Athenagoras’ Corpus

The Works of Athenagoras of Athens

Athenagoras of Athens

A philosopher’s calm, addressed to emperors who could have killed him for it.

Catch rate: 150 / 255
Base research: 70
Stat total: 204

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina56

Contend54

Defend52

Popularity42

Total204

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Contend 54

Two short works — a plea to the emperors and a defense of the resurrection — argued with a philosopher’s calm rather than a polemicist’s heat. Modest Contend that grows as its arguments deepen.

Defend 52

Athenagoras survives in a single main witness (the Arethas codex, A.D. 914) — a clear text, but a narrow thread, so Defend is middling.

Popularity 42

Little read outside specialists — slow to the debate floor.

Cited for this book

Athenagoras of Athens wrote around 176 and called himself a Christian philosopher. His two surviving works, the Embassy for the Christians and On the Resurrection, come down to us through a single manuscript copied in 914.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

On the Resurrection→
Lv 4

Athenagoras’ Corpus

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	Embassy	History	Argument	50	100%	20
1	On the Resurrection	Eschatology	Argument	55	100%	15
1	Expose Contradictions	Rationality	Status	—	100%	15
10	Word Made Flesh	Christology	Argument	70	100%	6
14	We Pray for Caesar	Rationality	Argument	55	100%	20
18	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
18	Body and Soul	Anthropology	Argument	60	100%	15
25	Diagonalization	Biblical Theology	Argument	85	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“For who are more deserving to obtain the things they ask, than those who, like us, pray for your government, that you may, as is most equitable, receive the kingdom, son from father, and that your empire may receive increase and addition?”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 37 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).public domain

Embassy

HistoryArgument · power 50 · 100% accurate

In the gameAthenagoras’ open letter to the emperors: Christians are no atheists — they pray for the state and seek a quiet, obedient life. Rome could ask for no better subjects.

“That same power can reunite what is dissolved, and raise up what is prostrate, and restore the dead to life again, and put the corruptible into a state of incorruption.”
Athenagoras, On the Resurrection of the Dead 3 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).public domain

On the Resurrection

EschatologyArgument · power 55 · 100% accurate

In the gameThe God who made matter from nothing can surely gather it again — dissolved bodies reunited, the dead raised, corruption clothed in incorruption. Hope, argued.

“The Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one.”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 10 (ANF, public domain).public domain

Word Made Flesh

ChristologyArgument · power 70 · 100% accurate

In the gameFrom Athanasius: only the Creator can recreate.

Strong against

×4One Nature After the Unionan argument · why?

It holds the flesh in place — which is the one thing his union cannot do.

×4The Ugly Broad Ditchan argument · why?

Lessing’s ditch says history can never carry necessary truth. The claim on the table is that it did, once, on purpose — the Word made flesh, a fact about a Tuesday.

×3The Many Faiths, One Realan argument · why?

Hick says the faiths are level roads to one summit. Athanasius answers with a fact and not a view: God himself became a man. That cannot be one road among several, because it is not a road at all. It is an arrival.

×2Changeable by Naturean argument · why?

The Word who became flesh is the Word who made the world. He was truly tempted, but he was never a creature who might have gone the other way.

×2Devout Man Onlyan argument · why?

A devout man can teach, but he cannot remake the world. The Word who made creation became flesh to renew it, and that is why he is worshipped.

×2Exalted Creaturean argument · why?

Athanasius’ answer: only the one who made the world can remake it. A creature, however high, cannot save creation, because it is part of creation.

×2God by Gracean argument · why?

Athanasius says the Word who renews creation is the same Word who made it. That is who the Son is, not a title he was lent.

×2The Thaliaan argument · why?

The Word who became flesh is the Word through whom everything was made, time included. The one who made time did not begin within it.

×2The True Word: On the Godsan argument · why?

The Word who came down is the Word who made the world. Coming into his own creation does not change the Creator.

×2Thirty Aeonsan argument · why?

The thirty levels exist to keep God away from matter. John 1 answers that he came down all of them himself — the Word, made flesh.

“And this is also for our advantage, that we may lead a peaceable and quiet life, and may ourselves readily perform all that is commanded us.”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 37 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain) — the sentence following his prayer for the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, c. A.D. 176; he is echoing 1 Timothy 2:1–2.public domain

We Pray for Caesar

RationalityArgument · power 55 · 100% accurate

In the gameThe charge was disloyalty. Christians would not burn incense to the emperor, but they prayed every day for his life, his armies, his senate and his peace, to the only God who could grant them.

Strong against

×2The True Wordan argument · why?

Tertullian answered the charge of disloyalty: Christians pray every day for the emperor, his armies and his empire. They refuse only to worship him.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

“Man, therefore, who consists of the two parts, must continue for ever. But it is impossible for him to continue unless he rise again.”
Athenagoras, On the Resurrection of the Dead 15 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).public domain

Body and Soul

AnthropologyArgument · power 60 · 100% accurate

In the gameGod made humans body AND soul, and judges the whole person — so the whole person must rise. The book steadies itself in its own integrity (Defend may rise).

“Many things human beings conceptualize as opposites can be overcome when viewed from a biblical perspective that refuses to accept the (humanly constructed) opposition.”
Forrest, Chatraw & McGrath, The History of Apologetics — a short excerpt from a modern work, cited as such; the category is theirs, not a father’s.

Diagonalization

Biblical TheologyArgument · power 85 · 100% accurate

In the gameThe biblical refusal of false opposites: what the world splits in two, Scripture holds together. A method the great books share.

Read it: The Lute and the Player

The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Koine Greek.

“If, therefore, the world is an instrument in tune, and moving in well-measured time, I adore the Being who gave its harmony, and strikes its notes, and sings the accordant strain, and not the instrument. For at the musical contests the adjudicators do not pass by the lute-players and crown the lutes.”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 16 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).

“But among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike again; when robbed, they do not go to law.”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 11 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).

“What, then, are those teachings in which we are brought up? ‘I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that persecute you’ … who of them have so purged their souls as, instead of hating their enemies, to love them; and, instead of speaking ill of those who have reviled them … to bless them; and to pray for those who plot against their lives?”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 11 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).

“But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (nous kai logos) of the Father is the Son of God.”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 10 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).

“Who, then, would not be astonished to hear men who speak of God the Father, and of God the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and who declare both their power in union and their distinction in order, called atheists?”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 10 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).

“We, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles… For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it.”
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 35 (trans. Pratten, ANF 2, public domain).

Notes

Athenagoras the Athenian, "philosopher and Christian," addressing the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Internal evidence dates it to A.D. 176–177.

He is answering three specific charges: atheism, cannibalism, and incest. Chapter 35 is his answer to cannibalism — and the answer is that Christians will not even watch a man die in the arena.

Read chapter 11 in its setting. Athenagoras has just described professional philosophers as men who "reduce syllogisms, and clear up ambiguities, and explain etymologies." Then he points at the old women. The old women win.

"Their power in union and their distinction in order" — that is remarkably precise Trinitarian language for the 170s, and he uses it to make the atheism charge collapse.

No early historian mentions Athenagoras at all; Methodius cites him about a century later. Everything we have descends from the Arethas codex, Parisinus graecus 451, copied in A.D. 914.