's a distribution, okay, so they have a Eucharist.

And then there's an offering.

Now, the only thing he doesn't mention specifically in here is the singing of hymns, but we know that was also going on.

He just doesn't happen to say it in this case.

So, anyway, you get the idea.

Any questions about Justin?

Okay, I'm going to talk about two more apologists with the time we have left here.

So, a little bit about Athenagoras.

I think I've got you reading him.

Athenagoras.

Athenagoras of Athens, but not bishop, so basically he's an Athenian philosopher.

Do you remember in the book of Acts when Paul goes to Athens and preaches and really nothing comes of it?

Well, according to tradition, indirectly Paul's preaching in Athens is responsible for Athenagoras, because what ends up happening is Athenagoras hears about Christianity, thinks it's dumb or whatever, and decides he's going to refute Christianity.

He's going to write a treatise or a document that just, you know, takes Christianity apart.

And especially he wants to refute the Apostle Paul's understanding of resurrection, which, you know, you get in 1 Corinthians 15. So what does he do?

He figures, well, if I'm going to refute this Paul guy, I better read his stuff.

Read the stuff and you know the rest of the story, he's converted to Christianity.

And so he sets out to write a document supporting the Christian doctrine of resurrection, the very doctrine he was originally going to refute.

And so he writes a document called On the Resurrection of the Dead, which is heavily based on Justin's document on resurrection.

Again, it's just against the philosophical concept of the afterlife as a sort of The one I think you are going to read is called A Plea for the Christians.

Sometimes it's translated as A Supplication for the Christians, but it's A Plea for the Christians.

Again, this is also written to the emperor, in this case, Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus.

If you saw the movie Gladiator with Russell Crowe, it begins with Marcus Aurelius and Commodus becomes the next emperor.

So, think Richard Harris and Joaquin Phoenix, if you want to.

Probably written about 177 CE. Again, it's standard sort of apologetic arguments.

The Christians, we'll probably talk more about this when we talk about the persecution, but one of the big criticisms that the Romans had against the Christians is, who do you people think you are for claiming you can get away with only worshipping one god?

What's that all about?

We have all these gods.

And when you don't worship all of our gods, you make them mad.

We don't want you to make them mad.

So you people who only worship one god, they put a label on that.

They call the Christians atheists, because they only worship one god.

So, Athenagoras is writing against the charge of atheism, and saying, well, you know, we're not atheists, we're monotheists, and here's how that works.

But in the process, of course, he's going to try and explain what Christians think God is.

Again, there's still no word for Trinity yet.

Another apologist named Theophilus of Antioch is going to coin the Greek word triados, or triad.

So in Greek, before we have the word Trinity, because the word Trinity comes from Latin, before we have the word Trinity, God is a triad, God is a divine triad.

But what Athenagoras says is, he says, you know, look at yourselves.

The emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and his son, Commodus.

They are from the same family, so there's a unity.

And they have the same authority, so that even though confidence isn't technically the emperor yet, if he shows up, people are going to give him the respect due an emperor, because he comes with his father's authority.

And that's kind of like God, the father and the son, kind of like the emperor and the heir, h-e-i-r, right, the heir of the power and the authority.

Two persons, two people, in the sense the emperor and the son, one power or one authority.

And so the apologists are beginning to speak of God as a triad in terms of one power or authority and three, let's say, individual manifestations of that power.

So we don't have the Trinitarian language yet, but you see we're getting there.

Are there any questions about Athenagoras?

Are you with me?

Is this making sense?

Stop me if it's not.

I think, in large part, the documents of the apologists are a response to persecution that's already going on.

But, in the case of individuals, the writers of the apologies, like, for example, Justin Martyr, having written these letters to the Emperor, and then he gets executed, is that a coincidence?

I mean, if the other philosopher is trying to get him in trouble, the Emperor has already heard about him, it probably Contributed to their own deaths.

So, it's hard to say.

When we talk about persecution, I'll show you the progress of the way the persecution evolved in the early church, too.

And so, it's already going on.

But so, as you know, there are cases right around this time where angry mobs will, you know, there'll be these uprisings and Christians will be massacred and killed in certain cities.

But that's probably not the response to these documents.

Because those angry mobs are not angry because they read these documents.

Those angry mobs are angry because they're afraid that if the Christians stop worshipping the traditional gods of Greece and Rome, that those gods will be mad and will remove their protection from the empire.

And so, you know, there's a sense in the early church that natural disasters can be blamed on the Christian.

Oh, there's an earthquake.

