The Second-Century Apologists

""They bring three charges against us: atheism, Thyestean banquets, and Oedipean unions."" So a late second-century Christian Apologist wrote with reference to his critics. Against these and other charges the Apologists rallied. Not so, they maintained. It was not the Christians but their critics who were the atheists and the Christians were the true theists. They were atheists only insofar as they denied the fabricated gods of the cults and the immoral deities of theaters. That, they expla...