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Abstract"Jesus and the Gospel in Africa collects writings by Kwame Bediako and is the best source for his insights into the Christ of present-day African history and the Jesus of African faith. Bediako shows how intimately bound together are such elements as the message of Jesus and the struggle to give birth to African democracy." --Book Jacket.

AbstractThe phase of Christian history offering the most instructive parallels to the modern African context is the beginning of Hellenistic Christianity in the early Roman Empire. With Christianity virtually transposed from its original Jewish matrix and fast becoming a predominantly Gentile phenomenon, there emerged from the circles of Gentile Christian thought a significant body of Christian literature, in which the problem of Christian identity and the nature of continuity with the pre-Christian tradition began to be faced in earnest. Traditionally, early Christian writers have been studied largely for their contribution or otherwise to the development of Christian doctrine. Their careers...

AbstractApologetics take their place beside miracles of healing and courage in the face of persecution as an important means of furthering the early Christian mission. In the first two centuries AD, when the popular perception was that Christianity was closely allied to Judaism, the argument from Old Testament prophecy was important. In the third century, however, as the Church gained ground among the educated classes in east and west, the emphasis changed to an attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over its pagan rivals as a philosophy with a more convincing understanding of the role of providence. Apologists in the north African tradition, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius and Lactantius, all played their part in this process. The prophecies of the Old Testament had to be confirmed by other prophecies, notably the Sibylline oracles and the sayings of Hermes Trismegistus. Finally, in the fourth century, many north Africans who, like Augustine for ten years, adhered to Manichaean Christianity relied wholly on these authorities, rejecting the Old Testament altogether.

Abstract<p>This thesis discusses Lactantius’ moral philosophy and understanding of justice, and explores the apologetic use he made of these ideas. The present study is the fullest treatment of Lactantius’ view of justice in any language, and the only one in English. Its methodology is philological; it combines a close reading of Lactantius’ corpus with a literary-historical investigation of the many sources he cites and of the ideological justification of the Diocletian persecution. I investigate how these sources govern the form and content of Lactantius’ arguments; his apologetic method means he often argues for Christian ideas from pagan sources and premises. Lactantius understands justice as meeting obligations and divides obligations into two domains: duties to God and duties to other humans. He does so by likening God to a Roman paterfamilias, which creates the obligations of worshipping God and of treating other humans as his children and one’s siblings. Lactantius arrives at this definition by reconfiguring Cicero’s understanding of natural law, which undergirds justice in de Legibus Book 1. Lactantius’ conception of justice thus adopts a Ciceronian framework, but fills it with Christian ideas which drive his ethics. Lactantius’ ethics were influenced by Cyprian’s selection of biblical quotations in ad Quirinum; contra Wlosok and Loi, I found no profound dependence upon the Hermetica. The study then situates Lactantius’ ethics in the intellectual context of his day. Lactantius’ understanding of justice is carefully constructed to respond holistically to the persecutors’ ideology and asserts that Christians embody the ideals of Roman virtue. Contrary to the suggestions of Digeser and Colot, he does not seek to Christianise the Roman empire, but rather to dissuade it from persecuting Christians.</p>

AbstractRecent scholarship has begun to consider more seriously the effects of Tertullian of Carthage’s status as a colonized subject on his oeuvre. This article builds upon this groundwork, addressing Tertullian’s relationship to his North African identity by analyzing his use of Roman and North African history in his apologetic works. In particular, it examines Tertullian’s deployment of the Roman historiographic trope of exempla, narrative vignettes designed to emphasize the ideological goals of the historian, in the Apologeticum and his letter Ad Martyras with his colonial status in mind. Tertullian draws on certain exempla from the historical relationship between Carthage and Rome that prior Roman historians often used to bolster Rome’s claim to the divine right to rule. He reframes these stories in a manner that undermines these claims and places North Africa at the center of the historical narrative. In this way, Tertullian presents a view of history that privileges a North African narrative identity in which local Christians, especially martyrs, could imagine themselves as the latest participants.

AbstractThis work is a discussion of the African Latin apologists prior to St. Augustine. The time-frame ranges from the end of the second century into the opening of the fourth; one of the most important locations in the formative history of Christian doctrine and practice. In turn, the literary medium of the apology carries particular significance in this period. The apologetic writings of Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius of Sicca and Lactantius are considered in chronological order, highlighting aspects of a collective tradition as well as more individual apologetic concerns. Common themes, shared arguments, and probable lines of influence all support a highly workable generic connection of African Latin apologetics, provided that the nuances of each text are taken into account. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the dialogue of a tradition of African Latin apologetics before Augustine of Hippo’s landmark De ciuitate dei.

AbstractThis book is a study of the writings of a group of Chinese Christian apologists in the seventeenth century, focussing on Xu Guangqi. Eleven of his shorter writings are included in Chinese and in translation. The first part of the book is devoted to a study of Latin Christian apologists within the Roman Empire to provide a comparison for the analysis of Xu Guangqi's work. Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Lactantius are shown to have faced, in regard to imperial power and Graeco-Roman culture, a situation comparable to that of Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao and Yang Tinqyun in regard to imperial power and culture in the late Ming period. The final chapters of the book reconsider general issues of confrontation and adaptation in the inculturation of Christianity.