Well, see what you did?

You stopped worshipping our gods, and this is our punishment.

So, it kind of works like that.

Randy, did you have a question?

Yeah, I read in one of our earlier texts that during this period, the Jews were exempt from those guidelines for worshipping God.

And I'm just wondering, and you've given me some pictures as to why Christians were persecuted, but why...

Why not the Jews?

Why weren't the Jews?

Yeah, that's a good question.

And there's a couple reasons for that.

First of all, remember, Judaism is an ancient religion.

It's old, so they get a pass because they're ancient.

And as long as the Christians are a sect within Judaism, they fly under the radar of the Romans.

Once the Romans start to see that Christianity is something separate and different from Judaism, that's when Christians start having problems, because it's new, so it's suspect.

In addition to that, though, there were cases when Jews were persecuted, and there are multiple times when Jews are kicked out of Rome and things like that, and so they're not totally free and clear, but they do get a sort of a pass on those aspects of their religion.

Even to the point where at some times, As you probably know, they are exempt from paying certain taxes and things, and so they're given some concessions.

But because the Romans know, if you conquer a people or a kingdom and you colonize it and you make it a province, if you try to take away their religion, you're just asking for rebellion.

But if you let them have their religion and you give them a sense of peace, Maybe they haven't known for a while because there's been civil war around.

Then they're less likely to rebel against the Empire.

Alright, let's talk about Clement of Alexandria.

Now remember, we talked about Clement of Rome last time.

And this is a different guy.

So, Clement of Alexandria was not the Bishop of Alexandria.

But we call him Clement of Alexandria to distinguish him from Carmen of Rome, so just keep them separate.

He was born right around the time, right around the middle of the century, so like 150 to 160, somewhere around there, right around the time that Justin Martyr was writing his first Apology, Clement is born.

He died probably around 215, so you see we're going to Creeping into the third century here.

We say someone flourished.

If you see this FL period, that means this is the time when they flourished.

This is the time of their production when they created documents that we still have or whatever.

So we say he flourished in the last couple of decades of the second century.

Well, 202, because persecution comes to Alexandria in 201, 202. We'll talk about that later, but really it's the last couple decades of the second century.

So Clement is contemporary with a guy we're going to talk about later, Irenaeus, but because Irenaeus is more of a theologian and Clement is more of an apologist, we're dealing with Clement now and we'll deal with Irenaeus later.

Clement is another example of a philosopher like Justin, who went out to explore the different philosophies that were out there and picked the best one.

And in that process, he considered Christianity to be one of the options, one of the philosophical options.

And so he sought out people who could teach him what Christianity is all about, what the apostles taught.

And he found a guy named Pantinus.

You don't really need to know this name.

He became a student of Pantinus and followed him to Alexandria where Pantinus was the leader of the Christian school in Alexandria.

And the Christian school would become famous and usually you'll see it referred to as the catechetical school.

And this would be kind of a Christian school based on the model of a philosophical school, but the point of a catechetical school is to teach people what they need to know to get baptized and join the church.

Pantinus was a philosopher himself.

He was a Stoic who converted to Christianity, and so Clement became his student, followed him to Alexandria, and would eventually become the next head of the catechetical school there in about 190. Now, the thing about Alexandria is, like Rome, it's a cosmopolitan city.

A lot of people from other places go there.

And so, like Rome, Alexandria is a place of syncretism, philosophy, Gnosticism, and the Alexandrian school of thought, even within the church, comes to be characterized by allegorical interpretation.

allegorical interpretation as opposed to literal.

And if you think about it, this is what the philosophers were doing.

In fact, you know, the Christians in Alexandria did not invent the allegorical interpretation of Scripture.

We'll talk about this next week, but if you think about it, the philosophers reasoned that, you know, they knew as well as anybody that the gods of the Greco-Roman myths seemed kind of like, you know, they didn't act like divine beings.

So the philosophers knew that if they were going to hold on to those old mythologies, they had to sort of allegorize them and they had to interpret them as allegories for human behavior and virtue and stuff like that.

So what we have in Alexandria then is sort of the home of allegorical interpretation, philosophy, etc. So Clemens becomes the head of the school there.

He was eventually ordained a priest, but he was never a bishop.

As an apologist, Clement's Christology is in that category of Logos Christology.

And Clement said that the Logos, the Word of God, was the inspiration for not only the Old Testament prophets, but the philosophers as well.

And Clement is famous for saying that philosophy is for the Gentiles what the Old Testament is for the Jews.

