It’s the Roman year 816 (A.D. 63), and you’re a Christian living in the city of Ephesus where the Cayster River empties into the Aegean Sea. Ephesus is the third largest city in the empire, with a quarter of a million people living there. The Emperor Augustus named it the capital of the province of Asia Minor (later part of Turkey).
Ephesus is famous for a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis. The temple is so impressive that a century before you lived, the poet Antipater of Sidon named it one of the seven wonders of the world, a point of pride for the city.
As a Gentile growing up in Ephesus, you were taught to worship Artemis and the other Greek gods, and you’ve been in the temple many times. But eventually you turned your back on your childhood religion.
Becoming a Christian
Ten years ago, men known as apostles began arriving in Ephesus preaching about Jesus of Nazareth, who they said is the Jewish Messiah that the one true God promised. You didn’t meet Paul, but another apostle, Peter, came to Ephesus accompanied by men named Mark and Silvanus, and you met him. Peter was an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, he was Jesus’ chief disciple.
As Peter spoke about God and what his Son did for us on the cross, you were moved. You’d been interested in the philosophers’ idea that there is a high God above all the others, and you knew the Jews claim to worship him. You’d also been impressed by the high moral code of the Jews.
After you heard Peter preach about God’s love for us and how he sent his Son to save us from our sins and make it possible for us to be happy with him forever, you were persuaded. You became a Christian, and Peter’s companion Silvanus baptized you.
Peter and his companions then traveled to other cities before returning to their home base in Rome, which Peter referred to as “Babylon.”
Afterward, you drew support from fellow Christians in Ephesus, and it was good that you had them, because not everything was going well.
Family conflicts
Except for one uncle, your family and friends did not understand why you became a Christian, and they peppered you with questions and objections: “Why turn your back on your ancestral religion? Why join a foreign sect? Why set your hope for the afterlife on this executed Jewish carpenter?”
You felt unsure how to defend your new faith, so you kept your mouth shut, brushing off their questions.
In particular, you try to avoid your brother Diogenes. He’s proud of the fact he’s named after a famous philosopher who pulled stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, saying that he was looking for a man, only to find no one but scoundrels and rascals.
The original Diogenes loved to annoy Plato and disrupt his lectures. Similarly, your brother loves to annoy you by teasing you in front of the family with questions about your faith. He’s even held up a lamp like his namesake, implying that you aren’t honest in your new beliefs but are only a scoundrel. That caused you to snap at him and storm out of the house.
But you find comfort among fellow Christians, and you meet with them on the first day of each week, known among astrologers as the day of the sun but among Christians as “the Lord’s Day,” since it was when the Lord Jesus rose from the dead.
A letter arrives
One Lord’s Day, there is a visitor in church, and you know him—it’s Silvanus, the man who baptized you! During the service, he announces that he has a message from Peter, who has written a letter to the Christians in the cities he visited in your area.
As Silvanus reads it, your heart again is moved. Peter speaks about the Christian hope and how “baptism now saves you” (1 Pet. 3:21). But after losing family and friends because of your faith, the parts of the letter that most speak to you deal with suffering.
Peter says this is to be expected: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (2:21). Then he says something that takes you aback: “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (3:15) (see sidebar).
Wait—always be prepared? To anyone who wants an explanation? You haven’t felt prepared at all. You’ve been trying to dodge people’s questions about your faith. What is Peter asking you to do?
Sidebar:
What Is Apologetics?
The word St. Peter used in his letter for “defense” is apologia, and as a Greek speaker, our first-century Christian would have known the word.
Later, in English—a language that won’t exist for almost a thousand years—the word apology has come to mean saying that you regret something. But that’s not what the word meant to an ancient Greek.
In Greek, apo means “from” and logia means a speech, so an apologia is a speech given from a position. In time, it came to mean a defense. Plato used it as the title of one of his dialogues, the one in which Socrates offers his courtroom defense before the men of Athens.
By urging us to be ready to give an apologia to people who ask us about our Christian faith, Peter is telling us to be prepared to engage in what will one day be called apologetics—the study of how to defend a position.
But how are you supposed to do that, in the first century or the twenty-first? Read on.
Getting ready
Silvanus stays in Ephesus a few days and then leaves for other cities to deliver copies of Peter’s letter. You and the members of your church escort him out of the city, traveling several miles along the road by foot before turning back so that you can arrive home before sunset.
On the way back, you come up beside your uncle, Zenodotus. He’s a fellow Christian, one of the presbyters in the church, and the most educated man in the congregation. You explain that you’ve been meditating on what Peter said about being ready to give a defense, but you don’t feel prepared. What should you do?
Zenodotus ponders for a moment and then says that it depends on to whom you’re talking. If a Jewish person wants to know why you’re a Christian, you’re partway home. He already believes in the one true God and agrees that only he should be worshiped.
Jewish people also believe the Hebrew scriptures, so you can discuss the prophecies that point to Jesus. The apostles and their companions explained many of these in their visits, and the prophecies are discussed regularly in church. Commit them to memory, and you’ll be ready to explain your faith to a Jewish person.
“But what about someone who isn’t a Jew?” you ask, thinking of your infuriating brother Diogenes. “What if you’re talking to a Greek?”
