The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Martyrs' Church
Athenagoras of Athens
died c. 190Early Church
The Athenian philosopher who answered the empire's three charges against Christians to the emperor's face.
Summary
- Lived died c. 190.
- Stood in The Martyrs' Church (AD 100–313).
- Hangs on The Fathers.
- Tradition: Early Church.
The life
Around AD 177 a Christian in Athens wrote a formal petition to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. He signed it Athenagoras, philosopher of Athens. Beyond the name and the title, the record of his life is nearly empty.
The petition survives complete, and it is one of the clearest documents the second-century church produced. It is usually called A Plea for the Christians.
Three things the empire believed about Christians, Athenagoras set out to answer. First, that they were atheists, they had no images, no temples, no sacrifices, so plainly they had no god. Second, that at their meetings they ate human flesh, a charge the Greeks called Thyestean banquets. Third, that they committed incest in the dark, called Oedipodean intercourse. The rumors came from garbled reports of the Lord's Supper and of Christians calling each other brother and sister.
Athenagoras took them one at a time, in the manner of a man who had been trained to argue. On atheism, he pointed out that the pagan poets and philosophers themselves had reasoned toward one God, and quoted them at length doing it. On cannibalism, he made an argument the emperor could check: Christians refuse to attend the gladiatorial games, refuse to watch a man be killed for sport, and condemn abortion and the exposure of unwanted infants as murder. People who will not look at a death in the arena do not eat their own children.
On incest, he described Christian marriage, one wife, for life, with remarriage after a spouse's death regarded as a kind of decent adultery, and let the contrast stand.
Running under all of it is the argument he pressed hardest: Christians are the emperor's most loyal subjects, because they are the only people in the empire who cannot lie about what they believe.
A second work of his survives, On the Resurrection of the Dead, arguing that God's power and God's justice both require that the body itself be raised.
We do not know whether the emperor read the plea. We do not know when or how Athenagoras died. The record of his life is two books and a self-description, and both books are better than most of what surrounds them.
Sources: Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians and On the Resurrection of the Dead (Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2); Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 2.
What was happening while he lived3 moments · AD 100–313
- c. 155Polycarp of Smyrna is burned in the stadiumThe old bishop had been a disciple of the apostle John. When the governor told him to curse Christ and go free, the account written by his own congregation records his answer: "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" The traditional date is 155 or 156; some scholars argue for as late as 167.
- c. 165Justin Martyr is beheaded at RomeThe philosopher who had written open letters defending Christians to two emperors was tried by the city prefect Rusticus with six companions. The court record survives as the *Acts of Justin*. Asked what teachings he held, he explained them; asked to sacrifice, he refused, and the group was scourged and beheaded.
- 177The martyrs of Lyons and VienneMob violence in Gaul turned into arrests, torture, and days in the amphitheater. The churches there wrote an account that Eusebius preserved (*Church History* 5.1). Two names stayed: Pothinus, the bishop, over ninety years old, who died in prison, and Blandina, a slave woman whose owners feared she would break first and who outlasted them all.
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Athenagoras of Athens at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Wrote to the emperor to prove Christians were not cannibals, atheists, or traitors, the three things everyone believed.
Hangs on The Fathers: The men who carried the faith out of the apostles' hands, and wrote down what they had received.
Standing beside himThe Martyrs' Church · 40 on this stretch of wall
A 22-year-old mother who kept a diary in prison and walked into the arena at Carthage singing.
Stayed with his people through plague and persecution, then walked to his own beheading and paid the executioner.
Traced his teaching straight back to the apostle John through Polycarp, and wrote the first great takedown of the gnostics.
Kept wearing his philosopher's cloak after he met Christ, argued the faith to the emperor's face, and was beheaded for it.
Wanted to die with his martyred father as a boy, and spent the rest of his life laying six versions of the Old Testament side by side.
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The lawyer who gave the church the word Trinity and told Rome that the blood of the martyrs is seed.