And that is a so-called schoolmaster, think truant officer, the cop who catches you when you're playing hooky and drags you to school, or the headmaster.

It's a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ.

For Clement, the Old Testament is the schoolmaster that brings the Jews to Christ.

Philosophy could do the same thing for the Gentiles.

If you're doing it right, philosophy will lead you to Christ.

And so he says philosophy is a schoolmaster to bring the Greek mind to Christ.

Now Clement has an interesting thing that he does when I've been showing you our heresies as two extremes with a mainstream church in the middle.

And Clement seems to be the first person to really notice that.

And in his case, he talks about the two extremes as what he calls atheism and superstition.

And what he really means by that is philosophy and paganism.

But he talks about these two as two extremes with true religion as the middle way.

And so he consciously sees that orthodoxy, such as it was, was an attempt at finding this balance or this middle way between these extreme options.

Now, beyond that, Clement doesn't really add all that much that's new.

But what he does is he summarizes Logos Christology And so, his document that you're going to read, which is Exhortation to the Greeks, or sometimes called Exhortation to the Heathen, is our best summary of Logos Christology.

And so what he does is he sort of epitomizes that.

He also writes some theology, and so in a way he's kind of a transitional figure, transitioning us to the theologians But just so you know, he's really got several major works.

The Exhortation to the Greeks is the one you're going to read.

And this is an apology.

But then he's also got a document called The Instructor.

spoiler alert, Jesus is the instructor.

This is more of a catechetical document.

This is, you know, how to live as a Christian once you're baptized.

But remember, in the early church, catechesis is more about morality than it is about theology.

And then he's got a document called this.

The miscellanies, or miscellanies, the miscellaneous stuff, it's just a collection of stuff.

There is some more theology in here, but it's really long, and I wouldn't do that to you, make you read that one.

So, you're going to read the Exhortation to the Greeks, right?

That's in the syllabus, isn't it?

TA, help me out here?

Yes, okay, thanks.

And so what you're going to get in this document is an excellent summary of Logos Christology and the understanding of God such as it was in the 2nd century.

He's following John, of course, 4th Gospel and also following on the footsteps of the likes of Justin Martyr and Athenagoras.

So, we have Christ pre-existent as the Logos.

Now, I might have said this last time, but in the Fourth Gospel and here, Christ is understood as pre-existent, but they never bother to clarify that he's eternally pre-existent.

So that's going to need clarification later.

But for now, he's pre-existent.

And the point of that is that The Logos is the agent of creation.

Remember, again, John chapter 1, right?

Through him all things were made.

Nothing that was made was made without him.

So, God, the first person of the Trinity, the Father, is creator, but it is equally acceptable to say that Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is also creator, because it was through him that all things were made.

He is the agent of creation, but It is acceptable to say he is creator.

So you'll see that as well.

Also, you'll see in here the two natures of Christ, so that Clement will clarify that he is both human and divine.

So it's not enough to say he's human only as the Evianites did.

It's not enough to say he's divine only as the Docetics and Gnostics did.

He's human and divine.

In his divinity, he is equal to the Father.

In his humanity, he is the champion of humanity.

So, what does that mean?

You already know this because you've read the story of David and Goliath.

What's that about?

It's called representative battle, right?

Rather than having everybody killed, you pick your champion, your one person who will fight for everyone else and go into battle, and that One-on-one fight will determine the outcome of the battle.

Well, Christ is our champion.

As David was to the Israelite army, Jesus Christ is to all of humanity.

He goes into battle for us.

Of course, the paradox there is he wins victory through death.

But you get the idea that there's this balance here of His divinity, on one hand, in which he's equal to the Father, and his humanity, on the other hand, in which he is one of us.

He represents us.

So there's divine intervention, but there's also human representation.

He represents the rest of humanity.

Let's see what else I want to say about this.

Well, look for the way that Clement describes The Trinity.

And again, we don't have the word Trinity yet.

These guys are spreading in grief, so God is a triad, and the different individual manifestations of the Trinity are, of course, the Father, who is described as eternal, omniscient, indestructible, as opposed to the second person of the Trinity, who, while he's equal in divinity with the Father, He's not quite indestructible, is he?

Because he died on the cross.

He's not quite omniscient, is he?

Because there's some things he doesn't know.

At the very least, you know, who touched me?

You could say he did that for a fact.

But at the very least, there's the point in which Jesus says, no one knows the day or the hour, speaking of his own return.

Not even the Son, but only the Father.

So he's not quite omniscient, is he?

So, again, Playing with how to describe the distinctions between Father and Son.

