Athenagoras of Athens

About Athenagoras of Athens

Athenagoras of Athens was a Christian philosopher who defended his community through writing. He belonged to the second half of the second century and was a convert to Christianity. Very little secure information survives about his personal life.

His Plea for the Christians is usually dated to 176–177. Its imperial addressees are Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. Although the work takes the form of a speech, it should not be turned into a story of an established personal audience with the emperors. The argument survives more clearly than the circumstances in which it reached its readers.

Athenagoras asks that Christians be judged for their conduct rather than condemned because of their name. He is not asking that genuine crimes go unpunished. He wants accusations examined instead of accepted as rumor. The appeal makes a concrete distinction between belonging to a disliked community and committing a wrong.

His defense concentrates on the accusation of atheism, then addresses allegations of incest and cannibalism. In Richardson's account, this arrangement shows attention to the audience rather than an attempt to set down everything Christians believed. The work draws on Greek philosophy to make its case intelligible to readers outside the Church.

A second treatise transmitted under his name discusses the resurrection of the dead. Its authorship is disputed: Robert Grant's published research extract explicitly challenges the attribution. It is therefore safer to describe what this associated text argues than to treat every statement in it as an undisputed expression of Athenagoras's thought.

The resurrection treatise presents a human being as a unity of body and soul. It argues that lasting human life requires both, rather than the survival of the soul alone. Its discussion includes infants, whose resurrection it does not make dependent on moral judgment. These are theological arguments about human destiny, not observations offered as physical proof.

Later readers preserved these writings even when information about their author was scarce. The Orthodox Church in America's account identifies a manuscript made in the workshop of Arethas in 914. It commemorates Athenagoras on July 24. He is remembered for a clear and articulate defense of Christian faith.