On the Divine Logos

Aristides, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyon, Justin, Tatian, Theophilus, Mathetes

De: Józef Trzebuniak

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

The first Christian authors after the New Testament were the Apostolic Fathers, who, as disciples of the Apostles, passed on the Gospel in their writings. These earliest writers of the Church were not a homogeneous group, but preachers from various philosophical backgrounds. They did not seek a scientific justification for Christianity or the truths of faith. In their writings they did not directly raise issues connected to the concept of the divine Logos. The texts of the Apostolic Fathers instead had a pastoral character and were concerned mainly with the problems of their contemporary Christian communities. They used the vocabulary of everyday life and there is thus no complex doctrinal content or profound philosophical speculation in their writings.It was only in the second century that the Christian apologists began the so-called Christology of the Logos, which referred to both Greek and Jewish philosophy, as well as to biblical thought, in presenting Christianity in a scientific and philosophically coherent way. In their speeches and writings, they defended the orthodoxy of the Christian faith and presented the very teaching of the Church. These apologists generally accepted that the Old Testament has a doctrinal authority and is part of the Christian inheritance. In their deliberations they took up anthropological issues and accepted a dichotomous division of human nature. They based their philosophical arguments on the teachings of the New Testament, which they knew from both the apostolic letters and the Gospel, as well as from liturgical practices and the catechetical tradition of the Church. In so doing, they treated the entire content of the Holy Scriptures as one. This book presents the ancient Christian theology as it relates to the concept of participation in the Divine Logos. The theology of the apologists was the theology of educated people who had lost confidence in polytheistic religions and Hellenic philosophy. However, the apologists did not entirely reject the heritage of ancient culture. While they sought to translate the Christian faith into philosophical and theological language by employing the conceptual apparatus of their own era, they nevertheless also used the terminology of the philosophers of ancient times, especially that of the Stoics and Middle Platonists.In their arguments, usually in the form of speeches, treatises or dialogues, the apologists thus used concepts from classical philosophy that were familiar to their adversaries. They began by presenting Christianity as a philosophy, much like Philo of Alexandria, who pinpointed the close relationship between revealed religion and Greek philosophy. Moreover, they drew inspiration from the Prologue to the Gospel of John, in which the author identifies Christ as the eternal Logos and Son of God. In this way, using the concept of the Logos, they translated Christianity into a language that was understood in the culture of the Greco-Roman world. At the time of the second-century Christian apologists, the study of the Logos was booming, and the catechumens saw in Christianity the ultimate fulfilment of ancient philosophy. These apologists were thus the precursors of those who would later intellectually explain the relationship between creation and the Creator, the relationship of Christ and God the Father, and the Logos in men, angels and the whole world created by God.