There's the one God and the one Word of God, but both are the one God.

Then there's the Holy Spirit who is, if the second person of the Trinity is the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is the mouth of God.

Things like this, so look for that kind of stuff.

What else do I want to say?

Let me stop there for a second and see if there are questions before I go on.

Yes.

Right, he was never a bishop.

Well...

He was never elected bishop.

Now part of the reason was, I raised the date, but in 201-202, a wave of persecution comes to Alexandria and he left, he got out of town.

So had he stuck around, he might have been martyred, he might have become bishop, who knows.

But that may be part of the reason why he never became bishop.

Well, you know, the problem is we don't know if there was a response or a rebuttal.

Certainly, the Evianites, for example, would not have agreed with this document.

The Gnostics would not have agreed with this document.

So they would have had their own versions, if it was a response or a rebuttal, maybe, or maybe it was just totally separate.

What we have here is, in this case, the guy was the head of the catechetical school writing this document, probably for use in his school.

And so, people who are coming up and joining the church and have no experience with the church, who are preparing for baptism, have no reason not to just accept it.

I mean, they just read it, oh, okay, it is what it is.

Now, were there people in other cities who would disagree with it and have their own versions of it?

Maybe.

Probably.

We just don't have them.

So, what we're working with is a body of literature that exists, and we don't know what So it's hard to say.

In some cases it may very well be like the letters to Paul, for example, where we know there were responses, we just don't have them.

In other cases, it may be just simply an authority figure writing a document and everyone takes it.

Or everyone in that city, what they were doing in another city, who knows?

It seems to me that the early theologians are using John as a predominant source for understanding early Trinitarian theology.

I was just kind of wondering why that is.

Well, it's not that they aren't using the other documents that will be in the New Testament, but if you think about it, there are two reasons why John is attractive to the apologists.

First of all, they're philosophers.

John has latched on to a philosophical term, the concept of the Logos.

That's something you guys have all heard of before in their old world of philosophy.

Now, they bring a new meaning to it, but it's familiar, and so therefore it's useful in writing to non-Christians.

The other factor, though, is that remember, most likely the Fourth Gospel was the last one written, so it represents the latest It's an evolution of Christian thought about Christ and God.

It's not like it negates what's in the earlier documents or the earlier Gospels, but it's an advance on them.

We're just advancing all the way, so they pick up on that.

It was equal with God.

Yeah, the question is why, you know, it's an excellent question.

I'm going to repeat so that it's on the video.

If I got you right, you're saying, I can understand why people would say Jesus was divine, but where did they get the equality?

How is it that they assume he's equally divine with the Father?

That's an excellent question.

The reason seems to be that, for the most part, these folks would have assumed that there is no such thing as degrees of divinity.

One is either divine, or one is not.

And so, if God the Father is divine, and if God the Son is divine, not only are they equally divine, but they are of one divinity, because there can't be two divinities.

So that's where that's coming from.

It is a perfect segue into the next thing I was going to talk about, because these apologists, remember, they're philosophers.

So they bring to Christianity some of their philosophical assumptions.

you may or may not find this stuff in Scripture, and when you do find it in Scripture, you might say, well, it's hinted at, but it's not really explicitly there.

And so I want to point out a couple of these philosophical assumptions that all of these apologists are working with, and some of the heretics are also working with.

But one of them is that God is simplex.

Simplex means, you could also say God is simple, but then it sounds like God is dumb doesn't mean that.

Simplex means not composed of parts.

Right?

So we're talking about the unity of God or the unity of divinity itself.

So that divinity itself cannot be broken down into smaller components.

Why not?

Because if you could break it down into smaller components, it would break down into smaller components and that's decay.

And divinity can't decay.

Divinity can't degenerate, because divinity is also incorruptible.

So, as an aside, one of the things this means is you can't say the three persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are three parts of God.

You can't call Jesus part of God, because God doesn't have parts.

If you say there are three parts to God, it sounds like the Father is 33 and one-third percent of God, and the Son is 33 and one-third...

You know what I'm saying?

No. God is one, God is simplex, and therefore, there's only two categories of existence.

Now, remember, not everyone totally agrees with this, but this is what the apologists are working with.

There are only two categories of existence.

There is created...

creation and uncreated, but if uncreated, then creator.

There's no in-between.

There's either uncreated and therefore creator, or created.

Those are the only two categories of existence.

So, where do you put Jesus?

If you put Jesus into this category, he is automatically equal in divinity with the Father, because there's no degrees.

