Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

Apologetics as a special discipline, such as we have described it, is of recent origin. Arising at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it entered the theological schools only gradually. Before that, either mere apologiae flourished, or only certain questions of fundamental theology were treated, as the difficulties of the times and the progress of theology demanded.

1. In the first centuries the Christian religion was attacked by the Jews and the pagans. The Jews, indeed, not only denied that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, but also pursued both him himself and his disciples with calumnies. The pagans, adding other calumnies to these, accused the Christians of being atheists, haters of the human race, enemies of the state, and devotees of every error and crime.

These objections were refuted in the second century by those fathers of the Church who are significantly called apologists: Quadratus,¹ Aristides of Athens, Justin Martyr (First and Second Apology; Dialogue with Trypho the Jew), Tatian (Address to the Greeks), Athenagoras (Supplication for the Christians), Theophilus of Antioch (Three Books to Autolycus), the unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus, Minucius Felix (Octavius), Hermias (The Ridicule of the Gentile Philosophers), Tertullian (Apologeticum; Ad nationes).

2. With the Christian religion by now widely spread, the pagans no longer dared to put forward those absurd calumnies. All the more, however, did they strive by philosophical arguments to attack the teaching, the miracles, and the books of the Christians and to whitewash the pagan institutions, above all Celsus, Hierocles, Porphyry, and Julian the Apostate.

Accordingly, from the third to the fifth century very many distinguished men defended the Christian cause with the pen, whether negatively, by refuting those polemical writings and ridiculing the superstitions of the pagans, or positively, by expounding the revealed religion and proving its divine origin. The foremost of these apologists are: in the East, those three Alexandrians, Clement (Exhortation to the Greeks; The Instructor; Stromata), Origen (Against Celsus), and Cyril (Against Julian), as well as Eusebius of Caesarea (Preparation for the Gospel; Demonstration of the Gospel) and Athanasius (Against the Heathen); in the West, Cyprian (To Donatus; On the Vanity of Idols), Arnobius (Against the Pagans), Lactantius (Divine Institutes; On the Deaths of the Persecutors), and Augustine (The City of God).

3. From the seventh to the twelfth century rabbinic Jews revived and Arab philosophers attacked the Christian religion. The Jews did not cease to assail the messiahship, the life, and the teaching of Christ in talmudic schools and writings; the Arabs, above all the expositors and corrupters of Aristotle, Avicenna (1037) and Averroës (1198), not only spurned the Christian revelation, but also professed grave errors against the natural religion.

The Jews were refuted from the Old Testament and from the Talmud itself by Isidore of Seville († 636), Rabanus Maurus († 856), Peter Damian († 1072), and Jerome of the Holy Faith, a Jew converted to the faith of Christ, afterwards surnamed Hebraeomastix.

The Muslim Arabs were refuted by John of Damascus († 754), Peter the Venerable († 1156), Peter of Blois († 1200), and St. Thomas Aquinas († 1274). Against both — namely, Jews and Arabs — there fought Raymond Martin O.P. (Pugio fidei against the Moors and the Jews) and Alphonsus de Spina O.M. (Fortalitium fidei against the Jews, Saracens, and others).

The most celebrated of these works is St. Thomas's Summa contra Gentiles, which confounds not only the errors of the Arabs, but also those of other philosophers of that time. It presupposes the truths conceded by them, above all the fundamental ones, and defends those not conceded or ill understood. From this it is clear that this Summa too constitutes an apologia rather than an apologetics.

4. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in the time of humanism and of the rebirth of letters and of the liberal arts, many, stirred by love of the pagan Greeks and Romans, blushed at the Christian religion; some even attacked it, e.g. Giordano Bruno, Pomponazzi, Marsilius of Padua, Ockham, Wyclif, Hus, and others, the forerunners of the pseudo-Reformation.²

Others, however, strove to defend the revealed truths fervently. And indeed, in order to wrest the weapons from their adversaries, they themselves very often also appealed to the philosophy and literature of the classical authors. Whence at times the champions of divine truth went astray in the same way as their adversaries. The more distinguished apologists of this time are: St. Bernardine of Siena O.M. († 1444; De religione christiana), Pico della Mirandola († 1494; Heptaplus), Savonarola O.P. († 1498; Triumphus crucis, or On the Truth of the Faith), Marsilio Ficino († 1499; De religione christiana et fidei pietate).

