The next post in my Early Church Fathers isn’t actually about an early Church Father. Instead, it is about an early Church writing by an anonymous writer, some time in the early 2nd century, possibly around AD 130. It is written to someone whom the writer addresses as, “my lord Diognetus.” In any case, this writing is unique in that it is the earliest Christian writing addressed specifically to pagans. In the simplest terms, in this Letter to Diognetus, the writer tries to explain to a pagan audience what Christianity actually is.
We must remember that in AD 130, Christianity, as a separate religion, was still a pretty new thing. It began as a Jewish sect that proclaimed Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited Messiah, and therefore was essentially a sort of “fulfilled-Judaism” movement. Of course, between AD 30-70, this “fulfilled Judaism” movement began reaching out to Gentiles and declaring they could become part of the people of God in Jesus Christ, who wasn’t just the Jewish Messiah, but was indeed Lord of all creation. This message caused quite the strain between that first generation Church and the other Jewish sects of the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots. After the Jewish War of AD 70, the only two “forms” of Second Temple Judaism that survived were the Pharisees and the Christians. The Pharisees restructured Judaism, and their movement became known as Rabbinic Judaism, from which modern Judaism descends. After AD 70, though, Christianity essentially became an entirely separate religion from the restructured, Rabbinic Judaism of the Pharisees.
That being said, by AD 130, when the Letter to Diognetus was written, pagans throughout the Roman Empire were still trying to figure out just what this “Christianity thing” was. It wasn’t Judaism, but it wasn’t paganism either. So, what was it? The Letter to Diognetus attempts to answer that question. To do that, the letter focuses on three further questions: (1) Who is this God that Christians worship? (2) What is the source of the love they have for each other? And (3) Why did it take so long for this new way of living to appear on the earth? In answering these questions, the writer makes a point not to quote Scripture or any of the apostolic writings at all. That was intentional. After all, a pagan audience wouldn’t know any of that, and it certainly wouldn’t carry any convincing weight in their minds anyway—they were pagans. And so, to convince his pagan audience of the truthfulness of Christianity and the Christian way of life, he basically appeals to common sense.
A few years ago, I actually wrote my own paraphrase of the The Letter to Diognetus and posted it on my blog. I broke it up into three different posts, and you and read them here: PART 1, PART 2, PART 3.
The Content of the Letter to Diognetus
The first thing in the letter is essentially a mockery of paganism, specifically idolatry. The view expressed about idolatry can be found throughout the Old Testament, and hence has its roots in Judaism. It is essentially this: Idols are stupid and anyone who worships an idol is a moron! When you think about it, that’s a very fair assessment. An idol, after all, is made by someone, and then that someone bows down and worships the thing he has made. Needless to say, if you make something, that “thing” certainly is not a god. The writer says this: “Do you really call these things god, and really do service to them? Yes, indeed you do! You worship them, and you end up becoming like them!” What does that last thing mean? Simple: You become like the thing you worship, and that thing you worship is blind, deaf, mute, and stupid. Simply put: If you worship an idol, you lose all sense, rational, and reason—you become “dumb as a doorpost.”
At the same time the writer makes sure his audience knows that Christianity is not the same thing as Judaism (the emerging rabbinic Judaism of the time). His criticism of Judaism boils down to two things. First, their practice of animal sacrifice is, practically speaking, no different than the practice of animal sacrifice of pagans. Pagans think the gods need their sacrifices, while Jews think God wants them. The Christians say that since Christ is the ultimate sacrifice, God has never needed them, and now doesn’t want them anymore. Second, the writer criticizes the Jewish practices of circumcision, sabbath, and food laws as well, saying they are simply ridiculous. Simply put, since Jesus Christ has fulfilled God’s purposes for choosing the Jews in the Old Testament, the practices and rituals that marked the Jews off as different are no longer necessary or relevant.
