stians, which Athenagoras,
"the Christian philosopher of Athens," presented, to the emperors Marcus
Aurelius and Commodus, nowhere expressly designates Christianity as a
philosophy, and still less does it style the Christians
philosophers.[371] But, at the very beginning of his writing Athenagoras
also claims for the Christian doctrines the toleration granted by the
state to all philosophic tenets.[372] In support of his claim he argues
that the state punishes nothing but practical atheism,[373] and that the
"atheism" of the Christians is a doctrine about God such as had been
propounded by the most distinguished philosophers--Pythagoreans,
Platonists, Peripatetics, and Stoics--who, moreover, were permitted to
write whatsoever they pleased on the subject of the "Deity."[374] The
Apologist concedes even more: "If philosophers did not also acknowledge
the existence of one God, if they did not also conceive the gods in
question to be partly demons, partly matter, partly of human birth, then
certainly we would be justly expelled as aliens."[375] He therefore
takes up the standpoint that the state is justified in refusing to
tolerate people with completely new doctrines. When we add that he
everywhere assumes that the wisdom and piety of the emperors are
sufficient to test and approve[376] the truth of the Christian teaching,
that he merely represents this faith itself as the _reasonable_
doctrine,[377] and that, with the exception of the resurrection of the
body, he leaves all the positive and objectionable tenets of
Christianity out of account,[378] there is ground for thinking that this
Apologist differs essentially from Justin in his conception of the
relation of Christianity to secular philosophy.

Moreover, it is not to be denied that Athenagoras views the revelation
in the prophets and in Christ as completely identical. But in one very
essential point he agrees with Justin; and he has even expressed himself
still more plainly than the latter, inasmuch as he does not introduce
the assumption of a "seed of the Logos implanted by nature" [Greek:
sperma logou emphuton]. The philosophers, he says, were incapable of
knowing the full truth, since it was not from God, but rather from
themselves, that they wished to learn about God. True wisdom, however,
can only be learned from God, that is, from his prophets; it depends
solely on revelation.[379] Here also then we have a repetition of the
thought that the truly reasonable is