5. From the sixteenth century heretics gradually strove to undermine all the foundations of the divine religion. The pseudo-Reformers attacked above all the authority of the supreme pontiff, of the councils, and of sacred Tradition, and finally the whole doctrine concerning the Church of Christ and the truths that flow from it. Hence was first born that part of apologetics which is called the demonstratio catholica. And indeed, since the Protestants rejected both the rational and the ecclesiastical arguments, the Catholics defended the Church almost solely from the biblical books and the historical documents.

From then on, in the period of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, very many polemico-apologetic works appeared from the pens of Cochlaeus, Eck, Hosius, the brothers Adrian and Peter van Walenburch, and others. Among them all there stand out Baronius (Annales ecclesiastici), who defended the Church by means of history, Melchior Cano O.P., who wrote the celebrated work "De locis theologicis", and Bellarmine S.I., who published the "Disputationes de controversiis christianae fidei".

6. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries most Protestant theologians, as well as the unbelieving philosophers, progressed from the denial of the Church to the denial of revelation. Monistic, deistic, and rationalistic naturalism (see below, p. 25) called the fact of Christian revelation into doubt (seventeenth century) and finally simply rejected its knowability, usefulness, and possibility (eighteenth century). From this both orthodox Protestants and Catholics were compelled to devote themselves also to that part of apologetics which is entitled the demonstratio christiana.

For the defense of the Christian religion there labored, among the Protestants, Hugo Grotius, Leibniz, Mosheim, Haller, Less, Lilienthal, and Jerusalem; among the Catholics, Bossuet (Discours sur l'histoire universelle), Daniel Huet (Demonstratio evangelica; he favors fideism), Pascal (Les pensées; he favors apologetic voluntarism and sentimentalism), Bergier (Traité historique et dogmatique de la vraie religion), Chateaubriand (Le génie du christianisme), Paolo Segneri (L'incredulo senza scusa), and St. Alphonsus de Liguori (Verità della fede).

Yet even at this time, for the most part, either the whole apologetic object was not treated, or it was not treated systematically. The first to cultivate fundamental theology in the sense defined by us were Vitus Pichler S.I. (Theologia polemica 1713), Martin Gerbert O.S.B. (Demonstratio verae religionis veraeque ecclesiae 1760), Sardagna S.I. (1770), Kilber S.I. (1771), Mayer S.I. (1772), Stättler S.I. (1775), Gazzaniga O.P., Wiest O.Cist., and Beda Mayr O.S.B.

7. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the discipline of apologetics obtained its greatest importance and growth in the theological schools. To the old enemies of Christian revelation and of the Catholic Church there were added new ones, namely philosophical and biblical neo-rationalism, positivism, agnosticism, socialism, Old Catholicism, and finally modernism, the refuge and receptacle of all recent errors. Their efforts were curbed by apologetics, intimately joined to the "perennial philosophy" and to biblical science, in almost innumerable books. Passing over very many, let us mention only those which even today are either in use in the schools or at least can be usefully consulted by theologians.³

