The Second-Century Apologists. Alvyn Pettersen

The Second-Century Apologists - Alvyn Pettersen


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of Christ­ians, however, were, in all probability, people of humbler origin, free men and women who might well have had at least some slaves. Some of these slaves, in all probability, also were Christ­ians, people who along with the poor and the outcast had been attracted to Christ­ianity because it offered them both a dignity, as children of God, and an otherworldly security, which this world denied them. In recognizing neither rich nor poor, free nor slave, but all one in Christ, the churches were therefore cutting across society’s distinctions, even divisions of class and profession. They were challenging a concept of stability to which Greco-Roman society generally adhered.

      The empire’s bemusement was then deepened by the practices of the Jews and of those Christ­ians, generically called gnostics. The Jews, the empire was aware, were willing to make a public act of sacrifice for the emperor, even though they were unwilling to sacrifice to the imperial cult; but Christ­ians, perceived in some sense as an “offshoot” of Judaism, had no system of public sacrifices. Christ­ians, the empire was told, did pray for the emperor; but the empire’s officials could see no obvious proof of this. To people accustomed to seeing religion as a formal, public duty, involving doing something very overtly, being told that Christ­ians said a prayer in the privacy of a house church must have seemed somewhat unsatisfactory, certainly in contrast with the doing involved in the Jews’ public act of sacrificing for the emperor, if not wholly insufficient.

      That incomprehension, especially when put alongside both a concentration upon rites and rituals rather than beliefs and syncretic, pluralist theologies, may help to explain, though not excuse, why prosecuting officials and their supporters sometimes forsook persuasion and took to threats in their attempt to elicit a sacrifice to the gods of their cults.

      Some forty-six years earlier, in AD 156, Polycarp, the eighty-six-year-old bishop of Smyrna, although widely held in high esteem, was charged with being a Christ­ian. On the way from the farm house in which he was found to the amphitheater in Smyrna where he was to be killed, the arresting police chief sought to persuade Polycarp to do something, anything, which might have saved his life. People searched for a convenient form of words that might have spared Polycarp. They suggested that he said, “away with the atheists,” by which they meant “away with the Christ­ians who denied the gods of the empire.” He complied, saying, “away with the atheists,” by which he meant, “away with the pagans, who denied the one, true God of the Christ­ians.” Subsequent demands of Polycarp he would not grant; and so he was killed.

      Even allowing for the possibility that such accounts as these of Perpetua’s and Polycarp’s martyrdoms were written in such a manner as to encourage resistance to both smooth and harsh words which sought to lead Christ­ians into ways that all Christ­ians should resist, these accounts do suggest the degree of incomprehension on the part of pagan officials, demanding sacrifices, when faced with what they saw as Christ­ian obstinacy. What Christ­ians believed or did not believe, especially as “belief” or “faith” was thought to be the lowest form of cognition by those brought up on classical Greek philosophy, was of little concern. What was of concern to the local officials was a gesture, literally a gesture of honor to the cult, and an acceptance of a widely held religious tradition. One can almost hear their plaintiff cry, “We are not asking you to forsake the worship of your god. We are simply asking you to honor our gods as well.” For, in short, the official powers wanted peace and stability, not martyrs for a faith.


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