As for describing Christians in comparison to the pagan world, the writer points out that the Christians are dispersed throughout all humanity, all countries, and all cities. They aren’t a specific ethnic group, or anything like that. Their ultimate citizenship is in heaven, no matter where they may be living on the earth. The writer then says that if the world is like the body, then Christians are like the soul, which is present throughout the entire body. Similarly, Christians like the moral conscience of the body. That is why, the writer says, the world tends to hate Christians. People’s natural instincts are to just go off after whatever their bodies want, yet that darn conscience sometimes tells you, “No, that’s not a good thing to do!”
The writer then touches upon how the Creator God, whom he calls the Universal Artificer, revealed the Gospel in Christ—and this gets to the mystery of the incarnation. For what God has revealed is Himself, and this has been done through Christ, whom the writer calls Lord and Architect of the whole world. We have to remember that at this time in AD 130, the more carefully crafted doctrine of the Trinity had not yet been articulated yet. And so, it is fascinating to see how this Christian writer goes about discussing the mystery of the incarnation (which obviously tied to the mystery of the Trinity) before the later official doctrine of the Trinity was formed. Some try to claim that the doctrine of the Trinity was a later invention of the 4th century Church. Anyone who reads these early 2nd century writings, though, can clearly see that simply isn’t true. The later doctrine of the Trinity was articulated precisely because when those later 4th century theologians looked back and read, not only the New Testament writings, but also these early Church writings of the early 2nd century, they saw how they spoke of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a very “Trinitarian way,” even though they didn’t yet use that term.
In any case, the writer emphasizes at the end of his letter that Christians believe that God is a lover of mankind—that is why He created the world, that is why He gave mankind dominion over it, that is why He gave mankind reason and created them in His image, and that is why He sent His only-begotten Son into the human race to redeem it and transform it into something even better. We might read that without much of a second thought—that sounds like the “same old schtick” we’ve heard all our lives in church, from Sunday schools up through Sunday sermons. But we must remember that in AD 130, this idea of a single Creator God who loved mankind was tantamount to a religious revolution.
The pagan world didn’t view their gods that way at all. They viewed them as violent, abusive, and nasty. And that is why the pagan world was so violent, abusive, and nasty—pagans became like the gods they worshipped. By contrast, Christians strove to imitate the God they worshipped, as revealed in the person of Christ. And that is why the writer says this near the end of his letter:
“Do not be surprised that a man should be an imitator of God. He can, since God has willed it so. But happiness is not to be found in dominating one’s fellows, or in wanting to have more than his weaker brethren, or in possessing riches and riding rough-shod over his inferiors. No one can become an imitator of God like that, for such things are wholly alien to His greatness. But if a man will shoulder his neighbor’s burden; if he be ready to supply another’s need from his own abundance; if, by sharing the blessings he has received from God with those who are in want, he himself becomes a god to those who receive his bounty—such a man is indeed an imitator of God.”
That sentiment can be seen throughout the writings of the early Church Fathers. If I can put it this way, yes, their theology was centered on the person of Christ: his being both God and man, his life, suffering, death, and resurrection. But the real theology they emphasized wasn’t so much philosophical or theological speculation (although that is needed), but rather the day to day, practical living out one’s life in imitation of the life of Christ. It really is as simple as that.
The writer ends his letter by making a beautiful Eden analogy. He basically says that anyone who truly accepts the teaching of the Gospel, those words will become a garden paradise of delight, where will be found both the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is not bad—it wasn’t that tree that brought death. It was human disobedience that did. Thus, by obeying Christ’s commandments and patterning one’s “practical life-theology” after the imitation of Christ, one will come to the true knowledge of God in the right way—through obedience. And thus, one will truly become like God, knowing good and evil.
Conclusion
So, what can we learn from The Letter to Diognetus? Quite a lot. At the very least, though, a major takeaway should be on what I’ve called “practical-life-theology.” At the heart of the Gospel is the day-to-day imitation of Christ, manifested in how we treat others. That kind of lived-out-theology yields a deeper, more profound spiritual knowledge that a lifetime’s worth of academic study can accomplish.
Great post, Joel 🙂