Apology

Contents

Reading pages: 1–8 · 9–17 · 18–23 · 24–38 · 39–47 · 48–50

1. 1Tertullian appeals in writing to the Roman magistrates, arguing that hatred of the Christian name rests on ignorance and that Christians, unlike real criminals, rejoice when accused.
2. 2Christians alone are condemned for confessing the name and tortured to make them deny it; Trajan's reply to Pliny forbids seeking them out yet orders them punished.
3. 3People hate the very name “Christian” even in those it has reformed, though the name means “anointed” and schools are commonly named after their founders.
4. 4Tertullian challenges the law forbidding Christians to exist: human laws can err and are constantly amended, and no just law refuses examination.
5. 5The laws against Christians began with bad emperors like Nero and Domitian, while Tiberius and Marcus Aurelius are said to have favored them.
6. 6The Romans who accuse Christians of abandoning ancestral custom have themselves abandoned their ancestors' laws on luxury, women's modesty, marriage, and the gods.
7. 7The charges of ritual infanticide, cannibalism, and incest rest only on rumor, which has never been proved despite constant betrayal and surprise of Christian meetings.
8. 8Tertullian mocks the charge of ritual murder and incest by imagining what an initiate would have to do and asking whether anyone could do it.
9. 9Tertullian turns the charges back on the pagans: child sacrifice, exposure of infants, drinking of blood, and the risk of incest are found among them, while Christians forbid even abortion and abstain from blood.
10. 10Christians are charged with sacrilege and treason for not worshiping the gods, but the gods were men, as the case of Saturn shows.
11. 11There was no reason to make gods out of men: the world was complete from the beginning, and the deified men were wicked, while far better men were left in the underworld.
12. 12The gods are only dead men and their images mere material, which suffer in their making the very tortures inflicted on Christians.
13. 13The pagans themselves dishonor their gods by choosing among them, selling and taxing them, and treating them like the dead, and by deifying prostitutes, emperors, and court favorites.
14. 14The pagans dishonor their gods in their sacrifices and in their own poets, who tell of gods wounded, chained, lustful, and punished.
15. 15Mimes, plays, and the arena make sport of the gods, and temples serve as places of vice, so the pagans insult their gods more than Christians do.
16. 16Tertullian refutes the slanders that Christians worship an ass's head, the cross, or the sun, and mocks a caricature of the Christian god displayed in Carthage.
17. 17Christians worship the one Creator, who is known both from his works and from the testimony of the soul, which naturally calls on God.
18. 18God has also revealed himself through the prophets, whose writings were translated into Greek for Ptolemy Philadelphus and are read openly by the Jews every Sabbath.
19. 19The Scriptures are older than all pagan literature and religion, since Moses lived long before Danaus, the Trojan war, and Homer.
20. 20The fulfillment of prophecy in present events proves the Scriptures divine and grounds Christian confidence about the future.
21. 21Tertullian explains the relation of Christians to the Jews and sets out who Christ is: the Word and Son of God, God from God, born of a virgin, crucified, risen, and ascended.
22. 22Demons, fallen angels, cause disease and madness, steal knowledge of the future from the prophets, and work false marvels so that idols are worshiped instead of the true God.
23. 23Tertullian challenges the magistrates to test it: before a Christian, the spirits worshiped as gods confess that they are demons and fear Christ the judge.
24. 24If the gods are not gods, Christians cannot injure religion; even granting them, one may honor the supreme God above subordinates, and to forbid choice of religion is itself irreligion.
25. 25Rome's power is not a reward for its religion: its gods failed their own homelands, and Rome grew great by wars that sacked temples and captured gods.
26. 26It is the one God who gives and takes away kingdoms, as the empires older than Rome's gods and the history of Judea show.
27. 27Christians refuse to sacrifice even to save their lives, recognizing that the pressure to do so comes from the demons, over whom they triumph when condemned.
28. 28Compelling free people to sacrifice is unjust; the second charge, treason against the emperor, shows that the pagans fear Caesar more than their gods.
29. 29Idols, which are themselves protected and owned by Caesar, cannot protect him; Christians are accused only because they will not seek his welfare from them.
30. 30Christians pray to the true God, from whom the emperors have their power, for the emperor's long life, safe empire, and a quiet world, even while being tortured.
31. 31The Christian Scriptures command prayer for enemies and persecutors and, by name, for kings and rulers.
32. 32Christians pray for the empire because its continuance delays the end of the age, and they swear by the emperors' welfare, not by their genii, which are demons.
33. 33Caesar is appointed by the Christians' God, so they honor him the more by refusing to call him a god, which would deny that he is a man and an emperor.
34. 34Christians may call the emperor lord in the ordinary sense, but never God, since there is one Lord of all and such flattery is both false and ill-omened.
35. 35Christians are called public enemies for refusing riotous imperial festivals, yet the conspirators and assassins of emperors have all come from the pagans who kept those festivals.
36. 36True loyalty to the emperors lies not in festival displays but in the conduct God requires toward everyone: never to wish, do, speak, or think ill of anyone.
37. 37Christians, commanded to love their enemies, never retaliate, though they are now so numerous everywhere that they could resist, or empty the empire by withdrawing.
38. 38Christians should be counted a lawful association, since they take no part in politics or partisan strife and abstain from the public shows.
39. 39Tertullian describes Christian life together: common prayer, Scripture reading, discipline, elders chosen for character, a voluntary fund for the poor and imprisoned, and the agape meal.
40. 40Christians are blamed for every disaster, yet worse disasters struck before Christ; the human race has always offended God, and Christians' fasting and prayer now soften his anger.
41. 41The pagans, not the Christians, bring disasters on the world; God sends good and ill on all alike until the final judgment, as admonition to Christians and punishment to others.
42. 42Christians are not useless to society: they live, work, trade, farm, sail, and serve as soldiers like others, and pay their taxes honestly, abstaining only from pagan rites.
43. 43Only pimps, assassins, magicians, and astrologers lose by the Christians, who more than repay any loss by their protection.
44. 44The real loss to the state is the execution of so many innocent Christians, while the prisons and arenas are filled only with pagan criminals.
45. 45Christians alone are truly innocent, because their law, taught by God, forbids even anger, lust of the eyes, and retaliation, and they fear his eternal judgment.
46. 46Christianity is not merely a philosophy: philosophers attack the gods unpunished, but their lives contradict their teaching, while Christians know God and live chastely and faithfully.
47. 47The philosophers and poets drew on the older Scriptures and distorted them, as heretics have since distorted the Christian rule of truth; their judgment, Pyriphlegethon, and Elysium are copies of Christian teaching.
48. 48The resurrection of the same person, body and soul, for judgment is more credible than transmigration; God who made man from nothing can remake him, and the world is full of images of resurrection.
49. 49Even if Christian beliefs were false, they make people better and harm no one, so they deserve at most ridicule, not death; and Christians suffer only by their own choice.
50. 50Christians suffer as soldiers fight, to win; the pagans praise heroes who died for glory but condemn Christians who die for God, yet every persecution makes more Christians: “the blood of Christians is seed.”