The history of Christian Apologetics

What is history and how important is it for the study of apologetics? History is the

continuous narrative of events set out in a chronological order to help in understanding connections

in man’s civilization. It preserves the past, inspires the present and is an anthology of lessons to

assist us in our daily living.

For the apologist, history can be viewed as a recounting of God’s story among men, a story

manifested in divine interventions and communication in the world. It is noteworthy that every

experience in the world is according to God’s plan. God used many believers to propagate and

defend the faith. Even today, believers must be prepared to explain their faith and answer questions

raised against it. The believer must prepare mentally and spiritually to face opposition to the faith

and withstand it since all hell is bent against the church according to John Fox. Jesus’ parting

imperative to the disciples aptly fits the mandated of the Christian apologist to propagate and

defend the faith.

Kigame surveys the walk of several figures in Christianity who have stood out as key

apologists of lasting impact. He traces back from Stephen, one of the first major witnesses after

the Pentecost. He was a Hellenistic Jew, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, and a worker of

miracles. He embodied administration of charities in the social welfare of the church as a spiritual

duty.

His style of apologetics was effective and his thrust employed a clear grasp of the

redemptive history from Abraham’s call to Jesus’ betrayal and death, and thus effectively inferred

to Jesus in the correct historical context and convicted the Jews for denying him. Stephen strongly

rebutted the false confidence that was placed in the Temple as misleading. He displayed a depth

of scripture mastery and application to defend the faith and draw his conclusions. It is noteworthy
how he addressed his opponents respectfully and yet fearlessly. His effective apology swayed

many, even some priests to Christianity and this incensed the Sanhedrin who sanctioned his death

by stoning. A persecution of the disciples ensued in the wake of Stephen’s martyrdom which

scattered them to different places.

Kigame traces the apologetics ministry later to Quadratus. He was the Bishop of Athens.

His defense of the faith consisted of writing treatises. Eusebius records his address to the emperor

Adrian to defend Christianity from certain wicked and troublesome men. Quadratus insisted on

the veracity of Jesus’ miracles and maintained that those whom Jesus healed remained among the

people even after his ascension.

Later on, we encounter Marcianus Aristides who employed a mixture of Greek philosophy

and challenged irreligion and the persecution of Christians. He is noted to have written a scathing

address to the emperor Hadrian regarding reverence to God. Kigame points out that Aristides

categorized humanity into four groups to determine their folly as concerns the acquisition of truth.

He sarcastically pointed out the Barbarians as those who venerated the elements of nature,

fashioned and worshipped idols which needed protection from robbers. For these reasons, they

were so devoid of the truth. Furthermore, the Greeks were more foolish in perfecting worship to

many gods who displayed confusion, limitation, immorality and bad influence on men, and were

thus unworthy of worship. The Jews however, were closer to the truth since they claimed to

worship one God. However, they venerated the angels and feast days more than God and observed

rites, fasts and other rituals which they didn’t keep perfectly. Lastly, the Christians are the closest

to the truth and knowledge. The Christian truth needs to be considered because of the noble lives

and examples they displayed. Aristides’ style was a simplicity of critiquing the opponents’

worldview by identifying and challenging its loopholes.

 Kigame further highlights the life and ministry of Justin Martyr, a prolific Christian

apologist who was indebted to Aristides. He was born in Samaria in 100 AD and martyred in 165

AD. He was an adept scholar of Greek philosophy and a disciple of Socrates and Plato. However,

he later rebutted the philosophy of Socrates as hollow and impotent compared to Jesus’. Moreover,

the enlightenment that Plato advocated for was only achievable in Christ, since the force that works

in Christ was regenerative. Justin maintained that Plato plagiarized Moses.

Justin had a vibrant teaching, writing and debating ministry. His first work, ‘Dialogue with

Trypho the Jew’ was an evangelical treatise to the Jew and demonstrated Jesus as the promised

Messiah of the Old Testament. His first and second apologies appealed for the toleration of

Christianity as the only true philosophy and the highest moral faith and refuted common libels

against Christianity like cannibalism. He maintained for faith in Christ who is the ‘right reason’

and divine authority of the Bible against charges of rationalism.

A look into the walk and ministry of Origen reveals yet another highly respected early

church thinker who exerted a deep theological and apologetic influence on Christian scholarship.