AbstractThis chapter presents a reading of the Octavius, which is cast as a transcription of an earlier dialogue that purportedly took place in Ostia between three lawyers and friends: Marcus Minucius Felix, Caecilius Natalis, and Octavius Januaris. The text is set in a dialogical format that is clearly meant to recall the philosophical dialogues of Cicero, though it is less of a dialogue as it is actually composed of two speeches: one by Caecilius, defending the pagan position; and one by Octavius the Christian. Minucius functions as the arbitrator between the two others, though his actual role is the narrator of the exchange. The three lawyers are on holiday in Ostia, chatting as they walk along the shoreline, when the subject turns to religion; their conversation becomes a debate presenting both sides of the pagan-vs.-Christian arguments as commonly portrayed at the end of the second century. The chapter also considers the work of Thracius Caecilianus Cyprianus, bishop of Carthage.

AbstractThis chapter considers the work of Tertullian of Carthage. No Christian apologetic author could match Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (Tertullian) in his sardonic rhetorical style and massive erudition when writing against Christian heretics, fellow Catholics, and menacing pagans. His handful of apologetic works represent an apex in the refinement of refuting pagan denigrations of Christianity during the second and third centuries. Most remarkable in Tertullian’s case is that the reader encounters not merely another body of apologetic texts that marshaled philosophical or historical arguments against pagan condemnations, but the invention of a series of related texts advising Christians how they should live in and respond to a hostile culture.

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the work of Ambrose of Milan: specifically, it considers his two letters to Valentinian to see what they can tell us about the structure and evolution of Christian apologetic literature in the later fourth century. Both of Ambrose’s petitions are intent on making the bishop’s Against Symmachus the basis of a broader appeal in establishing the legitimacy of Christianity to an audience of uncommitted Christians or pagans. If it is correct to regard the two documents as such, then we are acknowledging the elasticity of Christian apologetic literature—a recognition that has come to typify scholarly assessment of Christian apologetic texts. The chapter also examines the work of Augustine of Hippo Regius, particularly the City of God and his analysis of evil things happening during “Christian times.”

AbstractThis chapter considers the work of Origen, whose one and only anti-pagan work elevated Christian standing in a culture that prized philosophical argumentation and intellectual attainment as among the higher goods. It was the first draft, as it were, “of a sustained Christian reflection of the evangelization of Hellenistic culture,” and the first one to survive. Origen had produced multivolume projects on a larger scale than Contra Celsum (Against Celsus), but it is this work that has come down to us, complete, in eight volumes. A great deal is known about both Origen and his literary efforts, including his work against the Christian critic Celsus. Although Celsus had been dead for seventy years or so, it is supposed that his arguments had been effectual enough to cause such severe Christian trepidation that Origen was asked by his patron, Ambrosius, to construct a refutation.

AbstractThis chapter considers the work of Arnobius, who presents the most mysteries of all the figures discussed in this book, both in terms of himself and in terms of what he was precisely attempting to achieve with his only known work, Against the Pagans (Adversus nations). There is almost no externally verifiable information on Arnobius except his authorship of this work, penned about fifty years after Cyprian’s death, likely during or just after the “great persecution” that the emperor Diocletian inaugurated from 303 until it was unexpectedly halted in 311 by Galerius—one week before his death. Against the Pagans provides a window into the intellectual debate of the time, through its engagement with the religious and philosophical standpoints that underpinned the outburst of anti-Christian feeling of the Diocletianic persecution. Just as Lactantius’s Divine Institutes and Eusebius’s Preparation of the Gospel will do, so Arnobius is rebutting the pagan attempts to justify the gods’ perceived anger toward Christianity. This chapter is also concerned with Lactantius

AbstractChristian apologetics in the patristic era should be understood broadly as a defense of Christian beliefs and practices against non-Christian beliefs, practices, and policies (religious, social, and political) that were either antithetical to Christian beliefs and practices or openly hostile to Christianity. The advantage of this conceptualization of apologetics is that it enables readers to follow the discussion of Christian responses to Hellenistic culture beyond the context of persecution associated with the pre-Constantinian period, which tends to be where many scholarly projects on apologetics end. The reader is also invited to see the links in the intellectual trajectory from early second-century apologetics through those written in the early fifth century, prompting deeper reflection about the process of Christian self-definition in late antiquity. This book explores Christian apologetic literature from the second through fifth centuries, examining the writers within the intellectual context of their times. The book argues that most apologies were not directed at a pagan readership. In most cases, ancient apologetics had a double object: to instruct the Christian, and persuade less devout Christians or non-Christians who were sympathetic to Christian claims. Taken cumulatively, it finds that apologetic literature was integral to the formation of Christian identity in the Roman world.