Letter to Diognetus
Part III: The Age of Persecutions
During the first three centuries, the Church had to make her way through dangers and difficulties of every kind. She had, on one hand, to endure the persecutions of the Roman political power, and, on the other, to assert the doctrine received from the apostles. To tackle the later task, some scholars defended the Christian message against its detractors; these scholars are called apologists (defenders).
In addition to the anthology of texts from the Apostolic Fathers, the reader will find in this third part some texts that will help him better understand the environment in which the word of God was first planted by our Lord. These are:
- Texts from an early apologist, the unknown author of the Letter to Diognetus.
- Four writings about the circumstances of the martyrdom suffered by early Christians.
- A short inscription from a tombstone –an epitaph– that reveals the transcendental truths the primitive Church possessed.
Letter to Diognetus
(circa year 124)
The Letter to Diognetus is a defense of Christianity composed in the form of a letter addressed to a certain Diognetus. He seems to be a high-ranking pagan, or the emperor himself (his name means “known by Zeus”).
This letter has been attributed to Quadratus, a Greek from Athens, who met St Paul and St John there. If so, this could be the lost letter he sent to Emperor Hadrian (117-138) arguing in favor of Christianity.
1 Excellent Diognetus!
I see that you are most eager to learn about the religion of the Christians, raising sharp and careful questions about their beliefs. “Who is the God in whom they trust,” you inquire, “and what kind of cult is theirs.” You say, “I am puzzled. This God enables them, one and all, to despise the world and to have no fear of death; to ignore the gods adored by the Greeks and to keep away from the fastidious observances on food and rituals practiced by the Jews.”
You want to know, too, what is the secret of that strong love they have for one another, and why this new people, or new way of life, has just come into the world we now live in, and not before.
I praise your eagerness to know, and I pray that God, who grants us power both to speak and to listen, may enable me to speak in such a way that you may derive the greatest possible benefit from hearing, and enable you to listen in such a way that I may rejoice for your attention.
The author attacks the foolish idolatry of the pagans and the external formalism of the worship of the Jews.
2 Look at what you call and consider gods; look at them not only with your eyes, but with your mind. What substance do they really have? Aren’t they made of stone, like the pavement under your feet, and that one of bronze, no better than the pots and pans of daily use? Is not that third one made of wood and already rotten, and that fourth one of silver and in need of a custodian, lest it be stolen?
You call these things gods; you serve them; you bow before them; and in the end, you become no better than they are.
3 If the pagans show their folly in making offerings to gods that can neither see nor hear, the Jews, in making the same offering to God, should think this ridiculous, rather than religious. God is not in need of such offerings. They offer God sacrifices with blood, fat, and burnt animals, and try to honor God with them; they differ in nothing –it seems to me– from those who show the same devotion to deaf idols.
And is it not an offense to God to take some things that He created for our use and food, and to reject others? Are not all created by God?
Is it not ridiculous to boast of a mutilation of the flesh, as a sign of the chosen people? Does this mutilation make them particularly loved by God?
The best part of the letter is the account which the author gives of the life of a Christian in the middle of the world. The author criticizes some vices common among the pagans; this criticism gives us an idea of the state of morality then.
5 Christians are indistinguishable from other men because of their nationality, language, or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some eccentric way of life.
Their teaching is not invented by man, or based upon the ideas or talent of some inquisitive human mind. Unlike some other people, they do not champion any doctrine of purely human origin. With regard to dress, food, and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it be Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them even their homeland is a foreign country.
Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not abandon the babies that are born. They share their meals, but not their wives. They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law.
Christians love all men, yet all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, yet enrich many. They are defamed, and in their defamation find their glory. They are calumniated, and are vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult.
For the good they do, they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.
The relations between Christians and the world are compared to that of the soul with the human body. Christians are the soul of the world. They maintain the world alive and united. Every Christian participates in this mission; thus, he cannot turn away from it.
6 The Christians are to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so are Christians found in all the cities of the world, but are not identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so are Christians seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unnoticed.
The body hates the soul and makes war against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.
Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body’s hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together. Similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together.
The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amid things that are not permanent, while they look forward to the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians increase daily more and more under persecution.