Common ground
Zenodotus again says it will depend on with whom you’re speaking. Some Greeks are skeptical about whether the gods exist, though few deny them outright, lest they be persecuted as atheists—something Christians are now being charged with, since they reject the gods of the state.
If you’re talking to a person who doubts or denies the gods, you can appeal to philosophy. Since it’s based on reason rather than revelation, it’s common ground between all peoples, because everyone has the gift of reason.
You could point out that the earliest philosophers, such as Thales of Miletus, argued that all of nature is filled with a single, divine principle that has no beginning and no end. Later philosophers, such as Plato, reasoned that there must be deities above the small, Olympian gods that people worship. Aristotle in particular explored the idea of an “unmoved mover”—an immaterial, changeless God who is responsible for all the change in the world.
Some philosophers even speak of a second figure, related to the highest God, who was responsible for fashioning the world. This figure is known as the “Artisan” or “Craftsman” (Greek, demiurgos), and some hold that he emanates from the highest God.
That sounds similar, Zenodotus says, from how the Son is begotten by the Father in eternity and how, as Paul has written, Jesus “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth” (Col. 1:15-16; see also John 1:1-3).
Paul in Athens
Back in the city, Zenodotus takes you to his house, where the church meets, and goes to a cupboard. He removes a scroll of the book of Acts, which was published a few years ago by Paul’s companion Luke. The scroll is precious, and not only because it contains the word of God.
Being handwritten by a professional scribe, a single copy of Acts costs more than twenty denars (more than $2,000). Luke’s patron Theophilus, to whom the book is dedicated, paid for this copy, but your congregation knows how valuable it is, and to keep it safe only a presbyter such as Zenodotus can be its guardian.
Your uncle rolls the scroll to a certain place. He explains that a few years ago when Paul was in Athens, he addressed a crowd of unbelievers in a way from which you can learn, and Luke wrote about the encounter.
“Men of Athens,” Paul said, “I perceive that in every way you are very religious” (Acts 17:22). Your uncle notes that instead of just condemning them as idolaters, Paul began by complimenting them about one of their good points.
Paul then said, “As I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (17:23).
The Athenians had reasoned—correctly—that there was a god who was not in their pantheon and that they owed worship to this deity. Now Paul would tell them about him, so they could know the God they had been worshiping in ignorance.
He explained, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything” (17:24-25). The true God is thus superior to the limited Olympian gods.
And God approves of the Athenians’ attempts to learn about him, for he created every nation “that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him” (17:27a).
Paul also said that God doesn’t just care about nations. He cares for each of us, for “he is not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring’” (17:27b-28).
Zenodotus points out that here Paul quoted two pagan authors, Epimenides of Crete and Aratus of Cilicia. “We should embrace it,” your uncle says, “when unbelievers have genuine spiritual insights.”
But neither should we leave them in idolatry, for Paul went on to say, “Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man” (17:29).
And, your uncle explains, we must call them to faith in Jesus, as Paul did: “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead” (17:30-31).
Learning the lessons
Zenodotus urges you to think about what you can learn from Paul’s example.
He doesn’t begin by condemning the Athenians but by complimenting them. Neither does Paul assume that they have no relationship with the true God. Instead, he acknowledges that they do, and he offers to help them improve this relationship by learning about God.
Paul corrects what they don’t get right—like thinking God needs anything from us or that he’s like the idols men make. He assures them that God cares about each one of them and will overlook what they’ve done in the past if they repent and have faith in Jesus. Finally, he gives them evidence by appealing to the fact Jesus rose from the dead.
One more thing . . .
As you’re preparing to go home, Zenodotus stops you and says, “There’s one more thing you need to bear in mind. Don’t forget what Peter said at the end of the passage you’ve been meditating on. He didn’t just call us to be ready to give a defense. He said something else. Do you remember what it was?”
You’re caught off guard and confess that you don’t.
“We’ll be reading Peter’s letter in church again this week, so listen for it,” your uncle says. “After Peter says to be ready to give a defense, he states, ‘yet do it with gentleness and reverence.’ That’s important.”
Your uncle Zenotodus has known you and your siblings since you were born, and he adds with a wink and a smile, “I know how infuriating your brother can be.”
A twenty-first century postscript
This exercise invites us to think about what it was like for the first Christians defending their faith, but the same principles apply to us.
We live in a world that is even more diverse than theirs, and it’s even more important to think carefully about with whom we’re speaking, learn what they believe, and craft our response accordingly. Some may already believe Scripture, in which case we can build on that. Others may not accept it, in which case we can use philosophical reasoning to make our points.
But philosophy alone isn’t enough. At some point, we must turn to the fact that God has given us revelation that centers on his Son, and the resurrection of Jesus is a compelling proof that this revelation is true. The Resurrection is the best documented miracle in history.
We should use the same strategy as St. Paul: be positive, identify common ground, build on what we agree on, correct misunderstandings, assure people of God’s love, and give them evidence. And always—always—speak with love and respect.
Twenty centuries after the apostles’ time, Christians have a wide range of resources available for doing apologetics. Many can be found at catholic.com and in the pages of Catholic Answers magazine.