The Turn from Community to Text in the Apology of Aristides
“Something Divine Mingled Among Them”: Countercultural Holiness as Apologetic in the Second Century: Part 4 of 5
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If the argument of the Apology of Aristides stopped here with the holiness of the church, perhaps it might partially fit the pattern described in The End of Apologetics. Despite beginning with an argument from the cosmos, maybe this would still produce an apologetic that simply declares to the world, “This is the truth I have encountered that has edified me. Take a look at my life, at who I am and see if you think that it’s true.”
Yet it is precisely at this point that Aristides makes a crucial turn and declares these words to his reader:
The sayings and ordinances [of the Christians] … and the glory of their service and the expectation of their recompense of reward, you can know from their writings. … So take now their writings and read them. You will find that it is not of myself that I have brought these things forward nor have I spoken these things as their advocate, but as I have read them in their writings, I firmly believe these things as well as the things that are to come. (Apology 16)
For Aristides, the holiness of the Christian community is not the final word. This countercultural way of being in the world is a signpost that becomes explicable only through the written Word. These words were what assured Aristides of the truth of the Christian faith, and it is only through these words that the life of the church became intelligible to him.
A Clash of Narratives
What the Apology of Aristides describes is not only a clash of lifestyles but also a clash of narratives. Aristides and other second-century apologists consistently presented the writings revered by Christians as “truer, more authoritative, and more ancient than the revered literature of antiquity on which the culture around them based its whole system of education.” To become a Christian in the second century was not merely to trade one network of relationships for another; it was to trade every previous narrative for the metanarrative of Scripture.
It is in this context that Aristides declares in the Syriac text, “Truly, this people is a new people, and there is something divine mingled among them” (Apology 16). The Greek has a different sentence at this point: “For the utterances [ρηματα] they speak are not from humanity but they are from God” (Apology 16 Greek). What is mingled among this people that sets them apart are the very words of God; as a result, the words that they utter derive not from themselves but from God.
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