Davide's Notes

Athenagoras wrote his περι χριστιανων (Plea for Christians) around 177. This text is addressed to the emperors Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus. These are the charges against Christianity he wants to refute (I shall consider the answers that Athenagoras and other apologists give later on):

1. Just the name Christian is enough to condemn and persecute. Why is it so? Others have different customs and laws (in some cases ridiculous), but do not get the same treatment. Athenagoras wants Christians to be treated as others when accused.
   
2. Christians are atheists. Athenagoras explains that this charge is related to the fact that Christians acknowledge only one God (and he explains to some length how this one God has a Son, and how the Holy Spirit is "an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun"). The charge of atheism may seem strange to us, but it is linked to the refusal to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods.
3. Christians indulge in Thyestean feasts. Thyestes was invited by his brother to a banquet in which the dish was his own sons. A Thyestean feast is therefore a reference to cannibalism: apparently, a then common misconception on the nature of the Eucharist. Note that Thyestes can also be a symbol for other common charges against Christianity, like adultery, sedition, and OEdipean intercourse (since he seduced his brother's wife and convinced her to steal from her husband property; he also raped his own daughter).
   
4. Christians practice OEdipean intercourse. We have seen similar accusations in the more or less contemporary Octavius, which refers to Marcus Cornelius Fronto, the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, as a proponent of those charges.
   

On Athenagoras, see this article.

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Categories: Church_History