In the first part of this series, I explored how genuine acts of persuasion are always built on shared concepts of the good, the true, and the beautiful. These “transcendentals” represent the areas of human life that touch most directly on our significance, meaning, and purpose—in other words, the areas of our lives that matter most. I argued that the doctrine of “common grace” gives Christians a strong reason to think unbelievers, to some degree, can truly apprehend the good, the true, and the beautiful. This apprehension, while marred by sin for all of us, can be sharpened over time.
Christian persuasion—things like evangelism, apologetics, and public theology—can and should appeal to these foundational principles. Christians should seek to help those around them understand these transcendentals more fully over time. Because of sin, humans do not perfectly understand these transcendentals, but this lack of a perfect knowledge should not scare us away from cultivating what knowledge we can in ourselves and in those around us. In this article, I will explore examples of ancient Christians who made these kinds of appeals. We will also take a brief look at how these appeals fundamentally shifted the way Western society imagines the good, the true, and the beautiful— offering a glimpse at how we might continue to cultivate the moral imagination of our society today.
Moral Persuasion and Evangelism
Apologists throughout the ages have assumed that unbelievers can grow to have a deeper understanding of morality over time, and they made regular appeals to morality as part of their evangelistic efforts. For example, in Justin Martyr’s First Apology—one of the first major works of Christian apologetics—Justin strove to convince the cultural elites of the ancient world that Christianity was a force for good in Roman society. In Justin’s day, the ancient Romans saw Christians as radical sectarians. The followers of Jesus were seen as atheists since they rejected the traditional gods of Rome. They were seen as cannibals since they gathered regularly to eat the body and blood of Jesus Christ. They were seen as poor citizens since they refused to give ultimate fealty to Caeser. Justin’s Apology provides three specific lessons on how to witness to Christian morality when the concepts of the good, the true, and the beautiful are being contested.
First, Justin pointed to the honorable way Christians lived their lives. He demonstrated how Christians were honest, ideal citizens. They never sought power for themselves but freely submitted to civic authorities and feared God. Justin reasoned that—since Christians are afraid of God’s judgment should they sin against him—the Roman authorities should recognize that there is no better citizen for Rome than the Christians. They would support the empire, promote prosperity, and care for the sick and elderly. They even, Justin pointed out, care for children who would otherwise be left out to die, exposed to the elements. Justin used the writings of philosophers whom the Romans already respected—namely Plato and Socrates—to convince them that these Christian commitments were praiseworthy. Like Justin, we should strive to demonstrate that the Christian story has rich resources to guide us toward moral living, and even if Christians often fail to live up to the standards of Scripture, the impact of Christianity as a whole is radically positive.
In our day, this might look like referencing research about Christian involvement in charity, service, and philanthropy—research like what Robert Putnam and David Campbell put together in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. Christians are called to live good and honorable lives, working for the good of the city or community they live in. Pointing to the fruit of this Christian ethic in our modern world will not only make the Christian faith seem more plausible to those who currently reject it, but it will also spur Christians on in their good works—a spurring on that many of us need!
That is exactly what happened in the ancient world during the Plague of Cyprian. Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, recorded how ancient Christians responded to this deadly plague. He explains that, while many citizens fled the city, the Christians in Alexandria “visited the sick fearlessly and ministered to them continually… And they died with them most joyfully, taking the affliction of others, and drawing the sickness from their neighbors to themselves, and willingly receiving their pains.”[i] In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark argues that this willing act of sacrifice, and others like it, led to Christianity’s rapid growth in the ancient world. Christians demonstrated that their beliefs changed their priorities, transformed their view of death, and gave them a hope that no plague could extinguish.
In our day, apologists will also need to be prepared to discuss the public moral failures of various Christian leaders. These examples of moral failure become cultural scripts that make Christianity seem less plausible to our neighbors, and a modern apologetic must account for those negative cultural scripts as much as the positive ones. A robust account of God’s justice, along with a real call to repentance, can help people understand the resources within the Christian story that account for these moral failures.