Such is the Christians’ lofty mission, assigned to them by God; thus, it is wrong for a Christian to run away from his vocation.
God has a universal plan of salvation; it is accomplished through his Son. The divinity of Jesus Christ is proclaimed.
7 God is truly the Almighty, the Creator of all, the Invisible. He himself revealed to men the Truth from heaven and sent the holy and incomprehensible Word. He engraved it in man’s heart. Contrary to what one may guess, he did not accomplish this by sending some subject, messenger or assistant, some earthly prince or celestial creature. No, he sent the very Architect and Creator of the universe himself, through whom all was made.
Did he send him, one may ask, to act like a tyrant, in fear and terror? Not so. In gentleness and compassion he sent him, as a king sending his son. He sent him as King; God and man. He sent him to men.
He sent him to persuade us and to save us, not to do violence on us. Violence, you see, is not an attribute of God.
8 No man has ever seen God or known him, but God has revealed himself to us through faith, by which alone it is possible to see him. God, the Lord and maker of all things, who created the world and set it in order, not only loved man but was also patient with him. So he has always been, is, and will be: kind, good, free from anger, truthful; indeed, he and he alone is good.
He devised a plan, a great and wonderful plan, and shared it only with his Son. For long he preserved this secrecy and kept his own wise counsel. He seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us. But when through his beloved Son he revealed and made public what he had prepared from the very beginning, he gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamt of. He even gave us sight and knowledge of himself.
Man should cooperate in this divine plan of salvation by using the grace Jesus won for us.
9 When God had made all his plans in consultation with his Son, he waited until a later time, allowing us to follow our own whim. Thus, we were swept along by our unruly passions, led astray by pleasure and desire. Not that he was pleased by our sins: he only tolerated them. Not that he approved of that age of sin: he was planning this era of holiness.
When we had been shown to be undeserving of life, his goodness made us worthy of it. When it became clear to us that we could not enter God’s kingdom by our own power, we were enabled to do so by the power of God.
When our sins had reached their highest point, it became clear that punishment was at hand in the shape of suffering and death. The time then came for God to make known his compassion and power. How immeasurable is God’s generosity and love!
God did not show hatred for us, reject us, or take vengeance. Instead, he was patient with us, put up with us, and in compassion took our sins upon himself. He gave his own Son as the price of our redemption. The Holy One became the ransom for the wicked, the sinless One for the sinners, the just One for the unjust. The incorruptible One became the price for the corrupt, the immortal One for the mortals.
For what else could have buried our sins but his sinlessness? Where else could we –wicked and sinful as we were– have found the means of sanctity except in the Son of God alone?
What a wonderful substitution, what a mysterious plan, what an inconceivable blessing! The wickedness of the many is buried in the Holy One, and the holiness of One sanctifies many sinners.
In return for God’s love, man must become God’s image.
10 If you desire to have faith, first learn about God the Father. God loved man; he made the world for man. God subjected to man everything that is on earth. He endowed man with intelligence and reason, so that he would raise his gaze and contemplate Him. He made man to his image, and sent him his only begotten Son. God promised man his kingdom in heaven. Think, therefore, what shall God finally give to those who correspond to his love.
Now that you know about God the Father and his love for us, shouldn’t you be filled with joy? And how will you love Him who loved you so much before you existed?
If you love Him, you shall be an imitator of his goodness. Do not be astonished that man could imitate God. If God wants so, man can.
You cannot find happiness in having power over your neighbor, being above the weak, or becoming rich by oppressing the poor. No, it is impossible to imitate God in so doing; for it is the opposite of his majesty.
To imitate God, you must take upon yourself your neighbor’s burden; you should be ready to render some service to a subordinate precisely in what you are superior. Give help to a person in need; you will become God’s image for those who receive from your hand.
In so doing and while still on earth, you should be contemplating God, who rules from heaven; you will be able to talk about the mysteries of God. Then, you will start admiring and loving those sentenced to death for refusing to deny God.
The world is full of deceit and drifting nowhere. You should react and unmask the decay behind worldly life-styles, when you get to know about true life in heaven. Then you will despise what people call death; for real death is that reserved for the damned in the eternal fire, a fire always giving torment to those thrown in. When you get to know about that fire, you will admire and congratulate those who suffer –out of love of God– this momentary fire.
