Please skim through Athenagoras'
Plea for the Christians. Like Justin, Athenagoras defends Christians against the incest and cannibalism slanders. He also uses pagan sources to point toward Christian truth. What do you see in this work that might have been especially helpful in drawing educated pagans toward Christianity, or at least in making them more tolerant of Christians?
In the readings he talks about the similarities of pagan religion and Christianity. He kind of twists some stuff like Christians actually worship God, Jesus, an Holy Spirit so they worshiped some Gods. He tries to point of old teachings from philosophers and other civilizations that say they are not so weird different.
ReplyDeleteAthenagoras used pagan sources to explain some of the things that Christians believed in. Doing this would have helped these pagans to understand Christians and see that Christian beliefs didn't make them do bad things. It would have shown them that in some ways the things that the Christians did weren't so entirely different from what they did. He also very logically refuted some of the arguments that they made against Christians. In Chapter 3 he seems to make the point that if they would just ask the Christians about these things then they would have the answers that they needed to see that they were wrong about them.
ReplyDeleteMallory Schlechter