An Appeal to the Morality of Christian Truth
The second lesson we can learn from Justin is in how he presented Christian moral teaching as something everyone should want to adopt. He framed Christianity not only as a set of beliefs but also as a way of life. It took serious work—spread over centuries—to convince the Romans that Christianity’s compassionate practices were more moral than the prevailing cultural sensibilities. Justin spends much of the First Apology doing that work. He references how Christian morality leads to greater social flourishing, less harm to vulnerable populations, and healthier families. Justin wasn’t the only apologist of his day trying to make these arguments. An unknown author wrote a letter to Diognetus, a famous skeptic and critic of Christianity, around AD 130. In that letter, the author argues, similar to Justin, that Christians are the ideal citizens:
They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh… They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life (Letter to Diognetus, 5).
In today’s world, we benefit from the faithful witness of these early Christians. Much of the assumed moral framework of our contemporary world is based on Christian values, and we should work to demonstrate that the moral intuitions our neighbors hold dear are often based on Christian influences. Without Christians demonstrating this and connecting those principles to the story of Scripture, those moral intuitions will continue to lose significance. This is what Nicholas Wolterstorff argued in his book, Justice.
Our Judaic and Christian heritage…declares that all of us have great and equal worth: the worth of being made in the image of God and of being loved redemptively by God. It adds that God holds us accountable for how we treat each other—and for how we treat God. It is this framework of conviction that gave rise to our moral subculture of rights. If this framework erodes, I think we must expect that our moral subculture of rights will also eventually erode and that we will slide back into our tribalisms. (388)
Tom Holland’s Dominion does a great job surveying how early Christians offered a radical moral framework that transformed the Western world. The example and result of early Christian moral witness in the face of alternate worldviews should give us hope that genuine moral argumentation today can have long-term positive impacts. While some of the Western world may countenance abortion today—generally through denying the unborn human full personhood—no one in our society would dare suggest that it is acceptable to leave infants in gutters to die of exposure. It was, however, common practice in Roman society to kill unwanted infants through exposure, and it remained common until “the emergence of a Christian people” (Holland, Dominion, 143). Great Christian exemplars, like Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, argued that the love of God gives every human inherent dignity and worth, a belief which is now widespread in Western society.
Contextualization and Persuasive Communication
Finally, Justin’s third lesson for us is how he contextualized his moral appeals by referencing the cultural sources that were already seen as significant by the ancient Romans. He argued that what the Romans already loved—namely, their philosophy and civic virtue—is more meaningful when viewed in light of Christianity. Justin argued that the resurrection gives depth and significance to those moral sources. He spends a good deal of time arguing that the writings of Moses provide more depth and hope than the writings of Plato, and he even argues that Plato is indebted to Moses for much of his insight. Since all truth is God’s truth, reasons Justin, what truth can be found in Plato only finds its ultimate meaning in light of Christ’s coming.
For us today, pointing out how Christianity gives more meaning to the things our neighbors love will look quite different. For your parent friend, you can explain how Christianity makes their parental love meaningful beyond simple brain chemistry. For your friend who serves at the local Humane Society, you can explain how Christianity affirms that humans are meant to steward and care for the rest of creation. For your friend concerned about justice in society, you can explain how Christianity gives us a way to understand the significance of justice in a seemingly unjust world. You can also tell them that Christianity promises their longing for justice will be fulfilled someday.
The plausibility of Justin’s argument was built on the good works of the Christian community. The lives Christians lived helped to underwrite the strong theological claims he made. This example should spur us on in our own good works, and it should challenge us to strive against all immorality within our own churches —whether it comes in the form of an abuse of power, sexual licentiousness, or simple apathy toward the plight of our neighbors.
Moral disagreements often seem intractable, as if the chasm between belief systems is so great that no amount of discussion can resolve the underlying disagreement. This can often tempt Christian apologists to abandon moral disagreements altogether, opting instead to focus on rational proofs or logical syllogisms that “step past” the intractable moral disagreements that mark Christianity out as a separate way of life. If we take common grace seriously, though, this would be a mistake. Christian moral witness has changed the world before and can do it again. In so doing, our moral witness can help make the truth claims of Christianity seem more plausible to a skeptical world.
In the next part of this series, we will take a look at how a shared apprehension of beauty can offer us fresh resources as we work to persuade our neighbors of the goodness and truth of Christianity.
Notes:
[i] This quote is recorded by the historian Eusebius, taken from a letter written by Dionysius. You can find this quote in The Church History of Eusebius, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, in vol. 1 of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1886), 7.22.