During the first three centuries, the Church had to make her way through dangers and difficulties of every kind. She had, on one hand, to endure the persecutions of the Roman political power, and, on the other, to assert the doctrine received from the apostles. To tackle the later task, some scholars defended the Christian message against its detractors; these scholars are called apologists (defenders).
In addition to the anthology of texts from the Apostolic Fathers, the reader will find in this third part some texts that will help him better understand the environment in which the word of God was first planted by our Lord. These are:
- Texts from an early apologist, the unknown author of the Letter to Diognetus.
- Four writings about the circumstances of the martyrdom suffered by early Christians.
- A short inscription from a tombstone –an epitaph– that reveals the transcendental truths the primitive Church possessed.
Letter to Diognetus
(circa year 124)
The Letter to Diognetus is a defense of Christianity composed in the form of a letter addressed to a certain Diognetus. He seems to be a high-ranking pagan, or the emperor himself (his name means “known by Zeus”).
This letter has been attributed to Quadratus, a Greek from Athens, who met St Paul and St John there. If so, this could be the lost letter he sent to Emperor Hadrian (117-138) arguing in favor of Christianity.
1 Excellent Diognetus!
I see that you are most eager to learn about the religion of the Christians, raising sharp and careful questions about their beliefs. “Who is the God in whom they trust,” you inquire, “and what kind of cult is theirs.” You say, “I am puzzled. This God enables them, one and all, to despise the world and to have no fear of death; to ignore the gods adored by the Greeks and to keep away from the fastidious observances on food and rituals practiced by the Jews.”
You want to know, too, what is the secret of that strong love they have for one another, and why this new people, or new way of life, has just come into the world we now live in, and not before.
I praise your eagerness to know, and I pray that God, who grants us power both to speak and to listen, may enable me to speak in such a way that you may derive the greatest possible benefit from hearing, and enable you to listen in such a way that I may rejoice for your attention.
The author attacks the foolish idolatry of the pagans and the external formalism of the worship of the Jews.
2 Look at what you call and consider gods; look at them not only with your eyes, but with your mind. What substance do they really have? Aren’t they made of stone, like the pavement under your feet, and that one of bronze, no better than the pots and pans of daily use? Is not that third one made of wood and already rotten, and that fourth one of silver and in need of a custodian, lest it be stolen?
You call these things gods; you serve them; you bow before them; and in the end, you become no better than they are.
3 If the pagans show their folly in making offerings to gods that can neither see nor hear, the Jews, in making the same offering to God, should think this ridiculous, rather than religious. God is not in need of such offerings. They offer God sacrifices with blood, fat, and burnt animals, and try to honor God with them; they differ in nothing –it seems to me– from those who show the same devotion to deaf idols.
And is it not an offense to God to take some things that He created for our use and food, and to reject others? Are not all created by God?
Is it not ridiculous to boast of a mutilation of the flesh, as a sign of the chosen people? Does this mutilation make them particularly loved by God?
The best part of the letter is the account which the author gives of the life of a Christian in the middle of the world. The author criticizes some vices common among the pagans; this criticism gives us an idea of the state of morality then.
5 Christians are indistinguishable from other men because of their nationality, language, or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some eccentric way of life.
Their teaching is not invented by man, or based upon the ideas or talent of some inquisitive human mind. Unlike some other people, they do not champion any doctrine of purely human origin. With regard to dress, food, and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it be Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them even their homeland is a foreign country.
Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not abandon the babies that are born. They share their meals, but not their wives. They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law.
Christians love all men, yet all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, yet enrich many. They are defamed, and in their defamation find their glory. They are calumniated, and are vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult.
For the good they do, they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.
The relations between Christians and the world are compared to that of the soul with the human body. Christians are the soul of the world. They maintain the world alive and united. Every Christian participates in this mission; thus, he cannot turn away from it.
6 The Christians are to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so are Christians found in all the cities of the world, but are not identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so are Christians seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unnoticed.
The body hates the soul and makes war against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.
Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body’s hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together. Similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together.
The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amid things that are not permanent, while they look forward to the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians increase daily more and more under persecution.
Such is the Christians’ lofty mission, assigned to them by God; thus, it is wrong for a Christian to run away from his vocation.