Those who treat apologetics systematically: Liebermann (Institutiones theol. 1831); Berlage (Apologetik der Kirche 1834), Drey (Apologetik 1838/47), Perrone S.I. (De vera religione; De locis theologicis 1835/42), Schwetz (Theol. generalis 1850), Albertus (Knoll) a Bulsano O.M.C. (Institutiones theol. dogm. generalis 1852), Murray (De ecclesia 1860/66), Reinerding (Theol. fundamentalis 1864), Jungmann (De vera religione 1874), Hacke (Handbuch der allgemeinen Religionswissenschaft 1875), Hurter S.I. (Theol. generalis 1876), Sprinzl (Fundamentaltheologie 1876), Palmieri (De romano pontifice 1877), Hettinger (Fundamentaltheologie 1879), Mazzella (De religione et ecclesia 1880), Zigliara O.P. (De ordine supernaturali 1884), Bautz (Apologetik 1887), Franzelin S.I. (Theses de ecclesia Christi 1885; De divina Traditione et Scriptura, 3. ed., 1882), Gutberlet (Apologetik 1888), Lambrecht (Theologiae fund. lib. I, 1889; Demonstratio cath. 1890; De locis theologicis 1890), De Groot (De ecclesia 1890), Norbertus (Stock) a Tux O.M.C. (Theol. fund. 1891), Egger (Enchiridion theol. dogm. generalis 1893), Dalponte (Theol. fund. 1894), Chr. Pesch S.I. (Instit. propaedeuticae ad s. theol. 1894), Schill (Theol. Prinzipienlehre 1895), Stöckl (Apologetik 1895), Tanquerey (Synopsis theol. dogm. fund. 1896), Wilmers S.I. (De relig. revelata; De Christi ecclesia 1897/98), Ottiger S.I. (Theol. fund. I/II 1897. 1911), Schmid (Apologetik 1900), Michelitsch (Elementa apologeticae 1901/4), Minges O.M. (Compendium theol. dogm. generalis 1902), Billot S.I. (De ecclesia Christi 1903), Reinhold (Praelectiones de theol. fund. 1905), De San (Tractatus de ecclesia et romano pontifice 1906), Van Noort (De vera rel.; De eccles. Christi; De fontibus revelationis 1907), Weber (Christliche Apologetik 1907), Angelus Stummer O.M.C. (Theol. fund. 1907), Kneib (Apologetik 1912), Specht (Apologetik 1912), Straub (De Ecclesia Christi, 2 vol., 1912), Garrigou-Lagrange (De revelatione per ecclesiam catholicam proposita, 2 vol., 1918), Virgilius Wass O.M.C. (Repetitorium theol. fund. 1921).

Others cultivate an apologia more than an apologetics, many other distinguished men and books being passed over: In English: Wiseman, Twelve lectures on the connection between science and revealed religion 1838; Manning, The grounds of faith 1852; Newman, Grammar of assent 1870.

In French: Nicolas, Etudes philosophiques sur le christianisme 1842; L'art de croire 1866; Migne, Démonstrations évangéliques, 20 vol., 1843—1853; Dechamps, Entretiens sur la démonstration catholique de la révélation 1857; Bougaud, Le christianisme et les temps présents 1884; Jaugey, Dictionnaire apologétique 1889; A. D'Alès, Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique, 1909 ff.; Cardinal Dechamps, Œuvres, Malines t. I, III, IV, XVI;⁴ Lacordaire, Conférences;⁵ Lepin, Jésus Messie et Fils de Dieu 1906; Sertillanges O.P., L'Eglise, 2 vol., 1916.

In German: Denzinger, Vier Bücher von der rel. Erkenntnis 1857; Vosen, Das Christentum 1861; Der Katholizismus 1866; Hettinger, Apologie des Christentums, 5 vol., 1863—1867; Weiß O.P., Apologie des Christentums, 5 vol., 1878—1889; Hammerstein S.I., Begründung des Glaubens 1891—1894; Schanz, Apologie des Christentums, 3 vol., 1895—1898; Schell, Apologie des Christentums, 2 vol., 1901/05; Seitz, Das Evangelium vom Gottessohn 1908; Reinhold, Der alte und der neue Glaube 1908; Klug, Gottes Wort und Gottes Sohn 1909; Straubinger, Grundprobleme der christlichen Weltanschauung 1911; Sawicki, Wahrheit des Christentums 1911; Esser-Mausbach, Religion, Christentum und Kirche, 3 vol., 1911—1913; H. Felder O.M.C., Jesus Christus, eine Apologie seiner Messianität und Gottheit, 2 vol., 2. ed. 1920—1921.

Particular apologetic questions are almost always treated individually by different authors in monographic books or in various periodicals and apologetic dictionaries. Some of these authors will be indicated in their places and chapters in the course of the present treatment, though few of them, as the character of a compendium requires. The names of non-Catholics are marked with an asterisk.