Origen lived between 185 AD and 254 AD. His work, ‘On First Principles’, strongly argues for

the veracity of both the Old and New Testaments and state that no legal system ever influenced

the whole world like Moses and Jesus through these Testaments. Origen notes that the fulfilment

of Jesus’ predictions vindicated him as the secession of the Priesthood, the Sacrifices and the

Temple with its rituals came true in Jesus as the Prophet, Priest and King and although he taught

shortly, the world is filled with his teachings and the worship of God established through him.

Another figure of interest whom Kigame looks up is Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria,

Egypt. He was born in 297 AD and died in 373 AD. His ministry was strongly opposed and he

suffered five exiles under four Roman emperors for the defense of the faith. He wrote in Greek but
knew Latin and even spoke Coptic. Was adept in grammar, rhetoric and logic, having attended

catechetical school in Alexandria. He was a great theologian and apologist who vigorously

defended the deity of Jesus against the heretical Arianism in 319 AD. Arius’ heresy led to the

convening of the Church council of Nicaea where Athanasius strongly laid the foundations that

the Son is fully God and co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Trinitarian unity.

Athanasius is to be remembered for the compilation and confirmation of the 27 books of the New

Testament as being part of the Holy Bible by 367 AD. This happened amid the circulation of many

false scriptures at that time. His apologetics style was predominantly to state the disputed as held

by his opponents and then explaining it away.

From Athanasius, Kigame introduces us to St. Augustine, of Thagaste in North Africa. He

lived between 354 AD and 430 AD. Augustine was the Bishop of Hippo in Algeria. The Roman

Catholic church considered him a Doctor of the Church whereas the Evangelical protestants

consider him the theological fountain head of the reformation teaching of salvation and grace. As

a young man, he struggled with lust, emptiness, poor health and the heresy of Manichaeism and

later also with Neo-Platonism and Pelagianism. Augustine life exemplified several aspects which

are worth emulating by Christian apologetics.

Augustine argued that Jesus is the wisdom of God, therefore, philosophy, critical thinking,

logic and metaphysics which is pursuit of wisdom, should be used for the defense of the Christian

faith. Only bad philosophy should be shunned. Furthermore, he opposed the heresy of Mani who

claimed to be the ‘Spirit of Truth’ to lead believers into all truth and cited the lack of biblical

inferences of Mani as the Paraclete. Mani had erred on the Trinity, on dualism and on the nature

of man, and teaching of a battle fought before creation, thus causing uncertainty. Augustine also

explicated the doctrine of salvation by grace alone and justification by faith in God and not works.
In Augustine, we learn that an apologist leads a devotional lifestyle for he is a worshipper in the

Spirit and truth, a singer and a quiet listener in the silence of the forest or in the Cathedral. We can

thus emulate his good example of pastoral ministry and apologetics.

Another interesting figure Kigame highlights in St. Thomas Aquinas of Italy who lived

between 1224 AD and 1274 AD. Aquinas was deeply impacted by the philosophy of Aristotle

during his days at the University of Naples. He was a prolific writer with over 90 works on

theological, philosophical and ethical issues to his credit.

Kigame notes that Aquinas approached the discussion of doctrine with unparalleled logic,

and insisted that faith is reasonable. He demonstrated that Christianity can be presented using

Aristotelian logic and stressed on the need for reason before, during and after believing. However,

Aquinas maintained that faith in God came by the grace of God and only God can persuade for the

belief in Him working along with evidence and through the free choice. It is noted by Geisler that

it is this unique synthesis of faith and reason in Aquinas that endears him to us.

The author also brings up St Anslem as another historical figure of apologetic importance.

He was the Archbishop of Canterbury and lived between 1033 AD and 1109 AD. Anslem joined

the monastic life at Bec by the assistance of Bishop Lanfranc.

Anslem is noted for inventing the ontological argument for God’s existence in his work,

the ‘Proslogian’. This fascinating and controversial argument posits that when a fool says in his

heart that there is no God, he affirms that he understands what is meant by the term God, that is,

that which no other ting can be conceived to be greater than. His classic writing, ‘Why God became

man’ set a standard view of atonement, that only God can satisfy the infinite demands of His

righteous wrath, and graciously did so through the God-Man Jesus Christ. Unlike his
contemporaries, his style of apology used argumentation that was indirectly dependent on scripture,

Christian doctrine or tradition.

During the enlightenment era when the worldview was dominated by reason as

championed by Descartes and Voltaire, Kigame highlights the ministry of a French mathematician

and physicist who experienced a definitive conversion to the Christian faith as recorded in his

‘Memorial’, the man Blaise Pascal. Pascal wrote sterling defenses of the faith in French prose form.