God has a universal plan of salvation; it is accomplished through his Son. The divinity of Jesus Christ is proclaimed.
7 God is truly the Almighty, the Creator of all, the Invisible. He himself revealed to men the Truth from heaven and sent the holy and incomprehensible Word. He engraved it in man’s heart. Contrary to what one may guess, he did not accomplish this by sending some subject, messenger or assistant, some earthly prince or celestial creature. No, he sent the very Architect and Creator of the universe himself, through whom all was made.
Did he send him, one may ask, to act like a tyrant, in fear and terror? Not so. In gentleness and compassion he sent him, as a king sending his son. He sent him as King; God and man. He sent him to men.
He sent him to persuade us and to save us, not to do violence on us. Violence, you see, is not an attribute of God.
8 No man has ever seen God or known him, but God has revealed himself to us through faith, by which alone it is possible to see him. God, the Lord and maker of all things, who created the world and set it in order, not only loved man but was also patient with him. So he has always been, is, and will be: kind, good, free from anger, truthful; indeed, he and he alone is good.
He devised a plan, a great and wonderful plan, and shared it only with his Son. For long he preserved this secrecy and kept his own wise counsel. He seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us. But when through his beloved Son he revealed and made public what he had prepared from the very beginning, he gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamt of. He even gave us sight and knowledge of himself.
Man should cooperate in this divine plan of salvation by using the grace Jesus won for us.
9 When God had made all his plans in consultation with his Son, he waited until a later time, allowing us to follow our own whim. Thus, we were swept along by our unruly passions, led astray by pleasure and desire. Not that he was pleased by our sins: he only tolerated them. Not that he approved of that age of sin: he was planning this era of holiness.
When we had been shown to be undeserving of life, his goodness made us worthy of it. When it became clear to us that we could not enter God’s kingdom by our own power, we were enabled to do so by the power of God.
When our sins had reached their highest point, it became clear that punishment was at hand in the shape of suffering and death. The time then came for God to make known his compassion and power. How immeasurable is God’s generosity and love!
God did not show hatred for us, reject us, or take vengeance. Instead, he was patient with us, put up with us, and in compassion took our sins upon himself. He gave his own Son as the price of our redemption. The Holy One became the ransom for the wicked, the sinless One for the sinners, the just One for the unjust. The incorruptible One became the price for the corrupt, the immortal One for the mortals.
For what else could have buried our sins but his sinlessness? Where else could we –wicked and sinful as we were– have found the means of sanctity except in the Son of God alone?
What a wonderful substitution, what a mysterious plan, what an inconceivable blessing! The wickedness of the many is buried in the Holy One, and the holiness of One sanctifies many sinners.
In return for God’s love, man must become God’s image.
10 If you desire to have faith, first learn about God the Father. God loved man; he made the world for man. God subjected to man everything that is on earth. He endowed man with intelligence and reason, so that he would raise his gaze and contemplate Him. He made man to his image, and sent him his only begotten Son. God promised man his kingdom in heaven. Think, therefore, what shall God finally give to those who correspond to his love.
Now that you know about God the Father and his love for us, shouldn’t you be filled with joy? And how will you love Him who loved you so much before you existed?
If you love Him, you shall be an imitator of his goodness. Do not be astonished that man could imitate God. If God wants so, man can.
You cannot find happiness in having power over your neighbor, being above the weak, or becoming rich by oppressing the poor. No, it is impossible to imitate God in so doing; for it is the opposite of his majesty.
To imitate God, you must take upon yourself your neighbor’s burden; you should be ready to render some service to a subordinate precisely in what you are superior. Give help to a person in need; you will become God’s image for those who receive from your hand.
In so doing and while still on earth, you should be contemplating God, who rules from heaven; you will be able to talk about the mysteries of God. Then, you will start admiring and loving those sentenced to death for refusing to deny God.
The world is full of deceit and drifting nowhere. You should react and unmask the decay behind worldly life-styles, when you get to know about true life in heaven. Then you will despise what people call death; for real death is that reserved for the damned in the eternal fire, a fire always giving torment to those thrown in. When you get to know about that fire, you will admire and congratulate those who suffer –out of love of God– this momentary fire.