There's no in-between.

Now again, we're going to see someone who's going to argue that point later, but this is what the apologists are working with.

God or divinity itself is incorruptible.

Divinity itself also, and it's uncreated, and divinity itself also must be immutable, unchanging, or unable to change.

We've got a couple of scripture passages that point to this, but this is based on an assumption that God is perfect.

So, divinity is perfect, by definition.

If divinity is perfect, then divinity cannot change, because change would destroy perfection.

Think this through.

If there's change, then either God wasn't perfect and became perfect, but that means God wasn't perfect at some time, or if there's change, God is perfect and there's change, then God ceases to be perfect.

So the idea, the assumption here is that change would destroy perfection.

Perfection has to be eternal perfection or it's not perfection at all.

immutable and immutably perfect and eternal.

It has to be eternal.

If divinity has a beginning to its existence, that's not divinity.

And if divinity ceases to exist at some point, that's not divinity.

So by definition, divinity is eternal and immutable and incorruptible.

All of these things you see are interdependent.

I call this the divine sweater.

Because once you pull one of these threads, the whole thing falls apart.

They're all interdependent.

God is eternal or immortal is another word that they'll use meaning the same thing.

So God is immortal, immutable, uncreated, simplex.

So far?

Are you with me so far?

Now, let me throw a couple others at you.

God is omnipresent.

Now, this one's going to create a bit of a problem for us.

God is omnipresent, which means, by definition, omnipresent means not circumscribable.

To be circumscribed is to be enclosed within something.

So circumscribability means to be able to be enclosed in time and space.

You and I, we're all circumscribable because we're in this room.

Now we can say God is in this room, in a sense, but really what we mean is that God is everywhere.

So God is not circumscribed by this room.

God is omnipresent.

That's part of the assumption of divinity.

But the problem comes in when you say, well wait a minute, we're calling Jesus divine, he was circumscribed, he was localized in time and space as a human being.

So that's going to be an issue we're going to have to deal with.

Ultimately it's going to be about Jesus' divine nature versus his human nature.

We'll get to that, we're not there yet.

But this is another philosophical assumption.

What else?

I think there's a handout in your supplemental readings book that has the important theological concepts and doctrines.

A lot of this stuff is in there, defined in bullet points.

But look for this stuff.

When you see that these apologists are assuming these concepts, and they're assuming things like there can be no degrees of divinity.

One is either divine or not.

One is either created or creator.

The other assumptions here are free will.

People have free will.

And so God is not responsible for evil.

And the idea of God as the first cause, we'll probably come back to this later, but God as first cause assumes that all of existence is part of a chain of cause and effect.

You're here because your parents got together and, you know, All on down the chain.

But along with that assumption that all existence is part of a chain of cause and effect is another assumption that that chain cannot go back in time through infinite regression.

It can't go back infinitely.

That somewhere there has to be a starting point to that chain of cause and effect.

Somewhere back in time there has to be a first cause that started it all But that was not in turn caused by something else.

So the first cause is itself uncaused.

You get that?

Now, the first cause that is itself uncaused, that's God.

But wait, there's more.

Because what the apologists are going to come to is, they're going to say, well, wait a second.

What's the relationship between in terms of causality between the Father and the Son.

They're going to say the Son owes his existence to the Father in some sense.

We're going to talk about this more later, so we don't really know quite yet.

But ultimately, only the first person of the Trinity is the first cause.

and is uncaused.

The second person of the Trinity, the Son, who will actually be called at some point the second cause, whatever that means, is himself caused by the Father.

So, his existence is somehow contingent upon the existence of the Father.

Does that make sense?

Now, These words, uncaused and caused, are going to be translated this way, unbegotten and begotten.

So the Son is begotten, the Father is unbegotten.

Does that make sense?

Tuck that away in your brains for later and it will all become clear before the end of the semester.

I have just a couple more things I want to say, but let me stop there again and see if there are any questions.

How are we doing?

If anything's not clear, make me clarify it.

I'm happy to do it.

I'm happy to go over stuff again, or whatever we need.

So, can you say that the concept of this day is the conclusion of the Catholic philosophy?

In some ways, I think they're not really conclusions so much as their starting point.

These are the assumptions that the philosophers brought to Christianity.

And the early Christians share these assumptions.

So that there's a certain, you know, when we talk about what do we mean by God, there's a certain assumption or a certain set of assumptions around the very definition of God or divinity with a capital D. And so these assumptions are built in.

God is simplest, God is incorruptible, God is immutable, God is eternally perfect.